Incorporating the Dual Customer Roles in e-Service Design

E-service involves the delivery of useful services through information technology based service delivery channels such as the Internet. A distinguishing feature of e-service is the active and significant participation of customers in the service co-production process. With increasing customer participation in the e-service co-production process, it is important to incorporate customers’ needs both as a co-producer and as a patron into the design of e-service systems. However, these dual customer roles create a complex decision problem during e-service design. In the current paper we present a customer orientation strategy for e-service design, and propose a corresponding two-stage decision model based upon the customer orientation strategy to evaluate the efficiency and effectiveness of e-service design when the focus of the design is to meet customers’ needs as both co-producers and patrons. The decision model is then applied in an empirical study of the design of e-services of Internet food retailers. Key Words: Service Operations, E-Service, Co-production, Efficiency Analysis, Data Envelopment Analysis

Using Experiments to Foster Innovation and Improve the Effectiveness of Energy Efficiency Programs

This paper argues that the establishment of a process designed to manage innovation must be developed in California to foster the creation of needed program improvements and develop new and more effective energy efficiency delivery programs. This paper discusses several key institutional problems that must be overcome to achieve significant progress

The specificity of the marketing distribution policy; diagnostic procedures in the enterprise

In the article stages of marketing distribution policy diagnostics are defined. At the first stage, it is proposed to analyse factors of enterprise internal and external environment (gathering information about general trends in the markets and factors of micro-environment (customers, competitors, suppliers, intermediaries, contact audiences). It is approved that analysis of general trends of the market’s development give an opportunity to determine the state of the enterprise macro-environment. At the same time, it is defined that the greatest influence on the marketing distribution policy provide such internal subsystems of the enterprise, as material and production, information, social, marketing and financial. At the second stage of marketing distribution policy diagnostics, researchers propose to analyse the internal system of marketing distribution policy at the enterprise. It is determined that the effectiveness of marketing distribution policy can be defined basing on indicators that can be combined in the following groups: 1) indicators of the enterprise’s market share (the market share of the enterprise, the rate of the market share increase), 2) indicators of sales activities profitability (the rate of profit from sales increase (decrease), the rate of receivables increase (decrease), product profitability, sales profitability), 3) indicators of sales expenses efficiency (sales volume of expenses, the rate of sales expenses increase (decrease), the ratio of increase (decrease) in sales from the sales costs increase (decrease), the profitability of investment in marketing and sales), 4) indicators of inventory (inventory levels, the proportion of unsold commodities in the value of the produced commodities, the coefficient of inventory turnover) and 5) indicators of service level (the rate of complaints increase (decrease), the rate of concluded contracts number increase (decrease)). And the third stage of marketing distribution policy diagnostics, it is recommended to identify internal (e.g., lack of sales personnel evaluation system, risk of marketing channels incorrect choice, risk of distribution strategies incorrect selection, risk of sales activity costs increasing, low level of assortment renovation and others) and external (e.g., foreign risk, inflation risk, tax risk, political risk, risk of legislative changes, risk of target segment incorrect selection, high level of competitive forces influence and others) sales risks that affect or may affect marketing distribution policy

Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after the Internet—The state of eTourism research

This paper reviews the published articles on eTourism in the past 20 years. Using a wide variety of sources, mainly in the tourism literature, this paper comprehensively reviews and analyzes prior studies in the context of Internet applications to Tourism. The paper also projects future developments in eTourism and demonstrates critical changes that will influence the tourism industry structure. A major contribution of this paper is its overview of the research and development efforts that have been endeavoured in the field, and the challenges that tourism researchers are, and will be, facing