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PurposeThe paper seeks to present research that examines the success factors for key accounts within firms, i.e. what factors lead to successful versus unsuccessful key accounts.Design/methodology/approachData from a consulting firm are analyzed to examine the success factors for key accounts within firms.FindingsThe results suggest that marketers' relational assets, personal/social bonds, dissatisfaction, and change in environment are the primary drivers of key account success.Research limitations/implicationsThe paper summarizes one's understanding in this area and provides additional data that will allow firms to re‐evaluate their strategies regarding success of specific key accounts. In the light of the sample, additional studies are suggested.Practical implicationsMarketers need to invest more in relational assets, personal/social bonds, and satisfaction activities as well as monitor changes in the environment.Originality/valueKey accounts have become an integral part of most business firms, as key account teams are created to provide extra attention to important customers and to allow a consolidation of selling activities to geographically dispersed large customer firms. Previous research has examined the success factors of key account programs between firms and this paper provides data on the success factors of key accounts within firms.

PurposeWestern business-to-business firms are under increasing competition from firms in emerging nations. As examples, Mindray in medical devices, LiuGong in earth moving equipment, Tata motors in Buses and Suzlon in Wind turbines are emerging as strong competitors in their industries. Yet despite increased competition from emerging nation firms, insufficient research has examined the growth of these firms, specifically in the areas of technology and innovation development processes. The purpose of this study is to examine how emerging nation business-to-business firms that have global ambitions achieve technology competence.Design/methodology/approachThe authors examined several case studies on emerging market business-to-business firms that have moved to global markets and highlight the following five: LiuGong China (excavating products), Mindray China (medical equipment), Suzlon Energy India (wind generators), Tata Motors Buses India and BYD Auto China (batteries to electric cars). The firms are in business-to-business markets, except for BYD China that emerged as a business-to-business battery supplier but is currently in both business-to-business and business-to-consumer markets.FindingsThe authors find that firms in emerging markets that have global ambitions follow different approaches to innovation development processes from conventional theories and assumptions held by scholars and practitioners in Western developed countries. Our cases suggest that firms follow the proposed progression: domestic markets – internally developed technology; domestic markets –acquired technology; and finally to, global markets – acquired technology.Researchlimitations/implicationsThe authors contribute to research in three areas. First, they suggest that the innovation development process for emerging market firms is different from the Western world. Second, they provide a framework of innovation development process that can be tested in multiple environments. Third, this study suggests a deeper examination of the longitudinal development of business-to-business firms, an area that has received less attention.PracticalimplicationsThe authors suggest that firms need to better track their competition from emerging nations because emerging nation firms can quickly acquire technology to become strong competitors.Originality/valueExtant research has not examined these issues.

Purpose
– The use of key accounts has become a mature trend and most industrial firms use this concept in some form. Selling firms establish key account teams to attend to important customers and consolidate their selling activities. Yet, despite such increased efforts on behalf of key accounts, sufficient research has not quantified the returns on key account strategy nor has it firmly established performance differences between key and non-key accounts within a firm. In response to this shortcoming, this study aims to examine returns on key accounts.


Design Methodology/approach
– Data were collected from a global consulting firm. The data collection started two years after the implementation of the key account program. Data were collected on recently acquired customers (within the previous year) at two time periods: year 1 and year 3 (based on company access of data).


Findings
– Initially, key accounts perform as well or better than other types of accounts. However, in the long term, key accounts are less satisfied, less profitable and less beneficial for a firm's growth than other types of accounts. Because the returns to key account expenditures, thus, appear mixed, firms should be cautious in expanding their key account strategies.


Research limitations implications
– The study contributes to research in three areas. First, most research on the effectiveness of key accounts refers to the between-firm level, whereas this study examines the effect within a single firm. Second, this study examines the temporal aspects of key accounts, namely, what happens to key accounts over time, in comparison with other accounts in a fairly large sample. Third, it considers the survival rates of key accounts versus other types of accounts.


Practical implications
– The authors suggest that firms also need to track their key accounts better because the results show that key accounts are less satisfied, less profitable and less beneficial for a firm's growth than other types of accounts.


