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By the year 2005, the meat business sector formed by “Rica Rondo S.A.”, “Industria Nacional de Alimentos S.A.”, “Suizo S.A.”,” Zenú S.A”. and “Almacenes La 14 S.A.”, started a new strategic alliance looking forward to increase their supply chain efficiency, this was named “Collaborative Carousel”. Their main goal was to improve the delivery times, reception and assortment of products in a supermarket of brands such as: “Zenú”, “Rica Rondo” and “Suizo” in the ten points of sales of “Almacenes La 14 S.A.”, looking forward to ensure the best service level to the final consumer. The result of this experience helped to generate a collective learning, allowing the parts to identify improvement opportunities in their logistics operations. The article presents a success story based on the application of the principle of collaboration in last mile processes. The methodology used corresponds to the narrative case method, presents the business evolution of several businesses, accounts for the success of the collaborative carousel type articulation process (step by step), which links resources, actors, interests, culture and results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The standard literature on inventory modelling is rarely differentiating between the inventory records and the physical inventory. In the recent years, some empirical studies highlighted that errors and inventory perturbations may occur in the inventory system. Such errors result in a gap between what the informational system (IS) shows and what is actually available for sales and used to satisfy the demand. The impact of such errors is particularly important in a wholesaling/e-retailing context where customer’ demands are remotely satisfied based on the inventory records shown in theIS. These errors could be modelled by an additive or multiplicative structure depending on the link between the error variability and the ordered quantity. The aim of the paper is to extend the existing literature by developing an inventory framework that permits the analysis and the performance improvement of an inventory system subject to a multiplicative errors setting. The multiplicative and stochastic settings also known as the stochastically proportional modelling of errors is not well developed in the literature despite the fact that such an assumption bears considerable association with reality. We provide comprehensive analytical and numerical studies and we also complete our contribution by a comparison between the additive and the multiplicative error settings where we derive interesting managerial insights about the impact of wrongly modelling errors. We also focus on the benefit of applying our results compared with the case where errors are ignored or not known. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Customer satisfaction is an important strategic performance which is influenced by service experience and perceived value. This study proposed a model to postulate, and statistically test, the relationship between value drivers and customers’ perceived value of semiconductor manufacturing services, and the impact of perceived value on customer satisfaction. The research results showed that perceived value and value drivers are significantly different among services. Line services have a more significant influence on customer satisfaction than support services. Customer firm type and geographical location have a significant influence on value perception and preference, and on the relationship between service value and customer satisfaction. This study suggests that semiconductor manufacturing service providers should deliver right value proposition to enhance satisfaction for different customer firm types in varying regions, and design customised service portfolios with various value foci to differentiate them and gain a competitive advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Vendor-managed inventory (VMI) has become a widely used tool for supply chain performance improvement. However, not all VMI implementations are successful. Therefore, the aims of this research are to contribute to a better understanding of the critical issues surrounding VMI implementation, and to support corporate practice with a methodology for evaluating the VMI readiness of firms. Fifteen features that determine the suitability of VMI are identified. These can be broadly categorised as product-, company-, and supplier-related features. The framework developed in this research is validated through its application in 10 case study firms. The framework can be used by other firms to support the decision of whether or not to adopt VMI by providing valuable insight into how firms score on suitability for VMI adoptions along several dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managers have widely embraced and adopted the Net Promoter metric, which noted loyalty consultant Frederick Reichheld advocates as the single most reliable indicator of firm growth compared with other loyalty metrics, such as customer satisfaction and retention. Recently, however, there has been considerable debate about whether this metric is truly superior. This article (1) employs longitudinal data from 21 firms and 15,500-plus interviews from the Norwegian Customer Satisfaction Barometer to replicate the analyses used in Net Promoter research and (2) compares Reichheld and colleagues' findings with the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Using industries Reichheld cites as exemplars of Net Promoter, the research fails to replicate his assertions regarding the “clear superiority” of Net Promoter compared with other measures in those industries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports on a web-based commercial customer satisfaction study consisting of 1284 respondents, which