Assessment of hidden and future customer needs in Finnish business‐to‐business companies

The development of new products should be based on the needs expected to exist even several years ahead – at the moment of market introduction and during the whole lifecycle of the product. To develop successful new products in the toughening business environment, companies should be able to surpass customers' expectations and to assess emerging customer needs proactively. Early, thorough understanding of the customer's real needs, including the assessment of hidden and future customer needs and requirements, plays a very important role in the successful development of new products.
The purpose of our paper is to study the assessment of new (hidden and future) customer needs for product development in Finnish business‐to‐business companies. We have carried out a survey in 93 Finnish business‐to‐business companies and SBUs to study their common problems in the assessment of unrecognized customer needs and potentially effective ways in clarifying new customer needs and dealing with important problems. On the basis of the results, we propose several possible ways to facilitate the assessment of unrecognized customer needs.     

A responsive voting system

To say that a democratic system of government ought to be responsive to the opinions of the citizens sounds like a truism which could hardly be expected to generate much controversy. Yet, the notion of responsiveness turns out to be open to several nonequivalent interpretations: Condorcet-consistency, monotonicity, invulnerability to the no-show paradox, to name the most important ones. Several results have been achieved to establish incompatibilities between these properties. We shall review some of these and discuss some similar notions and their relationships with those just mentioned.Received: 5 August 2003, Accepted: 19 March 2004, JEL Classification: D70This work has been supported by the Academy of Finland and the Yrjö Jahnsson Foundation. The author is grateful to Donald G. Saari for perceptive comments on an earlier version. Also the comments of Elina Kestilä, Kai A. Konrad, Maria Suojanen, Matti Wiberg and an anonymous referee are gratefully acknowledged.     

Migration and Labour Market Adjustment: Empirical evidence from Finland 1985‐90

This paper addresses the question of the role of migration as an adjustment process by analysing the relationship between unemployment and labour force mobility. The empirical analysis deals with long-distance migration in Finland in the period 1985-90. When considered within a multivariate setting in which personal and place characteristics are held constant, the results show that higher origin unemployment rates increase outmigration, but not particularly for unemployed workers. Three outcomes are deduced from the results. First, the equilibrating process of interregional migration is slow-although working in the right direction-and becomes steadily slower as regional unemployment differentials fall. Secondly, the size of high-unemployment regions, as measured in terms of the labour force, decreases during the adjustment process as employed persons also leave the region. Thirdly, high-unemployment regions in particular lose their young and educated workers. The danger of the process of cumulative causation is great in these regions.     

How objective and subjective knowledge affect insurance choices

This study investigates the effect of objective knowledge (OK) and subjective knowledge (SK) on real-life insurance choices, a non-trivial, information-rich choice task with no dominant option. Prior research has shown that OK and SK tend to be correlated, but that is not always the case. By using a novel approach to manipulate SK—which could be adapted by salespeople in real-world contexts—we ensured that levels of SK and OK were not always in accord. Clear patterns emerged showing an inverse relationship between SK and OK, and the number of problem-framing (or structuring)-related statements made, number of overall information processing operations performed and the time spent to reach a decision. Most of the extra effort expended by low SK/low OK individuals was spent framing the problem, not executing decision rules such as making attribute comparisons. Those with high OK were also less prone to misunderstanding product information. Whether high or low SK/OK, there were no differences in final choices, suggesting that neither group jumped to a simplifying choice heuristic. Instead, those low in knowledge compensated for this deficiency by taking more time framing the problem and reaching a thoughtful decision, a decision strategy that weakens the effect of branding.