Krishnakumar Davey, Paul Markowitz and Nagi Jonnalagadda
Companies cannot capture the full profit potential of their products and services until their managers understand the ideal price points and width of the price range for each…
Abstract
Purpose
Companies cannot capture the full profit potential of their products and services until their managers understand the ideal price points and width of the price range for each product or brand given its position in the marketplace. This article describes the tools and best practices to accomplish this.
Design/methodology/approach
In the past year or so, Mercer Consulting has conducted 26 discrete choice modeling studies (our version of the modeling is called Strategic Choice Analysis® or SCA) with over 15,000 customers in a wide swath of industries across the U.S., Canada, Germany, and China.
Findings
Mercer studies show that price (17 percent out of a possible 100 percent) is nowhere near as important a selection factor as product features (65 percent); service features (11 percent), and other features (7 percent) account for the rest of decision‐making.
Practical implications
The article shows how all businesses can follow the lead of the exemplars in aligning pricing to customer value.
Originality/value
It clarifies why ideal pricing depends on discrete choice modeling and a number of best practices rather than on price optimization software alone.
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Supported by the UK's eight principle funders of biomedical and health research, UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) is being developed in close consultation with its intended user…
Abstract
Purpose
Supported by the UK's eight principle funders of biomedical and health research, UK PubMed Central (UKPMC) is being developed in close consultation with its intended user community – the researchers. This paper seeks to outline why there is a need to develop a UK‐specific version of this well‐known and very popular free service, and what practical approaches have taken towards bringing a Beta service live for all to use and feedback on.
Design/methodology/approach
The approach to development of UKPMC has been consultative and iterative. Through surveys, focus groups and one‐to‐one user tests the aim has been to develop a service which can fit neatly into a researcher's workflow. Coordinating the programme itself has required close collaboration between organisations which are quite diverse both culturally and administratively.
Findings
Through developing UKPMC, technology has been melded together with practical delivery. The text mining functionality that the service now offers is truly innovative, and there is further potential to develop this. The recently launched Beta service (beta.ukpmc.ac.uk) will continue to be honed – particularly its text mining functionality – through ongoing user consultation and feedback. It is perceived that this flexible approach to development is essential in offering a service that is truly useful for the UK's life sciences research community and offers a compelling reason to use it as a valid and ground breaking alternative to PubMed Central (the US version).
Originality/value
The originality and value of UKPMC should be judged by the research community. All life sciences researchers are invited to try the beta site.
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Sherry Lee Finney and Megan Penney
Information for this case was gained first-hand as the case authors are also the protagonists. Care was taken to ensure case material was presented in an unbiased and accurate…
Abstract
Research methodology
Information for this case was gained first-hand as the case authors are also the protagonists. Care was taken to ensure case material was presented in an unbiased and accurate manner.
Case overview/synopsis
Sherry Finney, co-manager and partner at Escape Outdoors (EO), North Sydney, Nova Scotia, has just about completed a social media campaign collaboration with Cape Breton outdoor influencers, Davey and Sky. This was the company’s first collaboration with social influencers, and EO had done it to increase their follower base, particularly on Instagram. Defining measures of success was the task now facing Finney and her Sales and Marketing Assistant, Megan Penney. The campaign costs were in the range of $500, and if EO were to do this campaign again, they needed to understand the pros and cons and if it was a success. The campaign would end in a few days, and before it was finalized, Finney and Penney had to decide what final metrics would be required for evaluation and, specifically, how the campaign would be evaluated.
Complexity academic level
This case is intended for courses in social media marketing, marketing management, marketing analytics, digital marketing or entrepreneurship. The typical user of this case will be an undergraduate or graduate business student who has completed an introductory marketing concepts course.
