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According to market forecasts, e-commerce will attain growing importance in the near future: Business transactions are changing. However, until today, the subject lacks profound findings about possible challenges and advantages, as well as about success factors of acceptance. The present book informs about the trends in business-to-consumer e-commerce both from the retailer's and the customer's point of view. Additionally, it contains a case study of a well known U.S. retailer and a corresponding customer survey. Based on the results of this study, customer profiles, market segments and strategies are derived. The study shows that e-commerce is far more than a mere selling and distributing channel. It is a platform for an integrated marketing that takes customers' needs into consideration while at the same time enforces customer focus. While it may be too early to predict its ultimate impacts, e-commerce is certainly a major source of business opportunity today. The greatest threat may be the risk of not acting on this occasion.
It is long past time to take business ethics seriously. This is not because business people feel the need to appear virtuous, attentive to sustainability, or devoted to their stakeholders, but because business ethics can offer a competitive advantage to companies that prioritize it. A strong reputation and trustworthiness reduce transaction costs with partners, foster loyalty among employees, and attract top young talent. This book explores the many ways companies around the world can achieve such a competitive advantage. Use this volume to stay informed in this field, which will only grow in importance as technology continues to shed light on who provides the goods and services we rely on.
Stefan Wengler provides a well founded answer to the question of the economic value and shows the need for the implementation of key account management. He presents a comprehensive, but easy-to-handle decision-making model that supports the decision on the most efficient key account management organization for individual companies. In addition, he gives a comprehensive overview on the key account management conception and its controlling tools.
Commoditization is a major challenge for companies in a wide range of industries, and commodity marketing has become a priority for many top managers. This book tackles the key issues associated with the marketing of commodities and the processes of commoditization and de-commoditization. It summarizes the state of the art on commodity marketing, providing an overview of current debates. It also offers managerial insights, case studies, and guidance to help manage and market commodity goods and services.
Everyone in marketing is talking about word of mouth (WOM). At a time when traditional advertising is struggling, conversations between consumers – the most trusted source of product information – have taken on an entirely new dimension on the Internet. While considerable research on the effects and spread of WOM has been carried out over the past sixty years, surprisingly few scholars have tried to find out how to stimulate it. Martin Oetting seeks to close that gap. Based on involvement and empowerment research, this is the first scientific study connecting word of mouth with a participatory marketing approach, thus providing an answer to what may be marketing’s most pressing question: how to strategically harness the power of blogs, Facebook, and the Social Web.
Janine Frauendorf analyzes how customer processes can be used to optimize the overall service process. Her focus is on the service blueprint: Originally a tool for the design and optimization of the service operator’s internal process, it is now extended taking into account the customer process aspect. She presents significant implications for services research and helpful suggestions for business practice.
Based on a unique database of German firms, the Deutsche Bundesbank's Corporate Balance Sheet Statistics, Andreas Behr explores the link between financial factors and a firm's investment decision within the framework of the Q-theory of investment.
This is one of the first books to probe deeply into the art and science of branding industrial products. The book comes at a time when more industrial companies need to start using branding in a sophisticated way. It provides the concepts, the theory, and dozens of cases illustrating the successful branding of industrial goods. It offers strategies for a successful development of branding concepts for business markets and explains the benefits and the value a business, product or service provides to industrial customers. As industrial companies are turning to branding this book provides the best practices and hands-on advice for B2B brand management.
Katrin Mühlfeld analyzes motivations and conditions for strategic changes of market offerings which can be interpreted as shifts between different business types. Transaction cost economics provide the main theoretical foundations while additional reference is made to Austrian economics and research on power-dependence relations.
Evolutionary theory belongs to the rare species of theories that are simultaneously fundamental and over-arching, implicating as it does numerous life contexts as well as an array of scholarly disciplines. Armed with a profound grasp of evolutionary theory and its implications to social research, Professors Zumbansen and Calliess have mobilized an appropriately diverse and truly stellar group of academics to investigate how this theory may provide new insights about law, economics, and their inter-relations. Cast against an especially broad intellectual backdrop set by the editors, this volume is sure to become a standard reference in literature. Amir N. Licht, Radzyner School of Law, Israel...