Impact of Financial and Nonfinancial Constructs on Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): U.S. Retailer’s Perspective

Purpose: This customer lifetime value (CLV) study developed and refined an instrument to measure CLV from a retailer’s perspective using both financial and nonfinancial constructs. Design/methodology/approach: The authors created scale items to measure the financial (monetary value and marketing costs) and nonfinancial constructs (trust, loyalty, purchase frequency, recency, and churn rate). They assessed composite reliability as well as discriminant and convergent validity. Findings: A varimax rotation indicated strong items for trust and recency under the nonfinancial factors as well as monetary value and marketing costs under the financial factors. Additionally, the measurement model indicated a strong model fit. Practical implications: The findings reinforce the notion of using financial factors to determine CLV. However, nonfinancial factors are also relevant for explaining CLV. These findings fundamentally shift the argument about the determinants of CLV as well as open the door for further research about the financial factors of CLV. Originality: This is the first study to create scale items for measuring the financial and nonfinancial constructs of CLV. The research provides useful theoretical and managerial insights regarding the consideration of nonfinancial factors for refocusing marketing and retailing efforts toward consumers. The study findings reinforce the notion that all customers are not equally valuable

An Empirical Evidence of Willingness to Adopt RFID

Book chapter 36 from Supply Chain and Logistics Management: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications, by the Information Resources Management Association. About the chapter: This research examined the willingness of businesses and industries to adopt RFID. It was postulated that motivation to adopt RFID is influenced by the technological context, organizational factors, and perceived benefits of using RFID. Data was collected from Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals members using a 19-question web-based survey. Relative advantage that firms can achieve and the perceived benefits in improving product quality and information sharing along with better traceability in the supply chain were significant predictors of RFID adoption. Within the technological contexts, the visible obstacles of RFID adoption through quality of transmission and reliability, understanding of overly high investment costs, and importance of the privacy concerns were all significant. The IT readiness of a firm was also a significant predictor of RFID adoption in the organizational factor, however the size of an organization was not at all linked to the RFID adoption decisions. The results point to a number of important conclusions that are informative for various business and industries that might be contemplating to adopt RFID technology in their operations

Motivators to Adopt Green Supply Chain Initiatives

There are several factors that drive organizations to consider implementing green supply chain (GSC) initiatives. This paper refines an instrument to empirically test the significance of the following drivers for participation in GSC initiatives: Government Regulation, Buyer/Supply Chain Influence, Internal Readiness, Competitive Advantage, and Corporate Social Responsibility. Corporate Social Responsibility emerged as the most significant variable that effected the decision making of the organizations around green supply chain management practices. Surprisingly, Competitive Advantage, which has been found to be a significant contributor in prior research when studied in isolation, did not emerge as a significant factor in this study. The emergent high correlation between the Corporate Social Responsibility and Competitive Advantage could imply that the Competitive Advantage could be embedded within the Corporate Social Responsibility when agencies focus on greening their supply chains

Enterprise Resource Planning Systems and its Implications for Operations Function

Over the last decade, our world has changed dramatically due to the growing phenomenon of globalization and revolution in information technology. There is tremendous demand on companies to lower costs, enlarge product assortment, improve product quality, and provide reliable delivery dates through effective and efficient coordination of production and distribution activities. To achieve these conflicting goals, companies must constantly re-engineer or change their business practices and employ information systems. In 1990s, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems have emerged as an enabling technology, which integrates various functional (operations, marketing, finance) information systems into a seamless suite of business applications across the company and thereby, allowed for streamlined processing of business data and cross-functional integration. Thus, ERP systems provide an enticing solution to managers who have struggles with incompatible information systems and inconsistent operations policies. However, successful implementation of ERP systems requires active participation from senior-level managers from various functional areas so as to delineate its impact on the business level as well as functional level strategies. In this paper, we have endeavored to provide operations managers a brief overview of ERP systems and highlight its implications for operations function. Specifically, the objective of this paper is to give a broad based overview of enterprise resource planning systems. Using SAP R/3 as an example system, we discuss how an ERP system can assist in enhancing strengthening business strategy and making consistent operations decisions: process design, production planning and scheduling, inventory management, quality management, human resource management

Improving Operations Strategy: Application of TOC Principles in a Small Business

This paper demonstrates how small business managers can create and sustain competitive advantage by applying basic principles of Theory of Constraints (TOC) using a case study on a small family-owned pizza restaurant. TOC five focusing steps were used to reveal the business constraints and practical recommendations were provided that significantly improved throughput, resource utilization, and customer satisfaction without incurring any significant expenses. TOC performance measures encourage small business managers to find innovative ways of increasing throughput instead of simply cutting costs. Positive outcomes in this study demonstrate how small businesses effectively manage their operations and realize benefits using TOC principles

Collaboration and its impact on Supply Chain Dynamics

In the past decade companies have realized that although their focus on consumer satisfaction has been important in achieving in-house innovation, their competitiveness and profitability have not improved considerably. A primary reason for this is that independent inventory management decisions are made by supply chain partners. Businesses have now realized that collaboration among trading firms is a more effective process to deal with issues related to inventory management, as compared to the customary approach of shifting the load of inventories. This research demonstrates, through a dynamic simulation approach, the positive performance outcomes of collaboration such as increased sales, improved profits, reduced inventory levels, reduced lost sales and improved order fill rates

Assessing Effectiveness of Supply Chain Collaboration: An Empirical Study

Even though collaboration has obtained increasing popularity in the supply chain (SC) arena, its effectiveness has not been measured empirically at a national level. In this paper, we refine, validate, and then employ an instrument that measures (1) the extent of Information sharing, joint planning, goal congruence, personal interaction, and trust between SC partners and (2) manager perception of the effectiveness of this collaborative relationship. These factors along with several firm-specific variables that the literature has suggested (i.e. number of employees, annual sales revenue, percent of partners involved in collaboration, years in collaboration, and length of current agreement) are used to explain the effectiveness of SC collaboration using regression analysi

Supply Chain Management and its Impact on Operation Decisions

There has been a paradigm shift in traditional operation management ideology with the adoption of supply chain management (SCM) which is known for having a strategic, tactical, and operational impact on traditional business functions. The purpose of this paper is to study and analyze SCM from an operation manager’s perspective and analyze its impact on such critical operations decisions as: Quality, Process Strategy and Inventory Management

Universal-Diverse Orientation of Business, Education, and Social Work Students

Purpose of this interdisciplinary research was to measure the level of multicultural awareness, sensitivity to and understanding of difference, and intercultural competence when working in diverse environments in the undergraduate and graduate Business, Education and Human Development, and Social Work students using the Universal-Diverse Orientation (UDO) (MGUDS-S survey). Convenient purposive sampling was utilised to invite students enrolled in these three schools to participate in web-based descriptive survey research. Students in Social Work had the greatest UDO, followed by students in Education and Human Development, and the Business students. Interdisciplinary differences in context of variables, such as degree, number of prior diversity courses, exposure to diverse cultures, gender, spirituality, and political affiliation, are discussed, along with recommendations for education and practice