Marketing online banking services: The voice of the customer

US banks have invested heavily in developing online capabilities, with the expectation of migrating customers to the new cheaper delivery system. Results in the USA thus far have been mixed at best; market penetration is low and customer usage is sporadic, focusing mainly on simple tasks. This paper reports on the first of two studies conducted to investigate the reasons for the mediocre performance. A qualitative consumer study revealed significant differences in attitudes and opinions between early users and those that banks hope will adopt next. Most importantly, future prospects could be characterised as indifferent about online banking; many were not convinced about its benefits and the value it provides. While the potential to expand the market for online banking services exists, banks need to re-examine their marketing approach.     

Corporate self-greenewal: Strategic responses to environmentalism

The rise of environmentalism in the past decade has become a major transforming force in pollutive and hazard prone industries. Corporate environmental responsiveness is not simply a peripheral and one of the many ‘social’ or ‘ethical’ issues facing business. It is becoming a central concern for competitiveness, productivity, and profitability. It is creating strategic transformation of companies in a diverse range of industries such as, Autos, Chemicals, Oil, Fast Foods, Power Generation, Pharmaceuticals, etc. The process of environmentally directed self-renewal, called ‘greenewal’ here, affects all aspects of companies. It implies changes in products, production systems, waste management practices and internal systems. It seeks to make companies simultaneously more competitive and environmentally responsible. This paper describes the pressures of and responses to environmentalism in a selected set of industries. It examines the processes of greenewal that companies are undergoing. It identifies implications for strategic greening of firms.     

Estimating the effectiveness of extension information systems using farm trials and subjective probabilities

A method of combining survey data and Dairy Herd Improvement Association (DHIA) records to achieve low cost farm trials is presented. Farm trials and surveys of current practices and production responses are useful to identify yield gaps between expectations predicted from experimental findings and actual field results. Different management schemes can be ranked using subjective probabilities and stochastic dominance to enhance successful implementation of research findings and to increase the feedback between researchers, extension workers, and producers. A survey of current masitis control practices and expected milk yield response is the example. Combining survey results with DHIA records allowed estimating the relationship between somatic cell counts (SCC) and milk yield. Eliciting beliefs about the relationship between SCC and milk yield showed that producers agreed with predictions from the statistical model. Subjective probabilities about SCC and mastitis control practices showed that our sample of experts and producers consistently ranked the different practices but extension agents had no consensus about the the most or least effective ones.     

Emergent patterns of strategy,environment and performance in a transition economy

Insights from the resource dependence approach, dynamic fit, and strategic choice theories are used to explore the strategies adopted by Chinese enterprises, their settings, and the relationship between strategy, environment, and performance. Results from 959 firms indicate that respondents operating under ‘more marketized’ institutional settings tend to locate themselves in more munificent environments and place greater emphasis on meeting customer needs. Firms in China do not trade off one strategic direction against another, and certain strategy/environment coalignments have significant implications for performance. In particular, performance is better in more marketized and munificent environments and amongst firms who adopt an ‘aggressive’ strategic posture. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Decentralization and Pay Reform in Central Government: a Study of Three Countries

Over the past decade central governments of the UK, Sweden and Australia have been engaged in significant reforms in the way they pay their employees. These reforms have generally taken the form of the decentralization of pay bargaining and the individualization of pay. This paper details the policies that have been implemented in central government in these countries and presents some preliminary results on the effects of these. While the actual implementation has varied quite substantially across the countries and the analysis of the outcomes must be regarded as preliminary, there is some evidence that the reforms have led to an increase in earnings dispersion.     

Some differences between licensed and internalized transfers of machine tool technology: An empirical note

This note uses survey evidence drawn from the machine tool industry in three countries to identify some of the differences in form between technology transfers which are internalized and those governed by licensing contracts between independent firms. The results show that, consistent with transactions cost theory, the internalized mode of governance leads to the transfer of a much broader range of information and skills than licensed transactions.     

OPTIMAL FORECAST COMBINATION UNDER REGIME SWITCHING*

This article proposes a new forecast combination method that lets the combination weights be driven by regime switching in a latent state variable. An empirical application that combines forecasts from survey data and time series models finds that the proposed regime switching combination scheme performs well for a variety of macroeconomic variables. Monte Carlo simulations shed light on the type of data‐generating processes for which the proposed combination method can be expected to perform better than a range of alternative combination schemes. Finally, we show how time variations in the combination weights arise when the target variable and the predictors share a common factor structure driven by a hidden Markov process.     

Strategic groups as reference groups: Theory,modeling and empirical examination of industry and competitive strategy

Previous studies on strategic groups have mainly focused on their static characteristics in order to test the theory of strategic groups and intraindustry performance differences (Porter, 1979; Cool and Schendel, 1988; Fiegenbaum and Thomas, 1990). In contrast, this study takes a longitudinal, dynamic perspective and describes the forces driving strategic group membership and structural evolution. It proposes that a strategic group acts as a reference point for group members in formulating competitive strategy. A partial adjustment model of strategic mobility is then developed which incorporates the idea of a strategic group as a reference group. It models strategic change in an industry both within and across strategic groups. The model is tested in the context of an in-depth industry analysis of the more significant firms in the insurance industry over the 1970-84 time period. The results suggest that strategic groups act as reference points for firm strategies and that predictions of future firm strategies and industry/group structures may also be successfully derived.     

Inventories, Manufacturer Returns Policies, and Equilibrium Price Dispersion under Demand Uncertainty

Returns policies can prevent a manufacturer's product from being discounted. Such discounting discourages inventory holdings, and can deny adequate retail representation to products with uncertain demand. We demonstrate that returns are not simply a substitute for resale price maintenance, but can instead be employed to support a desirable degree of price dispersion at retail. Surprisingly, optimal return policies depend only on market demand functions and marginal production costs. The manufacturer need not know the distribution of demand uncertainty for its product, but can instead rely on retailers to order appropriately. Our results generalize to oligopoly settings.