measured stated attribute importance using six different methods (importance ratings, constant sum, Q-sort, maximum difference scaling, unbounded ratings and magnitude estimation). Statistical analyses were used to evaluate these six methods in terms of (a) the time they take to administer, (b) their ability to provide discriminating measures and (c) their predictive validity. Clear winners and losers emerge from these analyses, and applied marketing researchers can use these findings to the benefit of the marketers they support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Collaborative manufacturer--retailer relationships based on efficient consumer response (ECR) have become ubiquitous over the past decade. Yet academic studies of ECR adoption and its impact on marketing relationships are relatively scarce. Inspired by the relational view of competitive advantage, the authors empirically investigate whether the extent to which suppliers of a major retailer adopt ECR has a beneficial impact on their outcomes. The results demonstrate that whereas ECR adoption has a positive impact on supplier economic performance and capability development, it also generates greater perceptions of negative inequity on the part of the supplier. However, retailer capabilities and supplier trust moderate some of these main effects. The overall results are robust with respect to differences in supplier size as well as between branded and private-label suppliers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gestao & Producao is the property of Gestao & Producao and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Harbinger project was a 3‐year‐long international study of the changing attitudes and behaviours of early career researchers (ECRs). One of the aims of the project was to discover if ECRs were adopting disrupting platforms that, legitimately or illegitimately, promote openness and sharing. It has been alleged that such an adoption appeals to them as Millennials. More than 100 ECRs from seven countries were questioned annually, and questions about Sc‐Hub were raised as part of discussions about discovery and access. Interview data were supplemented by desk research and Google Trends statistics. It was found that Sci‐Hub use was increasing and that a quarter of the ECRs now use it, with French ECRs being the biggest users. However, Sci‐Hub is making little headway with ECRs from the UK, USA, Malaysia, and China, although in China's case, this can be explained by it being banned and the country having its own equivalent, www.91lib.com. Sci‐Hub is used as much for convenience as necessity; use is not connected to the strength of library provision and and it has been suggested that it represents a bigger threat to publishers than ResearchGate, whose star might be waning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Customers often resent priority queues even though priorities are often necessary to maximize either social welfare or revenue. Consequently, it is useful to consider the level of social inefficiency introduced when the design of a priority scheme is turned over to a revenue-maximizing firm. In this paper we study how the priority scheme chosen by a revenue-maximizing firm differs from the one a social planner would use. We study a single-server queue with customers who draw their valuations from a continuous distribution and have a per-period waiting cost that is proportional to their realized valuations. The decision maker must post a menu offering a finite number of waiting time-price pairs. There are then three dimensions on which a revenue maximizer and social planner can differ: coverage (i.e., how many customers in total to serve), coarseness (i.e., how many classes of service to offer), and classification (i.e., how to map customers to priority levels). We show that differences between the decision-makers' priority policies are all about classification. Both are content to offer very coarse schemes with just two priority levels, and they will have negligible differences in coverage. However, differences in classification are persistent. Further, a revenue maximizer may—relative to the social planner—have too few or too many high-priority customers. Whether the revenue maximizer overstuffs or understuffs the high-priority class depends on a measure of consumer surplus that is captured by the mean residual life function of the valuation distribution. The e-companion is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2987. This paper was accepted by Noah Gans, stochastic models and simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mining High Average-Utility Itemsets (HAUIs) in a quantitative database is an extension of the traditional problem of frequent itemset mining, having several practical applications. Discovering HAUIs is more challenging than mining frequent itemsets using the traditional support model since the average-utilities of itemsets do not satisfy the downward-closure property. To design algorithms for mining HAUIs that reduce the search space of itemsets, prior studies have proposed various upper-bounds on the average-utilities of itemsets. However, these algorithms can generate a huge amount of unpromising HAUI candidates, which result in high memory consumption and long runtimes. To address this problem, this paper proposes four tight average-utility upper-bounds, based on a vertical database representation, and three efficient pruning strategies. Furthermore, a novel generic framework for comparing average-utility upper-bounds is presented. Based on these theoretical results, an efficient algorithm named dHAUIM is introduced for mining the complete set of HAUIs. dHAUIM represents the search space and quickly compute upper-bounds using a novel IDUL structure. Extensive experiments show that dHAUIM outperforms four state-of-the-art algorithms for