Importers' benevolence toward their foreign export suppliers

In this article, the authors report the development and testing of a model of importers' benevolence toward their foreign export suppliers. The model posits that an importer's satisfaction with and commitment to its relationship with a foreign export supplier will have a positive impact on the importer's benevolence toward that supplier, that an importer's benevolence positively influences relationship performance, and that the benevolence-performance link is moderated by relationship duration. The authors tested the model with a sample of U.S. importers who buy from foreign exporters. The results indicate that the importers' commitment to the relationship significantly influenced its benevolence; however, importers' satisfaction with the relationship did not significantly affect their benevolence. Importers' altruistic benevolence had a positive impact on performance in mature relationships but not in new relationships. Importers' mutualistic benevolence had a significant influence on performance regardless of relationship duration. Dong-Jin Lee (djlee@base.yonsei.ac.kr) (Ph.D, Virginia Tech) is an associate professor of marketing at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea. His research has been published in theJournal of Marketing, theInternational Journal of Marketing Research, and theJournal of Advertising, among others. His research interests include relationship marketing and quality-of-life studies. M. Joseph (Joe) Sirgy (sirgy@vt.edu) (Ph.D., University of Massachusetts) is a consumer psychologist, professor of marketing, and Virginia Real Estate Research Fellow at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He has published extensively in the area of consumer behavior and quality-of-life research. He is the author/editor of several consumer behavior and quality-of-life research books. He presently serves as an editor of the Quality-of-Life/Marketing section of theJournal of Macromarketing. He founded the International Society for Quality-of-Life Studies in 1995 and is currently serving as its executive director. He coorganized at least seven conferences related to quality of life. He has served the Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) in many positions dating back to the early 1980s (e.g., board of governors, VP-programs, president-elect, cochair of several AMS conferences, conference track chairs). James R. Brown (jamesb@vt.edu) (D.B.A., Indiana University) is a professor of marketing in the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. His research has been published in theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and theJournal of Retailing, among others. He serves on the editorial review boards of several leading academic journals in marketing. His research interests focus on the structure, behavior, and performance of marketing channels and channel institutions. Monroe Murphy Bird (mobird@vt.edu) (Ph.D., University of Arkansas) is a professor of marketing and the National Association of Purchasing Managers (NAPM) Carolinas-Virginia Professor of Purchasing in the Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. His research has been published in theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, theJournal of Retailing, Industrial Marketing Management, and theAcademy of Management Journal, among others. He has served on the editorial boards of several of the business-to-business marketing journals for many years. His major research interests have been in profit and productivity advances within the business-to-business area, with a special emphasis in the industrial sector of that field. As of late, he has turned his interests to ethical issues in business-to-business buying and selling.     

Design thinking

In the past, design has most often occurred fairly far downstream in the development process and has focused on making new products aesthetically attractive or enhancing brand perception through smart, evocative advertising. Today, as innovation's terrain expands to encompass human-centered processes and services as well as products, companies are asking designers to create ideas rather than to simply dress them up. Brown, the CEO and president of the innovation and design firm IDEO, is a leading proponent of design thinking--a method of meeting people's needs and desires in a technologically feasible and strategically viable way. In this article he offers several intriguing examples of the discipline at work. One involves a collaboration between frontline employees from health care provider Kaiser Permanente and Brown's firm to reengineer nursing-staff shift changes at four Kaiser hospitals. Close observation of actual shift changes, combined with brainstorming and rapid prototyping, produced new procedures and software that radically streamlined information exchange between shifts. The result was more time for nursing, better-informed patient care, and a happier nursing staff. Another involves the Japanese bicycle components manufacturer Shimano, which worked with IDEO to learn why 90% of American adults don't ride bikes. The interdisciplinary project team discovered that intimidating retail experiences, the complexity and cost of sophisticated bikes, and the danger of cycling on heavily trafficked roads had overshadowed people's happy memories of childhood biking. So the team created a brand concept--"Coasting"--to describe a whole new category of biking and developed new in-store retailing strategies, a public relations campaign to identify safe places to cycle, and a reference design to inspire designers at the companies that went on to manufacture Coasting bikes.     

Moving towards an Improved Microsimulation Model of the Australian Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme

Finding ways of curbing government expenditure on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) while maintaining social equity and access to ‘essential’ medicines is at the centre of ongoing public debate. This article describes a microsimulation model of the PBS that simulates current and future use and costs of PBS medicines under existing and different PBS policy settings, and estimates the distributional effects of policy changes. The article outlines future developments that will extend the current model to include health outcomes. Adding health outcomes will enable the debate on PBS sustainability to be advanced beyond the prevailing cost‐containment mentality to consider not only the costs of pharmaceutical use but also the benefits that result from the use of these medicines.     

On the trait antecedents and outcomes of service worker job resourcefulness: A hierarchical model approach

In a series of three studies, a four-level hierarchical model of personality was employed to identify the antecedents and three validating criteria of a newly developed trait labeledjob resourcefulness (JR). JR is defined as an enduring disposition to garner scarce resources and overcome obstacles in pursuit of job-related goals. Across three service contexts, JR was shown to predict customer orientation, self-rated performance, and supervisor-rated performance. The results also revealed that the hierarchical model accounted for more variance in performance ratings than one version of the 5-Factor Model of personality. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for selecting high-performing service employees. Jane W. Licata (jwlicata@sosu.edu) is an associate professor of marketing at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. She has published articles in theJournal of Public Policy and Marketing, theJournal of Marketing Research, and theJournal of Business Research. John C. Mowen (jcmmkt@okstate.edu) is Regents Professor and holds the Noble Chair of Marketing Strategy at Oklahoma State University. He has published articles in numerous journals, including theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Sciences, theJournal of Marketing Research, theJournal of Marketing, Decisions Sciences, theJournal of Applied Psychology, and theJournal of Personality and Social Psychology. Eric G. Harris (eharris@lklnd.usf.edu) is an assistant professor of marketing at the University of South Florida. He has published articles inPsychology & Marketing and theJournal of Marketing Management. Tom J. Brown (tomb@okstate.edu) is an associate professor of marketing at Oklahoma State University. He has published in numerous journals, including theJournal of Marketing, theJournal of Marketing Research, and theJournal of Consumer Research.