Competition is the engine behind innovation and dynamics in the marketplace. Sectors like public transport,water,energy and telecom are liberalized and deregulated by nationalandinternationalgovernmentsinordertoincreasecompetitionamongcompanies. The ultimate goals are to create transparent...

During the past decade, irrational exuberance has turned into a possibly equally irrational pessimism about what the Internet can accomplish. The fear of getting ruined through cannibalization losses has recently deterred many firms from deploying the Internet as a distribution channel. But do...

A commonly applied modeling tool for the analysis of promotional effects on weekly sales data is a linear regression model. Usually, such a model includes 0/1 dummy variables for promotions, where weeks with a promotion get a value of 1. When these variables are included in a model with...

The authors develop a four-dimensional scale to measure members' satisfaction with virtual communities. The dimensions consist of members' satisfaction with member-member interactions, organizer-member interactions, organizer-community interactions, and the community's site. Using a sample of...

This research investigates the specific influence of the emotion of surprise on customer transaction-specific satisfaction. Four empirical studies-two field studies (a diary study and a cross section survey) and two experiments-were conducted. The results show that surprise positively...

We ask various experts, who produce sales forecasts that can differ from earlier received model-based forecasts, what they do and why they do so. A questionnaire with a range of questions was completed by no less than forty-two such experts who are located in twenty different countries. We...

Reaching service excellence through a focus on the customer, demands more than just measuring customer satisfaction by means of questionnaire surveys. Nowadays, it is not sufficient anymore to have service excellence in services, processes and relationships. Now is the time to create excellence...

Service organisations still struggle with the adoption of a road to excellence. Evidence exists that processes and systems in service organisations are not always as advanced as in manufacturing organisations. Adding a quality smile to the face of the service provider will not solve the problems...

China’s mobile communications market presents unique market challenges. With a high subscriber growth rate but polarized and stratified consumer adoption trends, an investigation into the current status of this market will improve our understanding on how adoption of mobile communications is...

In today’s multicultural societies, ethnic targeting is increasingly important for marketing. Two main approaches to target ethnic minorities have emerged: messaging consumers when their ethnic identity is most salient, and featuring spokespeople who have the same heritage as the target. We...