Building customer relations over the Internet

While previous marketing activities were primarily focused on increasing market shares in terms of a mass marketing based on single transactions, the past few years saw a paradigmatic shift towards relationship marketing. This change in viewpoint is based on the finding that the establishment and maintenance of long-term relationships have a decisive influence on corporate success. In this study, the authors present a critical theoretical and empirical analysis of the contribution the Internet can make to successful relationship marketing. The study focuses on the influence that important characteristics of the World Wide Web (WWW), such as its interactive structure and constant availability of information, can have on key variables of relationship marketing, i.e., commitment, satisfaction and trust. For example, the authors provide empirical proof of potential withdrawal of trust on the part of the customers if their expectations with regard to these characteristics are not met.     

What industrial marketers need to know now about ISO 9000 certification: A review, update, and integration with marketing

The ISO certification process has been in existence for 14 years. During that time, hundreds of thousands of suppliers of mainly industrial products and services have become ISO 9000 registered. However, the adoption rate of ISO 9000 certifications in US industry has lagged that of other developed countries. This is now changing; the number of new ISO 9000 certifications being obtained annually in the US is currently higher than most other countries in the world. Concurrently, the ISO 9000 certification series recently underwent a major revision, and much has been learned about the ISO 9000 certification process over the last 14 years. Therefore, industrial marketers who have taken a wait and see approach or have decided that the process is irrelevant to their businesses may need to reconsider this decision. To assist in this process, this article reviews the former and current ISO 9000 certification process, discusses the criticisms of the program, provides information regarding costs and benefits of certification, and offers suggestions for effectively integrating certification with the marketing program.     

Bank credit rationing and the customer relation

This paper investigates the theory that preference in situations of bank rationing is given to those customers with the strongest customer relation. It has shown that, within a certainty model where competitive pressure among banks requires full compensation for other bank relationships, neither deposit levels nor intertemporal demand would produce the preferential treatment claimed. It has also been shown that the prime borrowers would be unable to bargain effectively for credit line protection from such occasions of credit restriction.     

Análisis del servicio de Urgencias aplicando teoría de líneas de espera

Those responsible for making decisions in hospitals are increasingly aware of the need to efficiently manage hospital systems. An option for analysis is done by queuing models. In this paper is analyzed the service area ER, in a public hospital applying the concepts and relationships of waiting lines. From the model results, it is concluded that in the emergency department does not have the required minimum number of doctors to allow a steady flow of patients. With the model, the minimum required number of doctors is calculated to meet current and future demand for service with the same service time and the same discipline of service. Analytical models, allowing direct understand the relationships between service demand, number of doctors and patient care priority viewed as a queuing system. The work is useful for administrators and managers of hospital systems.     

Challenge to ICT manpower planning under the economic restructuring: Empirical evidence from MNCs in Singapore and Taiwan

The study evaluates the issues related to the manpower planning for developing the information, communication and technology (ICT) industry under the economic restructuring in Singapore and Taiwan. Using data collected from 211 multinational companies (MNCs) operating in these two countries, we measured recruitment difficulty and attrition rate experienced by MNCs, and evaluate the extent of ICT skill shortages among the companies surveyed. We found some impact of the nation-pushed ICT manpower planning and development on easing the recruitment difficulty overall at firm level. However, a high attrition rate especially of the low-medium ICT professionals identified in this study may be related to an imbalanced approach taken by the governments to focus on developing high level of science and technology and ICT skills. Implications to the two countries examined and other latecomer countries such as China, India and Vietnam are discussed.     

Genetic engineering in agriculture: New approaches for risk management through sustainability reporting

Genetically modified crops and foodstuff have been highly controversial for environmental, health, and ethical reasons. The controversies have been worldwide, but most prominent in the European Union, for reasons that include distrust of the regulatory authorities, scientists and technocratic decision making. An informal moratorium in the EU came recently to an end, without solving the underlying problems. In response to the criticisms, the European governments have attempted to improve the risk assessment methods and their scientific basis, and to tailor public policies to the growing demand for transparency, accountability, and public participation.This paper proposes a novel approach to including the public in evaluating the impacts of food and agricultural biotechnology and present and future applications modeled after the growing practice of sustainability reporting by companies. The most visible among those, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), when implemented properly, includes a wide range of stakeholders, including the financial institutions, companies, NGOs and the civil society, in an interactive multi-stakeholder discourse and collaboration. The reporting exercise would open the discussion about the R&D around new GMO products, and could mitigate potential adverse effects in an early stage (Constructive Technology Assessment). We specifically propose initiating a broadly based societal initiative aimed at developing of a new sectoral supplement of GRI Guidelines, specifically designed for the food and agricultural biotechnology sector.This approach can be conceptualized as experimentation on a small scale with a multitude of stakeholders involved (Bounded Socio-Technical Experiment or BSTE) which is an effective venue for higher-order learning among participants. Sustainability reports and BSTEs have been so far applied in limited cases, none of which included highly controversial technologies such as biotechnology; they need further elaboration and testing to become possibly highly effective concepts and tools for mitigating conflicts on the societal implications of emerging technologies, and to lead to better public policies and greater social trust.     

A new energy security paradigm for the twenty-first century

Conventional energy security has been focused on the depletion of natural resources, particularly oil, natural gas and coal. More recently, the link between energy security and the military has been made, focused on the defence of international oil tanker chokepoints and the free flow of oil through these trade routes. This paper considers a possible future in which, the impacts of climate change have been realized far earlier than most experts have previously expected. This has promoted a transition to cleaner energy technologies long before the depletion of fossil fuel resources. In this scenario, the peak in demand for fossil fuels occurs before the peak in supply and some nations are strongly promoting the development and deployment of clean energy technologies. Some private companies developing and deploying these technologies benefit from sudden market expansion, fuelled largely by the world's richest nations struggling to reduce their carbon footprint.In this scenario the countries of the world would fall into one of the three categories: (1) the countries willing and readily able to adjust in response to rapid and serious climate change, (2) the countries willing to adjust, but facing significant economic hardship without external assistance and protection, (3) and those countries unwilling and, perhaps to their perception at least, unable to play a part in combating climate change. In this scenario, the Western Economies will likely fall under the first category while the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China) might fall into the second category. These nations together are needed to achieve a viable, powerful, and effective formal or informal “Clean Energy Alliance”. Some countries however will probably fall into the third category. This paper considers how countries in the first two categories could respond by adjusting their foreign, trade and even military policies.If climate change is as severe and as pressing as some fear, leadership will be needed from those nations who are most capable of responding to the crisis. Within a generation, the great powers might find themselves shifting from keeping trade routes open to constraining the same trade. Severe climate change impacts could even approach the timescale of technological innovation needed to respond to this crisis. This paper proposes that our world may need new military and foreign policy options as well as new energy technology options in the years to come. Parallels are drawn between the challenge of decarbonising the global energy systems in the early twenty-first century and the ethical imperative of ending slavery in the early nineteenth century.