Receiving,Recording, and Responding to Customer Complaints: The Effects of Formalizing Customer Complaint Handling Policies in Retail Firms

ABSTRACT

Given the critical need for retail firms to provide high quality customer service and satisfaction, this article investigates the importance of formalizing customer complaint handling policies and procedures with regard to its relationship to the ways in which retail companies receive, record, and respond to customer complaints. A survey of 184 firms from the retail environment of a midsized community reveals that the existence of such formalized procedures is significantly associated with firm size, better channels of communication with customers, mechanisms of recording customer feedback, and better-trained employees, which have been shown to relate to higher firm performance.     

Guidelines for commercial negotiators

Most negotiators would be happy to sharpen and refine their bargaining skills. The following points, drawn from practical experience, can help them do so.     

Guaranty trust bank of Nigeria: Building a trusted brand in financial services

The case study is about the Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) of Nigeria and charts the growth of the bank from startup to its current position as the fifthlargest bank in Nigeria. The case describes how the vision of the bank's two cofounders is turned into reality by adopting an ethical brand positioning for the bank in a competitive environment characterized by corruption and lack of trust. Students are invited to participate in a strategic review of the bank's growth prospects. Using a brand model, students are asked to review appropriate brand development strategies. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Foreign exchange pricing under free floating versus admissible band regimes

In this paper contingent price theory is used to infer the fair present value of the future effective spot rate under free float and alternative permissible band regimes. It is shown that a given term structure cannot at the same time bring about an equilibrium in both controlled and free exchange markets. A controlled exchange rate is proven to be less sensitive to changes in expectations about the future effective spot rate than a freely floating rate, whereas the interest rate change needed to offset such a shift is smaller. It is inferred that under an admissible band regime, the effective control limits on the current spot rate can differ significanly from the government's declared intervention points.     

Decision making and decision aiding: Defining the process,it representations,and support

We present a formalized account of decision making as a multistep process that involves several classes of participating entities. The purpose of this article is to lay the foundations for a conceptual framework in which decision support systems can be placed. A series of increasingly formal representations of the decision problem are developed, from a mental model conceived by the decision maker to a knowledge base that may be used in a decision support system. The reformulations of the decision problem lead us to contemplate different forms of support: for mental models, for formal models (this includes supporting measurement and representation), for solution, and for communication.     

Theories of the (state-owned) firm

State-owned enterprises (SOEs) contribute approximately 10% of the world’s GDP. SOEs at one time were predicted to disappear from the economic landscape of the world, but today SOEs are growing more prevalent in the world economy. The current theories of the firm that form the pillars of the management discipline largely ignore the theoretical differences that SOEs introduce into the conceptualization of the firm. Therefore, we extend four core theories of the firm by incorporating SOEs as a mainstream (not special or marginal) organizational form into these theories. We focus specifically on property rights theory, transaction cost theory, agency theory, and resource-based theory, culminating in a research agenda with 12 testable propositions.     

Optimal Intertemporal Consumption and Involuntary Memories of Consumption

Recent studies introduce the notion of treating autobiographical memories of past pleasurable experiences as assets and expanding the discounted utility model to include the utility of memories of past consumption. Recent studies in psychology have found that involuntary autobiographical memories are common in everyday life. This paper builds on these two strands in the literature by expanding the discounted utility model to include the utility of involuntary memories of past consumption. Optimal control theory is used to develop a continuous‐time optimal consumption model that takes into account the fact that consumption may generate involuntary memories that arrive at random times. The model is used in an in‐depth analysis of optimal consumption with memories. It is shown that memories shift consumption to earlier times. This effect gets weaker as the time horizon gets longer, and it vanishes entirely when the time horizon is infinite.