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Since organizations have limited resources, it is not possible to invest in every opportunity which is recognized or imagined. Once a set of promising projects has been identified and investigated, it is necessary to reject some projects but invest in others. In this respect, the process of capital budgeting serves to shape the future of organizations, and a variety of capital budgeting methods have been proposed to assist managers who are engaged in this important planning task.

Reports on content‐analysis research of television commercials for products, services and retail outlets attempting to discover whether the objectives or strategies used differ. Uses three frameworks for evaluation of the product and service advertisements. Finds that services, product and retail marketers are using different advertising strategies. Notes that many of the differences seem to be concerned with the heterogeneity, simultaneity and intangibility of services and discusses implications for managers of these findings.

Human existence is characterized by discontinuities, chaos, instabilities, constant changes, and paradoxes (Firat and Venkatesh, 1996). A challenge to social scientists is to construct theories which explain human behavior, given the plurality and complexity of human behavior. At the same time, business decision makers face the challenge of managing in an environment of constant change and flux. The economist, Joseph Schumpeter (1943), described this process well:

The application on conjoint analysis to the task of customising financial services is discussed. Conjoint analysis allows for the generation of the utility levels associated with financial service design alternatives. By evaluating service‐provider and customer utility levels simultaneously, an efficient frontier of financial service designs can be identified. This process can greatly simplify the financial service design selection decision, since it eliminates inferior alternatives from consideration. A hypothetical example, the selection of commercial line of credit features for a potential corporate customer, is demonstrated.

The northern spotted owl (Strix occidentalis caurina) was declared a threatened species by the US Fish and Wildlife Service on June 22, 1990. Its listing as a threatened species makes it illegal not only to harm the owls directly, but also to destroy their habitat. Uncertainty associated with the federal government's handling of the owl habitat area increased with the announcement on June 27 that a plan for protection would be delayed. Subsequently, the Bush administration responded with a plan aimed at “balancing” environmental and employment considerations (Hooker and Rockwell, 1990). Reflecting the 1994 Clinton forest plan for the Pacific Northwest, total harvests of softwoods in the Douglas‐fir region of Western Washington and Western Oregon were recently projected to decline from 3.14 billion cubic feet in 1986 to 1.75 billion cubic feet in 2010 (Haynes, Adams, and Mills, 1995). Since the stock market responds very rapidly to new information, its reaction to the owl's listing can be investigated in an attempt to uncover Wall Street's perception of the likely future effect of the decision on the financial attractiveness of growing and marketing timber. Results have implications for the forest products industry and should be of interest to policymakers, forest industry planners, and security analysts.

Considers the interaction between customer and provider in professional service encounters, where extended person‐to‐person discussions frequently take place. Describes an experiment in which subjects read and reacted to stories describing such encounters, which included three service variables – competency, outcome and courtesy. Reports on the emotional responses of the subjects, finding that courtesy was responsible for most of the variation in response. Discusses the managerial implications resulting from the study, notably the importance of courtesy in professional service encounters.

Compulsion to buy is an important but neglected aspect of consumer behavior. This research uses cross‐cultural data from the USA and South Korea to study compulsive consumption behavior by focusing on individual factors. Three compulsive consumption behaviors (i.e. compulsive buying, compulsive substance abuse, and compulsive gambling/lottery play) are analyzed via structural equation modeling. The findings reveal that comorbidity (i.e. coexistence of more than two related compulsive consumption behaviors) is found in both countries. With one exception, the predicted personality traits (i.e. obsessive thoughts, risk‐taking tendencies) are significantly related to compulsive consumption behaviors in both countries.

Proposes a model to explain consumers’ willingness to recommend a service provider. The model considers four predictors of this phenomenon: affect, outcome, competency and courtesy. In a laboratory setting, subjects read and responded to a scenario describing a service encounter of a fictitious individual with a dry cleaner and/or an attorney. The subjects were later asked how likely they were to recommend this service provider to a friend experiencing a similar problem. Separate path analyses were performed to analyze each type of service encounter; and in both scenarios, outcome, competency, courtesy, joy and disgust were found to influence the likelihood that the consumer would recommend a particular service provider. The proposed model accounts for more than 72 percent of the variation in the subjects’ decision to recommend.

The Internet has the potential to revolutionize all kinds of business activities, including the creation, promotion, and delivery of services. In this paper, we examine the intersection of two frameworks in order to identify new opportunities for delivering and promoting services via the Internet. The first framework is based on technology and network boundaries (e.g. intranet, extranet, Internet). The second framework is based on the business objective of the network application (e.g. automation, information, transformation). By combining these two frameworks, we identify nine new ways to create and promote services.

This paper proposes a framework for connecting the involvement construct’s antecedents of Internet marketing, measured involvement degree, related constructs and consequences of consumer behavior. The research first determined the factors that influence the degree of Internet marketing involvement then established the different involvement degree clusters by measured involvement. Finally, the relationship among influence factors, Internet marketing involvement degree, and consequences of consumer behavior was analyzed. Based on the research findings, this paper discusses the possible Internet marketing strategies for a variety involvement degree clusters.