In the competitive retailing environment of the 1990s, success often depends on a firm’s ability to find a unique way of appealing to a carefully selected group of target customers (those most likely, willing, and able to buy the firm’s offering) in order to gain their patronage, and ideally, their loyalty. The best way to achieve a competitive advantage is to develop a unique merchandise and/o...

Customer mistreatment events play a major role in employees' subsequent customer service behaviors, and is believed to have implications for sense of self. We extend this line research by developing self-verification account the relationship between customer-directed OCBs (OCB-Cs) examining theoretically prescribed novel mechanisms (i.e., self-verification) boundary conditions self-esteem entit...

Recent works question the benefit of Promotional Pricing (Hi-Lo) formats. In this essay, we characterize a setting in which cost-disadvantaged firms would rationally and profitably opt for the Hi-Lo format. Essentially, cost-disadvantaged retail firms, such as mall outlets and smaller chains lacking the economies of scale of their rivals, charge higher prices than their cost-competitive rivals....

balanced scorecard is a strategic evaluation tool. reviewing of the relevant literature indicate that regardless of significant improvement of conceptual and theoretical dimension of this framework, its implementation faces with some difficulties, specially based on quantitative approach. the purpose of this paper is to propose an integrated qualitative and quantitative approach for development...

The growing focus on customer relationship forces enterprises to redesign their processes more customer oriented. This article suggests a classification of customer orientation from the customer’s perspective. Within this classification we discuss processes to obtain customer-oriented products and services in enterprises. To create a comprehensive solution to a customer’s problem, i.e. a bundle...

a key challenge to brand managers is how to gain a better understanding of the relationship between brand and customer loyalty constructs. researchers have recognized that brand identity plays a key role in brand management. the purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of brand identity and brand identification on brand loyalty through perceived value, customer satisfaction, and trust...

Our research is directed towards agile supply chains enabling enterprises to quickly respond to individual customer demand. From this perspective, agility encompasses three dimensions of adaptivity: space, time, and economy. Supply chain agility can be achieved by exploiting the most fundamental resource of any enterprise: knowledge. Studying supply chains, we regard all their tiers, participan...

The growing focus on customer relationship forces enterprises to redesign their processes more customer oriented. This article suggests a classification of customer orientation from the customer’s perspective. Within this classification we discuss processes to obtain customer-oriented products and services in enterprises. To create a comprehensive solution to a customer’s problem, i.e. a bundle...

This study proposes a conceptual model and empirically tests the relationships between customers and librarians (i.e. tangibles, responsiveness, assurance, reliability and empathy) with a dependent variable (customer satisfaction) regarding library services. The SERVQUAL instrument was administered to 100 respondents which comprises of staff and students at a public higher learning institution ...

The e-business arena is a dynamic, complex and demanding environment. It is essential to make optimal reuse of knowledge of customer services across various functional units of the enterprise. On the other hand, it is also important to ensure that the customer service staff can access and be trained up with dynamically updated knowledge that meets the changing business environment of an enterpr...