Psychological Meaning of Products and Product Positioning

New product positioning is an issue increasingly being considered by new products managers. An article on this topic by Crawford appeared in this Journal in 1985. Roberto Friedmann and Parker Lessig employ the concept of psychological meaning of products to discuss why and how Crawford's new product positioning typology affects the consumer. They present arguments to show that the psychological meaning of products and Crawford's typology address product positioning from complementary and converging perspectives. They also argue that psychological meaning of products can be a valuable managerial planning tool.     

State‐owned Enterprises: NWSC's Turnaround in Uganda

Abstract: Oversight agencies in the water sector emphasize performance monitoring based on outputs, such as customers served, volume delivered, and service quality. However, bureaucratic tendencies can curtail operational innovation and creativity. In situations where managers lack full operating knowledge and capacities, proactive and consultative monitoring and regulation can yield benefits. This study reviews the results of Uganda's National Water and Sewerage Corporation's (NWSC) approach to performance monitoring (and ‘self‐regulation’). The purpose of this study is to outline corrective actions undertaken by the NWSC Management and Staff to turn around performance, the sequencing of those steps, and the outcomes from this reform program. The NWSC focuses on promoting improvements in technical processes and input selection. Improvements in service quality and network expansion resulted from aligning performance improvement initiatives with the organization's financial performance and team development. The program's success required managing organizational rigidities and moving towards full cost‐recovery. In particular, organizational incentives and information flows encouraged managers to reduce rules and procedures that hindered strong performance. African proverbs are interspersed throughout the article to underscore key themes and lessons for those designing, implementing, and evaluating infrastructure sector reform initiatives.     

State-of-the-art of Russia’s heat supply systems

The paper overviews the contemporary state of Russia’s heat supply systems and fuel consumption within its centralized part, the structure of heat consumption by economic sectors and types of industrial consumers. As shown, the centralized heat supply systems, providing the major part of country’s economy with low temperature heat, have heat losses and accident rate at a critical level. The state of decentralized heat supply systems of low rise buildings is not covered by national statistics at all. A second paper on the prospects and development of Russia’s heat supply systems will be published in a subsequent issue.     

An Analysis of Third Party Consumer Complaint Handling Mechanisms: The Hawaii Office of Consumer Protection

This paper presents a preliminary analysis of third party complaint handling mechanisms, based on data obtained from the Hawaii Office of Consumer Protection. Specifically, the study focuses on the types of complaints processed by the Agency, the factors which affect the redress received by consumers and the length of investigation time.     

Environmental Kuznets Curve: Conclusive Econometric Evidence for CO2

This paper begins with a statistical formulation of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) and discusses the major econometric problems raised in the literature in testing this hypothesis using panel data. A simple t‐test is then presented that avoids these econometric problems. The result from applying the t‐test confirms conclusively the EKC for CO₂ as formulated.