Examines the role and importance of customer-contact personnel in the marketing of a bank's financial services and the importance of customer service in retail banking. Customer-contact personnel from suburban branches of an Australian retail bank identified their level of agreement with...

We identify a general framework for weak planning called bootstrap planning, which is defined as global planning using only a local planner along with some memory for learning intermediate subgoals. We present a family of algorithms for bootstrap planning, and provide some initial theory on...

In the United States, over 70% of the labor force is engaged in services, and an estimated 75% of the GDP in 2005 was derived from services. Industrialized countries around the world share similar statistics, while emerging economic powers, such as India and China, are seeing dramatic growth in...

Productivity and efficiency are the tools used in managing performance. This study researches and implements best practices that lead to best performance. A customer quality defined standard has to be created by benchmarking the Information Technology Service Regions which may be used to help...

Commentators suggest that to survive in developed economies manufacturing firmshave to move up the value chain, innovating and creating ever more sophisticatedproducts and services, so they do not have to compete on the basis of cost.While this strategy is proving increasingly popular with...

With the growing significance of services in most developed economies, there is an increased interest in the role of service innovation in service firm competitive strategy. Despite growing literature on service innovation, it remains fragmented reflecting the need for a model that captures key...

Innovative Catering is a research, development and innovation project that involves HAAGA-HELIA University of Applied Sciences, Finnish hospitality industry and the industry‟s technology and appliance manufactures. The objective is to build an experiential restaurant concept. The aim of this...

Warehouse financing has emerged as one of the most promising financing approaches for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). Its basic working mechanism is to transfer the company's assets to collaterals which are more acceptable by the banks. In this paper, we take the position of...

Innovation is internationally recognized as an important source of competitiveadvantage. It was the aim of this research to isolate which factors play a keyrole within South African firms in unlocking their product and serviceinnovation ability, and in so doing potentially promote prosperity for...

Innovation has long been considered the cornerstone of firm competitive strategy. The view that firms use innovation to create value and outperform competitors not only applies to manufacturing firms, but also to service firms. Despite the recent shift in marketing literature from goods-centered...