CRM in Data-Rich Multichannel Retailing Environments: A Review and Future Research Directions

Many retailers have collected large amounts of customer data using, for example, loyalty programs. We provide an overview of the extant literature on customer relationship management (CRM), with a specific focus on retailing. We discuss how retailers can gather customer data and how they can analyze these data to gain useful customer insights. We provide an overview of the methods predicting customer responses and behavior over time. We also discuss the existing knowledge on the application of marketing actions in a CRM context, while providing an in-depth discussion on CRM and firm value. We outline future research directions based on the literature review and retail practice insights.     

Interactional service failures in a pseudorelationship: The role of organizational attributions

The current research investigates customer responses to interactional service failures, such as a service provider who is rude or inattentive, or unfriendly. We study interactional failures within pseudorelationships, which exist when a customer interacts repeatedly with the same firm but encounters different employees across service occasions. Empirical results demonstrate that customers’ responses to these interactional failures distinguish between the offending employee and the organization. Dissatisfaction with the organization critically depends on the customer's attribution of globality—how widespread the interactional failure is throughout the organization. Globality attributions and dissatisfaction with the organization can be lowered by excellent past experience with the organization; however, that same positive experience increases dissatisfaction with the offending employee. Thus, customers’ discrimination of the organization and employee in a pseudorelationship can work in the organization's favor after an interactional failure, and managing customers’ attributions of globality should be a managerial priority.     

Size Does Matter: Technical and Scale Efficiency in Indian State Tax Jurisdictions

Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) is used to measure tax efficiency in 15Indian states from 1980/81 to 1992/93. Tax efficiency is shown to be conditional on state gross domestic product (SDP), agriculture's share in state SDP,and a poverty index. The considerable remaining efficiency differences areattributable to the small size of some tax jurisdiction rather than to technical inefficiency. Multilateral Malmquist tax indices show that six of the states were consistently efficient, while three were consistently inefficient. Tax efficiency grew at an average annual rate of 3.9% until 1986/87, but growth ceased after that date for all but two states.     

Production under uncertainty: a simulation study

In this paper we model production technology in a state-contingent framework. Our model analyzes production under uncertainty without being explicit about the nature of producer risk preferences. In our model producers’ risk preferences are captured by the risk-neutral probabilities they assign to the different states of nature. Using a state-general state-contingent specification of technology we show that rational producers who encounter the same stochastic technology can make significantly different production choices. Further, we develop an econometric methodology to estimate the risk-neutral probabilities and the parameters of stochastic technology when there are two states of nature and only one of which is observed. Finally, we simulate data based on our state-general state-contingent specification of technology. Biased estimates of the technology parameters are obtained when we apply conventional ordinary least squares estimator on the simulated data.     

Workplace Spirituality Facilitation: A Comprehensive Model

This article specifies a comprehensive model for workplace spirituality facilitation that integrates various views from the existing research on workplace spirituality facilitation. It outlines the significance of workplace spirituality topic and highlights its relevance to the area of ethics. It then briefly outlines the various directions the existing workplace spirituality research has taken. Based on this, it indicates that an integration of the elements from various existing research works on workplace spirituality facilitation into a comprehensive workplace spirituality facilitation model could make relevant contributions to the existing workplace spirituality research. It then indicates that there are various points of focus in workplace spirituality conceptualization and facilitation views. It outlines various views from the existing research on workplace spirituality facilitation. Drawing on the elements of these various workplace spirituality facilitation views, it specifies a comprehensive model of workplace spirituality facilitation. It outlines how the various parts and linkages depicted in the comprehensive model of workplace spirituality facilitation are consistent with and are supported by the various views of workplace spirituality facilitation that it seeks to integrate. It then outlines how the comprehensive model specified can guide the future research in the area of workplace spirituality and how it can provide inputs to leadership and organization development (OD) efforts for workplace spirituality facilitation.     

Service failure and recovery: The impact of relationship factors on customer satisfaction

This research investigated how customers' relationships with a service organization affect their reactions to service failure and recovery. Our conceptual model proposed that customer-organizational relationships help to shape customers' attributions and expectations when service failures occur. The empirical results showed that customers with higher expectations of relationship continuity had lower service recovery expectations after a service failure and also attributed that failure to a less stable cause. Both the lower recovery expectations and the lower stability attributions were associated with greater satisfaction with the service performance after the recovery. These effects appeared to be key processes by which relationships buffer service organizations when service failures occur. Ronald L. Hess Jr. (ron. hess@business.wm.edu) (Ph.D., Virginia Tech) is currently an assistant professor of marketing at the College of William & Mary. His research interests include customer responses to service and product failures; organizational complaint handling; and customer assessments of satisfaction, loyalty, and service quality. He has published his research inMarketing Letters and several conference proceedings. Shankar Ganesan (sganesan @bpa.arizona.edu) (Ph.D., University of Florida) is an associate professor of marketing and Lisle and Rosslyn Payne Fellow in Marketing at the Eller College of Business and Public Administration, University of Arizona. His research interests focus on the areas of interorganizational relationships, buyer-seller negotiations, service failure and recovery, new product innovation, and E-marketing. He is the author of several articles that have appeared in leading academic journals, including theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Retailing, theJournal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and theJournal of Applied Psychology. He currently serves on the editorial review board of theJournal of Marketing Research and theJournal of Marketing. Noreen M. Klein (nklein@vt.edu) (Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University) is currently an associate professor of marketing at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Her research interests include consumer decision making and the behavioral aspects of pricing, and her research has been published in the theJournal of Consumer Research, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Making, and theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science.     

Mobile Marketing: A Synthesis and Prognosis

Mobile marketing refers to the two- or multi-way communication and promotion of an offer between a firm and its customers using a mobile medium, device, or technology. We present the conceptual underpinnings of mobile marketing and a synthesis of the relevant literature. We identify and discuss four key issues: drivers of mobile device/service adoption, the influence of mobile marketing on customer decision-making, formulation of a mobile marketing strategy, and mobile marketing in the global context. We outline research directions related to these issues and conclude by delineating the managerial implications of mobile marketing insights.     

Perspectives and problems of development in sub-Saharan Africa

This paper analyses the initial conditions for development facing post-colonial African nations, outlines alternative development strategies followed by different groups of countries and assesses the consequences for growth and poverty alleviation. On the basis of this diagnosis the paper outlines a number of policy priorities for the future including greater research, extension and infrastracture support for smallholder agriculture, an improvement in the overall structure of incentives in favour of agriculture, a more realistic urban formal sector wage structure to reduce rural—urban migration and foster a more internationally competitive manufacturing sector, and greater emphasis on surplus generation through government budgets and parastatal enterprises.