mining HAUIs in terms of runtime on both real-life and synthetic databases. Moreover, results show that the proposed pruning strategies dramatically reduce the number of candidate HAUIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study brings together the fields of industrial organization and consumer research in an attempt to account for variations in consumer dissatisfaction among product categories. A major portion of these variations is empirically accounted for by distributional and cost/size factors. The theoretical explanations behind the empirical associations are discussed in the context of the correspondence between economic theory and consumer data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marketing from a relational perspective, or relationship marketing, requires that a firm offers more resources and activities than a core product (goods or services) in order to satisfy the long-term value needs of its customers In the present article a value-driven approach to how such long-term needs are fulfilled is discussed. The analysis goes beyond the product concept and develops a resources-and-competencies approach to the market offer. However, a relational approach to marketing can be expected to be successful only if the firm adopts a true relational intent and the customer is in a relational mode. Therefore, the concepts of relational and transactional intent and relational and transactional mode, respectively, are also introduced and discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The market response model of the MEDIAC media planning system is used as a base for discussion of empirical studies relating to the advertising phenomena of response to repeated exposure and forgetting. The model provides hypotheses to examine and a common base for analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effective management of the supply-delivery chain ensures the necessary quantity of goods and services where needed, at the right time, in the required quantity and at the best price. To this end, simply put, the supplydelivery chain is defined as an umbrella process under which products are created and delivered to the customers. The management of the supply-delivery chain ensures the improvement of the management of the fluxes which begin with the supplier of the supplier and end with the customer of the customer. There are Physical fluxes circulating between the partners who make up the supply-delivery chain, which are oriented from uphill to downhill (there are also physical fluxes oriented towards the financial fluxes which are oriented from downhill to uphill, and the fluxes of information which circulate both ways, preceding, accompanying or following the physical and financial fluxes). The current economic circumstances require from firms short term objectives, such as the downsizing of stockpiles, the increase of income combined with the maintaining of constant fixed expenditure, the improvement of performance. In the current article we briefly present, under a relational aspect, the functional structures or the components of the supply-delivery chain and some related processes which play a fundamental role in the effective functioning of partners interconnected in business processes.

Retail space has become a set of resource around which to fight a number of entities to provide a position for your items on the shelves of retail alliances. Also, the retail space is becoming a new marketing ground with a very strong effect of advertising on consumers' decisions during the buying process. Creating and maintaining competitive advantage requires that retail alliance has advantages that its rivals do not have the target markets. Of particular importance competitive advantage based on knowledge. Retail stores gathered in the alliance have the opportunity to make sure that 'the competition by working' in association with providing benefits to all members. The article traces the future activities of retail alliances, ways to organize, survival in the market to competition and efficient response to consumer demands.

Supply chain systems for fashion apparel products face a high level of risk as the market demand is very volatile and unpredictable. In order to cope with demand volatility, the quick response system which aims to shorten replenishment lead time has been well-established. With a shortened lead time, retailers can postpone the ordering decision and improve their demand forecast by gathering updated market information. However, there is a limit for quick response in which the market demand forecast is never fully accurate and uncertainty can never be fully eliminated. Thus, to keep the level of risk under control, retailers tend to possess a risk-averse behaviour in making their respective inventory decisions. In this paper, we explore the make-to-order quick response fashion supply chain with a risk averse retailer. We employ the mean-risk framework to incorporate the retailer’s risk averse behavior into the optimization model. With the focal point on uncovering the impacts brought by the retailer’s risk averse behavior to the quick response fashion supply chain system, we analytically derive important theoretical insights regarding the retailer’s optimal decisions, the implied inventory service levels, the values of quick response, and the contractual arrangements to attain Pareto improvement when the retailer is risk averse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the sport service environment, the level of customer satisfaction is monitored more and more thoroughly. The assumption is that a satisfied customer remains loyal for a longer period of time, buys more new products, talks favourably about the service provided, pays less attention to competing services, is less sensitive to price, and provides the company with new ideas for service