This paper attempts to coordinate at the macro level the research potential and the development capability of an organization in a competitive environment. New product ideas generate from various sources of research which are then processed (preliminary screening, market appraisal, technical...

We compare quota-based salesforce compensation plans with the BLSS plan, i.e., the optimal curvilinear agency-theory-based compensation plans proposed in Basu, Lal, Srinivasan and Staelin (Basu, A. K., R. Lal, V. Srinivasan, R. Staelin. 1985. Salesforce compensation plans: An agency theoretic...

The authors propose a new approach for measuring, analyzing, and predicting a brand's equity in a product market. Brand equity is defined as the incremental contribution ($) per year obtained by the brand in comparison to the underlying product (or service) with no brand-building efforts. The...

This paper analyzes the role played by brand loyalty in determining optimal price promotional strategies used by firms in a competitive setting. (Loyalty is operationalized as the minimum price differential needed before consumers who prefer one brand switch to another brand.) Our objective is...

A recent article in this Journal provides an efficient computational scheme for obtaining a regression line that minimizes the sum of absolute deviations of a set of two-dimensional points. The present note interprets that procedure as the solution of the parametric dual to the linear...

In multi-attribute models in marketing, a consumer's preference for a brand in a product class is expressed as a weighted sum of the brand's attribute values. However, marketing is abundant with examples where two brands may have approximately the same attribute values but enjoy very different...

The cash management problem is concerned with optimally financing net cash outflows and investing net inflows of a firm while simultaneously determining payment schedules for incurred liabilities. The problem is formulated as a transshipment model to minimize the total cost of allocating sources...

We consider the problem of determining a schedule of capacity expansions for m producing regions and a schedule of shipments from the regions to n markets so as to meet market demands over a T-period planning horizon at minimum discounted capacity expansion and shipment costs. The proposed...

In an earlier issue of this journal, Charnes, Cooper, Niehaus and Stedry provided different problem formulations to take into account the multiple attributes that organizations may consider in assigning men to jobs. The present paper shows that their formulations for static multi-attribute...

This paper suggests a procedure which analytically ties a model to predict users' predispositions to purchase different "brands" in a product-market together with a search process to identify optimal new product ideas. Brands, conceptualized as attribute bundles, are located in a prespecified...