Originality/value
– Extant research has not examined these issues.

AbstractThis paper endeavors to find an optimal solution to alleviate the harmful consequences of choice overload using assortment categorization. Past research on assortment categorization has primarily studied the type of category labels. Only a few studies focused on the number of category labels, and the extant research is inconclusive on the right number of labels. This paper argues that the number of options under each label is more important in reducing choice overload than the number of labels. We call the number of options under each label "category ratio". We integrate the research from four streams to recommend an optimal range of category ratio. In a field and a lab experiment, we tested the optimal category ratio as an intervention in the reduction of choice overload. The results of both experiments found a significant reduction in choice overload for the optimal category ratio. In experiment 3, we manipulated the category ratio to test whether the optimal category ratio is better than the non‐optimal category ratio. The results of experiment 3 found that consumers experienced more satisfaction for the optimal category ratio than both uncategorized assortment and non‐optimal category ratio. Past research has found that fewer labels and uninformative categorization are not helpful in the choice process. This paper finds that a few labels are beneficial only when the category ratio is within the proposed optimal range. Uninformative labels also reduced choice overload when categorized using the optimal category ratio.

AbstractThe number of alternatives for consumers in almost all purchase situations is increasing at an extremely rapid pace. Although more choices may have many benefits to the consumers, recent studies on choice overload have found that choosing from large alternatives may lead to negative consequences. Majority of the choice overload research has compared only two groups of small versus large assortment size. In extant literature, there is no clarity as to what are small and large assortment sizes. Assortment size used as small in one study has been used as large in some other studies. Small assortment size varied from 2 to 60 choices and large assortment size from 3 to 300 choices in past studies, and the presence of choice overload has been reported at completely different levels of assortment sizes. This study has used an array of six choice sets from 6 to 36 options as compared to just two groups of small versus large assortment. Switching likelihood of consumers was used to capture the choice overload effect in this study. The probability of consumers switching their earlier choice was plotted as a function of number of options using binary logistic regression. Results showed that probability of switching was almost a linearly increasing function of assortment size from 6 to 36 options. The graph of predicted probabilities from 2 to 300 options showed a sharp increase in switching behaviour initially and subsequent flattening of the curve when options became very large.

SummaryNearly a quarter of the world's neonatal deaths take place in India. The state of Uttar Pradesh alone accounts for one-quarter of all neonatal deaths in the country. In this study 892 married women aged less than 50 years living in a peri-urban area of Kanpur city in Uttar Pradesh were interviewed. In all, 109 women reported neonatal deaths. Characteristics of the last neonatal deaths of these 109 women were compared with those of the last surviving children. Also, characteristics of women who had a neonatal death were compared with those of 783 women who had no neonatal death. It was found that as compared with neonatal deaths, the last surviving children of the 109 women had: (a) significantly better antenatal tests during pregnancy, intake of iron/folic acid tablets and higher percentage of tetanus toxoid immunization; (b) safer delivery practices such as a higher percentage of institutional delivery, sterilization of instruments and application of antiseptic after removal of umbilical cord; (c) postnatal care, such as application of antiseptic to the navel and postnatal checkups; and (d) higher maternal age and greater birth spacing. Likewise, better antenatal care and safer delivery practices and postnatal care were observed among the 783 women with no neonatal deaths, when compared with women who had experienced neonatal death. The complexities of inter- and intra-household differences in health care are discussed. The paper concludes that to improve child survival general education and awareness regarding safe delivery should be increased. Continuing cultural stigmas and misconceptions about birth practices before, during and after childbirth should be an important part of the awareness campaigns.

Logistics managers need to collect timely and accurate data on
customers′ needs, as well as customer perceptions of the firm′s and
competitors′ performance levels. Today, a large number of companies
collect this from their salesforce – a good, inexpensive and
timely source of customer and competitive information but caution is
needed since a majority of salespeople are inaccurate. Reviews the
conceptual issues associated with using the salesforce to collect
information and reports results of an empirical study which examined the
accuracy of salesforce information.