Customer relationship management processes: How faithful are business-to-business firms to customer profitability?

Marketing academicians and practitioners have over the past decade advocated the implementation of customer equity principles within firms. This article draws on adaptive structuration theory to frame the faithfulness of firms to acquiring and maintaining customers according to their profit potential. Using survey data from 158 business units engaged in business-to-business sales, this article examines the motivational effects of market growth rate and customization requirements, and the technology and information integration capabilities of the firm as determinants of firm adherence to treating customers according to their profitability. The study finds that firms are better at maintaining customers according to their profit potential than acquiring customers according to their profit potential. Further, maintenance faithfulness appears to have more ultimate impact on firm performance. The study suggests that pursuing customer profitability has limited effectiveness unless accompanied by a broader range of initiatives aimed at making the firm more customer-focused.     

Intelligent technology,intelligent workers: A new pedagogy for the high-tech work place

When the focus of technology is on automation, it may be reasonable to have training programs that merely teach workers the objects and actions necessary for them to respond to smart machines. However, as the OTA report clearly points out, “There is uncertainty about how current instructional programs should be revised or expanded. …” This uncertainty comes from the informating function of the technology. As one manager said: “Our competition can buy the same black boxes that we can. Our future depends on how well our people use the information generated by that technology.”When the informating quality of the technology is recognized, the importance of smart people becomes apparent. Traditional training, with its focus on objects and actions, is not enough. In the informated environment, on-line, interactive learning is necessary if people are to create new meanings out of the information generated by computer technology.A pedagogy for meaning is a collective enterprise that can unleash individual and organizational energy in an informated work place. It has implications for (1) rethinking traditional worker-training and management-education programs, (2) transforming the work place into a learning environment, (3) reconceptualizing the roles of workers and managers so that they can become partners in creating meaning, and (4) designing rewards for people who create and participate in an environment of inquiry.A pedagogy for meaning is concerned with peoples learning how to learn. A work force that has learned how to learn is one of the most important competitive levers an organization can have in an environment of ongoing technological change.     

PERSPECTIVE: Establishing an NPD Best Practices Framework

Achieving NPD best practices is a top‐of‐mind issue for many new product development (NPD) managers and is often an overarching implicit, if not explicit, goal. The question is what does one mean when talking about NPD best practices? And how does a manager move toward achieving these? This article proposes a best practices framework as a starting point for much‐needed discussion on this topic. Originally presented during the 2004 Product Development Management Association (PDMA) Research Conference in Chicago, the article and the authors' presentation spurred a significant, expansive discussion that included all conference attendees. Given the interest generated, the decision was made to move forward on a series of rejoinders on the topic of NPD best practice, using the Kahn, Barczak, and Moss framework as a focal launching point for these rejoinders. A total of five rejoinders were received and accompany the best practices framework in this issue of JPIM. Each rejoinder brings out a distinct issue because each of the five authors has a unique perspective. The first rejoinder is written by Dr. Marjorie Adams‐Bigelow, director of the PDMA's Comparative Performance Assessment Study (CPAS), PDMA Foundation. Based on her findings during the CPAS study, Adams comments on the proposed framework, suggesting limitations in scope. She particularly points out discrepancies between the proposed framework and the framework offered by PDMA's emerging body of knowledge. Dr. Elko Kleinschmidt, professor of marketing and international business at McMaster University, wrote the second rejoinder. Based on his extensive research with Robert G. Cooper on NPD practices, he points out that best practices really raise more questions than answers. Thomas Kuczmarski, president of Kuczmarski and Associates, is the author of the third rejoinder. Kuczmarski highlights that company mindset and metrics are critical elements needing keen attention. Where do these fit—or should they—in the proposed framework? The fourth rejoinder is written by Richard Notargiacomo, consultant for the integrated product delivery process at Eastman Kodak Company. Notargiacomo compares the proposed framework to a best practices framework Kodak has used for new product commercialization and management since 1998. The distinction of the Kodak framework is the inclusion of a product maturity model component. Dr. Lois Peters, associate professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), is the author of the fifth rejoinder. She brings out issues of radical innovation, a natural focal issue of RPI's radical innovation project (RRIP). It is highlighted that radical innovation may require unique, distinctive process characteristics a single framework cannot illustrate. Multiple layers of frameworks may be more appropriate, each corresponding to a level of innovation desired. The overall hope is that the discourse on best practices in this issue of JPIM generates more discussion and debate. Ultimately, the hope is that such discourse will lead to subsequent continued study to help discern what NPD best practice means for our discipline.     

Evaluating the Impact of Conditional Cash Transfer Programs

Several developing economies have recently introduced conditionalcash transfer programs, which provide money to poor familiescontingent on certain behavior, usually investments in humancapital, such as sending children to school or bringing themto health centers. The approach is both an alternative to moretraditional social assistance programs and a demand-side complementto the supply of health and education services. Unlike mostdevelopment initiatives, conditional cash transfer programshave been subject to rigorous evaluations of their effectivenessusing experimental or quasi-experimental methods. Evaluationresults for programs launched in Colombia, Honduras, Jamaica,Mexico, Nicaragua, and Turkey reveal successes in addressingmany of the failures in delivering social assistance, such asweak poverty targeting, disincentive effects, and limited welfareimpacts. There is clear evidence of success from the first generationof programs in Colombia, Mexico, and Nicaragua in increasingenrollment rates, improving preventive health care, and raisinghousehold consumption. Many questions remain unanswered, however,including the potential of conditional cash transfer programsto function well under different conditions, to address a broaderrange of challenges among poor and vulnerable populations, andto prevent the intergenerational transmission of poverty.      

The Extent, Pattern, and Degree of Market Integration: A Multivariate Approach for the Brazilian Rice Market

The extent, pattern, and degree of integration are analyzed in a multivariate system with cointegrating restrictions. The extent of the market is found by identifying locations that are linked by trade and where prices share identical long run information (permanent component). The pattern of integration characterizes interdependence and is analyzed by estimating a vector error correction model. The degree of integration is calculated with persistence profiles of the long run relations. We demonstrate that bivariate models are inadequate for capturing the spatial dynamics of price adjustment. The methodology is applied to the Brazilian rice market and policy implications are discussed.     

Bayesian Investor Belief Updating Speed and Market Underreaction to Earnings Announcements

Building on the Bayesian Theorem, we propose a multi-period market microstructure model to understand how Bayesian investors underact new information and the duration of market underreaction. Applying the model to post-earnings-announcement drifts, our simulation and regression analyses show that the duration of the post-announcement price adjustment process and the post-announcement drifts can be explained by the new measure of belief updating speed that quantifies the uncertainties faced by Bayesian investors when incorporating new information into prices. Our study highlights the importance of incorporating the belief uncertainties of uninformed investors in explaining market underreaction in the Bayesian framework.