Collecting conjoint data through telephone interviews

Data collection for conjoint analysis is relatively new. The current study examines the reliability and convergent validity for selected user segments vs. the mail questionnaire alternative. The results attest the telephone collection procedure is both reliable and valid relative to collecting data with mail questionnaires.     

Valuing New Varieties: Trade-Offs between Growers and End-Users in Wheat

Variety release decisions usually involve trade-offs between growers and end-users as well as substantial uncertainties about agronomic, quality, and economic variables. In this paper, methodologies were developed to value grower and end-user characteristics for individual wheat varieties and to evaluate trade-offs. The models capture effects of variability in agronomic, quality, and economic variables and were applied to experimental and hypothetical varieties. Results indicate two experimental varieties provide improvements in grower and end-use value over most of the incumbents. Though applied to a specific grain and region, the approach is applicable to other grains and oilseeds that have multiple agronomic and quality attributes.     

Firm-like behavior in markets: The administered channel

Partially cooperative behavior of member firms of the same channel of distribution, normally under the leadership of a dominant firm, is often very firm-like, giving rise to the concept of the administered channel. Analysis suggests that it is information creation and control, and their associated costs, rather than the contract which determines the extent of firm-like behavior. Administered channels are frequent alternatives to vertical integration or entirely market directed allocation, but do not emerge unless the benefits from cooperation exceed the costs of maintaining that cooperation and also can be appropriated by those firms bearing the costs.     

The use of co-nomination to identify expert participants for Technology Foresight

The United Kingdom has been carrying out a major exercise in the field of Technology Foresight, involving fifteen panels engaged in wide consultation about the future of their areas. The objectives of the Programme are to help set priorities for publicly funded science and technology and to create new working partnerships between science and industry. The paper describes the process by which members of the panels, and those whom they subsequently consulted, were identified. A survey-based technique known as co-nomination was employed, whereby respondents were asked to identify suitable participants and at the same time to profile their own expertise. The process was repeated with those nominated. The patterns of expertise thus revealed are themselves of interest and are used to construct a map of the inter-relationship between the fields covered by the panels.     

Comparing mean efficiency and productivity scores from small samples: A bootstrap methodology

This paper provides a bootstrap methodology for constructing confidence intervals for means of DEA and econometrically estimated efficiency scores, Malmquist productivity indices, and other similar measures in small samples. The procedure is nonparametric since no distributional assumptions are required. An empirical example is provided.This research was performed while Wilson was under contract with the Management Science Group, US Department of Veterans Affairs, Bedford, MA 01730.     

Compressing new product success-to-success cycle time: Deep customer value understanding and idea generation

Despite nearly 30 years of research focused on improving new product development (NPD) processes, recent research reveals that these improvements have failed to materialize as expected. Additionally, in today's continuous-change business environment, managers are focused on reducing cycle time in nearly all operations, including NPD, in order to realize acceptable returns on investments more quickly. Thus, we must not only be better but also faster at NPD, specifically at compressing the cycle time between new product successes, i.e., accelerating success-to-success velocity and not just accelerating each NPD project. But, how can businesses both improve the probability of new product successes and also speed up the process of doing so? This paper proposes that formalizing front-end processes will certainly help. Specifically, a process is presented which draws on customer value research that ought to help clarify the traditional “fuzzy front end” of NPD processes, resulting in consistently more successful new products.     

Using trade fairs in key account management

Trade fairs play an important role in marketing. In many cases, exhibitors view trade fairs as an opportunity for transactional selling, and thus may overlook opportunities that exist for initiating and building relationships with key accounts. This paper maps exhibitors' and visitors' exhibition objectives against key account management (KAM) activities, and in particular examines the role trade fairs can have in solving specific problems that arise at different stages in the development of the relationship between firms in a dyadic KAM scenario. Drawing on research conducted in the UK, US and Greece, the author concludes that trade fairs should occupy a pivotal position in KAM, but the evidence is that exhibitors are not taking full advantage of this opportunity.     

Product development cycle time for business-to-business products

For a number of years, firms have been implementing changes in the way they develop new products, changes that are targeted at reducing overall product development cycle times. And over the years, a number of academics have conducted research trying to understand the factors that are related to reducing new product development (NPD) times. But the question remains — just how long does product development generally take in absolute numbers? Information on how long product development takes is helpful to firms for planning and controlling the flow of products into the marketplace and in determining resource needs for NPD. Other than anecdotal data pertaining to particular projects that have been commercialized by particular firms, very little hard data have been reported on this topic. This article analyzes data to quantify average cycle times for physical goods commercialized by business-to-business (B2B) firms. The data are a subset of a much larger data set from the Product Development & Management Association's (PDMA) Best Practices research. The analysis presents average product development cycle times for four different types of projects (new-to-the-world, new-to-the-firm, next generation improvements and incremental improvements), presents evidence of the lack of a relationship between cycle time and success and looks at factors that are associated with differences in the length of product development cycle times.     

The middle east and the EEC: An analysis of trade flows

The Middle East has become the largest external supplier of imports to the European Community, and is also the EC's largest export market. Rising oll prices have not only affected the value of EC imports from the Middle East, but have also ultimately determined the ability of the Middle Eastern states to pay for Community exports. What are the prospects for the continuing growth of trade between the Community and the Middle East? What would be the effect of a fall in oil prices or of a decline in the EC's dependence on Middle Eastern oil?