Editorial

The relationship marketing paradigm is gaining increasing credence in consumer markets. Marketers need to get close to their customers to establish exchange relationships, and this “intimacy” is achieved using database technology and direct marketing communications. However, in implementing relationship marketing in this way, the potential exists for the use of technology to result in invasions of individual consumer privacy. The literature on relationship marketing and privacy are reviewed, and the findings of six exploratory focus group discussions, conducted in the UK, are presented. The study suggests that what some consumers define as “intrusion” is similar to what has been called “intimacy” by marketers. Nine propositions are presented which reflect the implications of current approaches to relationship marketing in consumer markets. In particular, the integral elements of meaningful relationships are absent or inhibited as a result of consumer concerns over intrusions of their privacy. Thus, marketers need to adapt their attitudes, behaviours, and processes in order to accommodate the participation of the consumer in the relationship. The implications for marketers are identified, and directions are offered for future research.     

Consumers' Freedom of Choice

The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes. The bearing of the foregoing theory on the first of these is obvious (Keynes, 1936, p. 372).     

Returns to corporate diversification in the 1970s

This research analyzes the performance of large corporations during the business cycles of the 1970s. The analysis identifies the level of diversification preferred by a risk-averse investor at different stages of the business cycle. The data base is a group of 222 large industrial corporations for which the number of four-digit SIC production areas has been determined for each firm. The analytical method used is that of second-degree stochastic dominance, a method that is sensitive not only to mean differences in corporate performance but also to the skewness of profitability distributions. The findings indicate that risk-averters would prefer the ten-year performance of moderately diversified firms to the performance of firms with low levels of diversification. In addition, moderately diversified firms were preferred to highly diversified firms. Finally, the experience of the 1970s suggest that there are serious managerial diseconomies of diversification in recessions.     

ACCOUNTING FOR CONTRIBUTED SERVICES: AN IDENTIFICATION OF ISSUES*

The purpose of this paper is to identify the main issues of accounting for contributed services in not-for-profit organisations. The AICPA position on accounting for contributed services is reviewed. The findings of a survey of not-for-profit organisation's use of and accounting for the contributed services of voluntary workers are reported.     

Measures used to evaluate industrial marketing activities

Given the importance of controlling marketing efforts, a study was conducted of industrial manufacturers to determine the extent of their use of various measures to evaluate different marketing activities. The predominate measures used for evaluation were sales volume with much less utilization of profitability, productivity, and expense measures.     

Real Rates, Expected Inflation, and Inflation Risk Premia

This paper studies the term structure of real rates, expected inflation, and inflation risk premia. The analysis is based on new estimates of the real term structure derived from the prices of index-linked and nominal debt in the U.K. I find strong evidence to reject both the Fisher Hypothesis and versions of the Expectations Hypothesis for real rates. The estimates also imply the presence of time-varying inflation risk premia throughout the term structure.     

Getting the Smaller Picture: Small‐Area Analysis of Public Expenditure Incidence and Deprivation in Three English Cities

This paper examines public expenditure incidence at small‐area level in cities. The motivations for such research are briefly reviewed. The article reports on an attempt at measuring public expenditure across the majority of programmes down to the level of Census wards and the actual results obtained for three urban local authorities in England. The relationship between spending, income and deprivation is examined overall and for particular spending programmes, using a number of approaches including regression‐based expenditure models. The conclusions suggest that spending is indeed targetted on poorer areas but raise questions about both the strength of this relationship and how best to measure deprivation and the need to spend.