Suchergebnisse

A New Look at Spatially Competitive Facility Location Models -- A Spatial Nash Equilibrium Model -- Investigating the Use of the Core as a Solution Concept in Spatial Price Equilibrium Games -- Computational Aspects of the International Coal Trade Model -- Demand Homotopies for Computing Nonlinear and Multi-Commodity Spatial Equilibria -- A Dual Conjugate Gradient Method for the Single-Commodity Spatial Price Equilibrium Problem -- General Spatial Price Equilibria: Sensitivity Analysis for Variational Inequality and Nonlinear Complementarity Formulations -- An Application of Quadratic Programming to the Deregulation of Natural Gas -- Evaluation of Electric Power Deregulation Using Network Models of Oligopolistic Spatial Markets -- Multiple Objective Analysis for a Spatial Market System: A Case Study of U.S.Agricultural Policy.

The continued development of e-business models has triggered a dramatic transition of customers'roles in a variety of service production and delivery processes. In the coproduction of service, the scale and scope of customers' participation have been significantly transformed and enhanced by newe-business models and technology. This transition calls for a newunderstanding of customers' roles in service delivery systems. The concept of customer efficiency is crucial for the successful management of systems where customers are actively engaged in service production and delivery processes. This article presents the concept of customer efficiency management (CEM), studies its relationship with other key customer characteristics, and explores its potential impact on e-business management.

This article explores the trade-offs between service and sales in phone center operations in retail banking and develops an analytical approach to quantify the costs and benefits of moving toward a sales-focused operation. Empirical evidence from retail banking call centers is provided along with a numerical example demonstrating the use of the analytical approach in the context of one major retail banking call center. It is shown that in addition to its visible costs, such as training and technology to build support systems for sales activities, cross-selling can have detrimental effects on customer service due to the additional load it creates on the system. It is further demonstrated that designing the right process and adopting human resource practices that support this design are critical in determining the success of a cross-sell program.

This article presents a methodology that determines the role of design in calculating the efficiency of service delivery processes. The efficiency of these processes is first determined by using a variation of frontier estimation (data envelopment analysis [DEA]-like) techniques. The methodology is then applied to a particular service delivery process in retail banking. The methodology allows one to address the question of how much inefficiency in a business process is due to process-design choice and how much is due to process execution. In addition, the methodology determines which policy group offers the most potential for improvement for a particular firm. Consistent with expectations, the results show that no single process design dominates. However, the methodology demonstrates the trade-offs for a particular institution and offers specific recommendations for either improving an existing process or radically changing to a different design.