A diagrammatical template for business market demand estimation

This article describes a template that can help guide managers through a minefield of complex product interactions and demand drivers on the way to producing a realistic demand estimation. It is based on many years of consulting and conducting postmortems to find out what went wrong when demand forecasts have gone awry.A menu of troublesome variables that make up a rogue's gallery of the worst offending causes of estimation error are presented. The premise being, if we are aware of the potential trouble spots in demand estimation, we are likely to avoid some of the more serious problems that plague market projections.A diagrammatical template is presented that shows these troublesome variables and where they enter into the demand evaluation process. Next, the template components are introduced to show how the various product interactions and drivers that affect demand estimation are used and how they impact market projections. Throughout, a list of dos and don'ts are provided along with a sufficient number of real-life disaster stories to reinforce the issues.     

Using vehicle monitoring technology and eco-driver training to reduce fuel use and emissions in tourism: a ski resort case study

Ground-based transport moves more tourists than any other form of transportation and contributes c. 32% of tourism's carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions – yet remains a largely neglected area of emission/carbon management research. This study examines the value of vehicle monitoring technology (VMT) and eco-driver training as a means to improve fuel efficiency and reduce CO₂ emissions for a fleet of vehicles at the largest ski resort operation in Ontario, Canada. The VMT was installed in 14 fleet vehicles. After eco-driver training, the fleet reduced its average daily speed (?14%), hard decelerations (?55%), hard accelerations (?44%), and idling time (?2%), resulting in decreased fuel costs (?8%) and CO₂ emissions (?8%). The process requires very low capital expenditures, can pay for itself in as little as one year, and has safety paybacks. It also has valuable externalities: tourism businesses that instill sustainability awareness and values to their employees contribute to environmental prosperity generally, because eco-trained drivers also drive more efficiently in their everyday lives. This is the first known study to quantify the benefits of driver training and behavioral intervention within a tourism context, demonstrating the potential to enhance environmental sustainability while simultaneously reducing operating costs. Technicalities, issues, and future application possibilities are discussed.     

An Attitudinal Revolution in Irish Industrial Relations: The End of ‘Them and Us’?

Intensified international competition and high unemployment have characterized many Western economies since 1980. A firm's survival in such an environment demands a flexible and co-operative work-force, a requirement incompatible with traditional adversarial industrial relations. Drawing on a survey of employees in nine unionized companies in the Irish manufacturing sector, this paper examines the effect of these changes in the economy and workplace in facilitating a significant reduction in 'them and us' attitudes and an associated weakening of union structure and influence in the workplace. We found no evidence of a reduction in 'them and us' attitudes, but a cohesive and influential union was associated with less intense 'them and us'.     

Developing and using a customer profile data bank

This article proposes the implementation of a customer profile system to aid the industrial marketer in: making daily sales decisions involving the firm's customers; the development of the vendor's “buyer mix”; and the production of marketing analysis reports used by the firm. The components of the customer profile are presented and the procedures by which these elements can be incorporated into the firm's decision making are explained. Working examples are also provided to reinforce the concepts. Unfortunately the names of the actual corporations had to be deleted or changed for reasons of confidentiality.     

FROM EXPERIENCE: Disruptive Innovation and the Need for Disruptive Intellectual Asset Strategy

Disruption has become a popular business term, yet it is often used so loosely as to convey almost nothing of substance. Here a largely neglected factor is addressed: the role of intellectual assets in securing opportunities for or averting threats from disruptive innovations. While the literature explains why the decision-making systems in large established companies cause difficulty in responding effectively to disruptive innovation the generation of intellectual assets (e.g., patents, publications, trademarks) typically is not subject to the same cultural and structural barriers. Though it may be difficult to convince a business to invest millions in pursuit of a speculative disruptive innovation, it is much easier for a small team to gain support in pursuing low-cost intellectual assets in the name of mitigating potential threats. A two-pronged approach is proposed that builds on the authors' experience at Kimberly-Clark Corporation in dealing with disruptive threats and opportunities. The approach calls for generation of intellectual assets, often using small proactive teams, to (1) protect an existing business by reducing competitive risks from disruptive innovation, including the risk of new products with disruptive potential and the risk of associated competitive patents that might limit one's response; and (2) prepare for future new and disruptive business opportunities that could be protected or strengthened by the intellectual assets generated. Kimberly-Clark's growing experience with this approach suggests that it may be a valuable component of one's strategy for innovation and protection of the business.     

Asymmetric promotion and strike effects in an oligopolistic service industry

The effects of promotion and selling expenses as well as the impact of striks on the sales of two major airlines in an oilgopolistic service industry are investigated through simultaneous and recursive multiple regression modelling. Results indicate that the independent variables asymmetrically affect the respective sales of the duopolists. Additionally, there is evidence that the two firms appear to have adopted a form of competitive response model regarding their promotional expenditures which may be questionable given the results of this study.