Cultural, Institutional, And Economic Factors Inhibiting The Transition From Tobacco Cultivation To Alternative Forms Of Agriculture In South Central Appalachia

A series of preliminary investigations indicated the strong need for alternatives for tobacco farming. Progressive elements in the communities where the study took place often suggested that this particular economic development issue should be a leading or critical priority.  Nevertheless, when the issue was put to communities at large in subsequent community sustainability studies, there was little enthusiasm among the populace for alternative agriculture initiatives.  The study reported here involved interviews with thirteen tobacco growers, two intermediaries who have grown tobacco themselves and worked among the farmers for many years, and representatives of three entities that have demonstrated success in alternate methods.   The results indicate that there are substantial institutional, economic, and psychological barriers to grower adaption.  The most important institutional barriers are the concentration in retailing and the development of highly centralized buying offices.  The most significant economic barriers are the high start-up costs and variable nature of returns.  Finally, the most salient cultural barrier is a learned helplessness resulting from years of isolation from market forces and an under educated and aging populace in farm communities. &nbsp

Seven Best Practices for Creating a Sales Culture: Transitioning From an Internally-Focused, Transaction-Oriented Culture to a Customer-Focused, Sales-Oriented Culture

Ninety-four per cent of the bankers who responded to a recent survey think that establishing a sales culture is very important to their institution\u27s success, yet less than half had actually instituted even the most rudimentary reforms. This article outlines the reasons which make the transition to a sales culture imperative, describes the basic features of organizational culture in general and sales culture in particular, and presents seven best practices that facilitate the painstaking process of transition to a sales culture in banks. The strategies discussed increase sales per employee, improve cross-selling to high-value customers, and enable banks to focus on solving customer needs to the mutual benefit of both parties. It requires providing consistently excellent service quality and sales and customer interaction training for all boundary-spanning employees

Meeting the Service Quality Challenge: Structural Problems and Solutions

Presents real-life and day-to-day examples of service delivery problems which will be familiar to all readers. Then provides practical re-engineering solutions to remedy the problems. The vignettes illustrating the problems are all real-life cases based on the experiences of the authors, and the solutions they propose are also based on their encounters with service providers as educators and consultants, and talks to business audiences by both parties

Competing for Patients and Profit

Analytical framework can help marketers determine the competitive strengths and weaknesses of hospitals

Modified Importance-Performance Analysis: An Application to Hospitals

This paper seeks to investigate the reasons why, in an increasingly competitive health care milieu, patients choose certain hospitals over others. It introduces the modified importance-performance analysis technique and presents the method and findings of an empirical study which applied importance-performance analysis in a health care setting. The strategies derived from the study findings are discussed