improvement. Aim. The aim of this paper is to assess the level of customer satisfaction with golf resorts in the Liberec region. The survey evaluates the satisfaction of 78 customers at four golf courses in the Liberec region. Methods. Customer satisfaction was surveyed using a standardized questionnaire adjusted to Czech conditions and based on the SERQUAL model. This method identifies gaps between customer expectations and perceived quality of golf courses. It seeks to assess customer satisfaction with the golf course, the golf course amenities, the services offered, the golf course staff, the club staff, and the golf resort management. Results. Overall results showed that the customers were most satisfied with the services at Grabštejn Golf Course (total gap 0.02), while Malevil Golf Course and Ypsilon Golf Course had the same negative result (total gap -0.22) and the worst negative gap was at the Ještěd Golf Course (-1.24). The results show that there is room for managers to improve their services. In all cases the biggest gap appeared in the "Satisfaction with the course" dimension (except at Ypsilon GC), Ypsilon GC had the biggest problem in the "Satisfaction with staff" dimension (-0.72). Also the customers at the Malevil GC claim that they are dissatisfied with the golf resort management (-0.74). Conclusion. There is room for improvement at all golf courses that took part in this research. Customers are mostly dissatisfied and they evaluated the service provided as low quality in most of the dimensions. Generally the worst area is the golf course and staff. At the Ještěd GC, the results show that the management of the golf course is at a low level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Polish Journal of Management Studies is the property of Czestochowa University of Technology, Faculty of Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, we examine the information-sharing behavior of firms in a distribution channel context. Channel alliance initiatives like ECR and category management often involve pooling of information available with manufacturers and retailers. Such pooling of information should lead to better decision making and hence it is desirable. However, in practice, category management is often implemented with an intriguing institution of category captain, that involves the retailer entering into an alliance with only one (of many) supplier in a category. We first analyze the information sharing incentives of a manufacturer and retailer in a bilateral monopoly and identify the importance of quality of information available with the firms and the degree of complementarity of resources in determining the effectiveness of information sharing. We then show how these forces might lead to the emergence of the category captain phenomena in a model with competing manufacturers selling through a common retailer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We empirically investigate how sellers’ website quality affects buyers’ economic and social satisfaction, which in turn influences buyers’ repurchase intentions in consumer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce contexts. In addition, we examine how the effects exerted by economic and social satisfaction on repurchase intentions are moderated by relational capital between buyers and sellers. Data collected from 311 buyers on the TaoBao website provide strong support for the proposed model. The results indicate that information quality exerts a stronger impact on economic satisfaction than does service quality. Service quality exerts a stronger impact on social satisfaction than does information quality. System quality has no effect on economic or social satisfaction. Economic satisfaction can contribute to buyers’ repurchase intentions, but the impact of social satisfaction on repurchase intentions is insignificant. Furthermore, relational capital positively moderates the effect of social satisfaction on repurchase intentions, whereas it has no moderating role in the relationship between economic satisfaction and repurchase intentions. Our study advances the theoretical understanding of the information systems success model in the C2C e-commerce context. The results also inform online sellers that they should more strategically improve website quality dimensions according to different types of buyers’ satisfaction and take advantage of relational capital in order to facilitate buyers’ repurchase intentions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

En la actualidad se evidencia un creciente interés por buscar las fórmulas que permitan alcanzar mayor eficiencia en los procesos logísticos, analizando de forma exhaustiva las operaciones relacionadas con la distribuci.n, con el almacenamiento, la automatización de procesos y los sistemas de gestión de calidad. Sin embargo, es primordial que en las estrategias empresariales presten suficiente atención a los aspectos relacionados con la gestión del abastecimiento. Una correcta, sustentable y eficiente estrategia de abastecimiento, se basa en la construcción de sólidas sociedades con los proveedores, quienes tras pasar por etapas de preselección y selección, propenderán por garantizar el suministro de bienes y/o servicios, según las condiciones en que se hayan pactado. El adecuado funcionamiento y el cumplimiento de los compromisos contraídos por las partes, bajo un ambiente de profesionalismo y de responsabilidad, conducirá a que se constituyan alianzas colaborativas empresa – proveedor. Ejemplo de ello es el SRM, Supplier Relationship Management, en donde por medio de la constitución de acuerdos basados en intereses comunes, se establecen relaciones estrechas, funcionales y eficientes entre las partes, permitiendo por esta vía la garantía del suministro, y de esta forma, darle un importante impulso para el desarrollo de la cadena de valor.

We consider a complete-information multilateral bargaining game in which a single buyer negotiates with two heterogeneous sellers selling perfect complementary units. While bilateral negotiations take place through a sequence of offers and counteroffers, the bargaining order is exogenously given. We solve for the conditions under which (a) the buyer prefers to negotiate with the lower-valuation seller first and (b) efficient (inefficient) outcomes emerge for the two bargaining orders. We find that the buyer prefers to negotiate with the lower-valuation seller first whenever the players are relatively impatient or the sellers are sufficiently heterogeneous. We show that there exists a unique efficient outcome when the buyer negotiates first with the lower-valuation seller and the sellers are sufficiently heterogeneous; however, significant delay in reaching agreements may arise when they are not. In case the buyer bargains with the higher-valuation seller first, an inefficient outcome is shown to exist even when players are extremely impatient. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study sequential interdiction when the interdictor has incomplete initial information about the network and the evader has complete knowledge of the network, including its structure and arc costs. In each time period, the interdictor blocks at most k arcs from the network observed up to that period, after which the evader travels along a shortest path between two (fixed) nodes in the interdicted network. By observing the evader's actions, the interdictor learns about the network structure and arc costs and adjusts its actions to maximize the cumulative cost incurred by the evader. A salient feature of our work is that the feedback in each period is deterministic and adversarial. In addition to studying the regret minimization problem, we also discuss time stability of a policy, which is the number of time periods until the interdictor's actions match those of an oracle interdictor with prior knowledge of the network. We propose a class of simple interdiction policies that have a finite regret and detect when the instantaneous regret reaches zero in real time. More importantly, we establish that this class of policies belongs to the set of efficient policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on the utilization of information management systems by many organizations to operates business. Topics discussed include Six Sigma method developed by American multinational telecommunications company Motorola Inc., Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) method provide value by satisfying the customers, and DFSS project has been pursued by American Society for Quality (ASQ) Greater Houston Section.

Under increasing pressure from competitors and consumers, vendor-managed inventory (VMI), which is believed to be conducive to reducing inventory costs and improving distribution and sales, has been a popular system particularly in the retail industry. This present study, by adopting the modified Delphi method, attempts to identify key success factors of VMI implementation in Taiwan manufacturing industry and examine impact of the identified factors. Through three rounds of expert questionnaires, it is found that excellent project management, organizational fit, information sharing, trialability, and top management commitment are the five most important factors in terms of VMI implementation in Taiwan manufacturing industry. Employee training, a good project team, exercise of power, and relative advantages are of secondary importance to Taiwan manufacturing industry. Finally, it is hoped that these identified factors may serve as a guide for manufacturing companies in implementing VMI more effectively and efficiently. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Tourism & Management Studies is the property of Escola Superior de Gestao, Hotelaria e Turismo, Universidade do Algarve and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this study, a vendor-managed inventory model is developed for a single-vendor multiple-retailer single-warehouse (SV-MR-SV) supply chain problem based on the economic order quantity in which demands are stochastic and follow a uniform probability distribution. In order to reduce holding costs and to help balanced on-hand inventory cost between the vendor and the retailers, it is assumed that all inventory is held at a central warehouse with the lowest cost among the parties. The capacity of the central warehouse is limited. The objective is to find the warehouse replenishment frequency, the vendor's replenishment frequency, the order points, and the order quantities of the retailers such that the total inventory cost of the integrated supply chain is minimized. The proposed model is a mixed integer nonlinear programming problem (MINLP); hence, a genetic algorithm (GA) is utilized to solve this NP-hard problem. The parameters of the GA are calibrated using the Taguchi method to find better solutions. Some numerical illustrations are solved at the end to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed methodology and to evaluate the performance of the solution method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider a capacitated inventory model with flexible delivery upgrades, in which the seller allocates its on-hand inventory to price- and delivery-time-sensitive customers. The seller has two decisions: inventory commitment and replenishment. The former addresses how the on-hand inventories are allocated between the two classes of customers within an inventory cycle. The latter addresses how the inventory is replenished between inventory cycles. We develop optimal inventory allocation, upgrade, and replenishment policies and demonstrate that the optimal policy can be characterized by a set of switching curves. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 61: 418-426, 2014 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While efficient consumer response (ECR), radio frequency identification (RFID) and supply chain visibility are concepts that have received academic and practitioner attention, the benefits of integration have not been considered in any detail. Based on a systematic review of literature, the findings suggest that designing retail supply chains to integrate the concepts of RFID, ECR and visibility presents opportunities for sustained competitive advantage. The contribution made by this article is the formulation of six research propositions which propose that the integration of ECR, RFID and supply chain visibility may be considered as a strategic capability within retail supply networks. By adopting the theoretical lens of the resource-based view of the firm, research propositions examining integration as per the characteristics of valuable, rare, imperfectly mobile, not imitable and not substitutable are developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]