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Paul McCrone, Steve Iliffe, Enid Levin, Kalpa Kharicha and Barbara Davey
There have been few economic evaluations of joint working between social and health care. This paper focuses on collaboration between professionals providing care for people aged…
Abstract
There have been few economic evaluations of joint working between social and health care. This paper focuses on collaboration between professionals providing care for people aged 75 and over, and examines the economic costs of contacts made by social workers with community nurses, GPs and older people or their carers. Two areas were studied, one where social care and primary care services were co‐located, and the other with social work teams located separately from local health services. The two forms of social care location had an impact on contacts and costs but overall it was fairly small. Contact costs made up only a small amount of the overall costs of care These findings suggest that altering the organisational arrangements for care delivery may improve the process of care delivery, but result in only minor changes to the proportion of overall resources directed to older service users.
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Caroline L. Davey and Andrew B. Wootton
This paper aims to understand the delivery of crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) across Europe – from European-wide procedures through national schemes to…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to understand the delivery of crime prevention through environmental design (CPTED) across Europe – from European-wide procedures through national schemes to effective local strategies.
Design/methodology/approach
The findings come from a review of published literature and reports, case studies and site visits conducted primarily during COST Action TU1203 (2013-2016).
Findings
Innovative approaches and methods to integrate crime prevention into urban design, planning and management have been generated by multi-agency partnerships and collaborations at European, national and city levels. Methods and procedures developed by the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) Working Group on “Crime Prevention through Urban Planning and Building Design” are pioneering. However, findings show that implementation is best achieved at a local level using methods and procedures tailored to the specific context.
Research limitations/implications
In-depth research is required to appreciate subtle differences between local approaches and conceptual models developed to better understand approaches and methods.
Practical implications
Practitioners and academics working to prevent crime benefit from participation in focused, multi-agency collaborations that, importantly, facilitate visits to urban developments, discussions with local stakeholders responsible for delivery “on the ground” and structured and sustained exploration of innovations and challenges.
Originality/value
The authors hope that this paper will contribute to developing a new direction for CPTED practice and research that builds on significant progress in creating safer environments over previous decades.
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Mille Mortensen and Charlotte Andreas Baarts
The purpose of this paper is to explore the interplay of organizational humorous teasing and workplace bullying in hospital work life in order to investigate how workplace…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the interplay of organizational humorous teasing and workplace bullying in hospital work life in order to investigate how workplace bullying can emerge from doctors and nurses experiences of what, at first, appears as “innocent” humorous interactions.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on an ethnographic field study among doctors and nurses at Rigshospitalet (University Hospital of Copenhagen, Denmark) field notes, transcriptions from two focus groups and six in-depth interviews were analyzed using a cross-sectional thematic analysis.
Findings
This study demonstrates how bullying may emerge out of a distinctive joking practice, in which doctors and nurses continually relate to one another with a pronounced degree of derogatory teasing. The all-encompassing and omnipresent teasing entails that the positions of perpetrator and target persistently change, thereby excluding the position of bystander. Doctors and nurses report that they experience the humiliating teasing as detrimental, although they feel continuously forced to participate because of the fear of otherwise being socially excluded. Consequently, a concept of “fluctuate bullying” is suggested wherein nurses and doctors feel trapped in a “double bind” position, being constrained to bully in order to avoid being bullied themselves.
Originality/value
The present study add to bullying research by exploring and demonstrating how workplace bullying can emerge from informal social power struggles embedded and performed within ubiquitous humorous teasing interactions.
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Henna M. Leino, Leila Hurmerinta and Birgitta Sandberg
Secondary customers often experience secondary vulnerabilities that manifest in family-centred transformative services as other- and self-related customer needs. Yet, a relational…
Abstract
Purpose
Secondary customers often experience secondary vulnerabilities that manifest in family-centred transformative services as other- and self-related customer needs. Yet, a relational perspective on primary and secondary customers’ needs is lacking. The study analyses secondary customers’ needs and their relationship to primary customers’ needs to enhance well-being in customer entities. The service inclusion lens is used to understand customers’ experiences of vulnerability.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses an exploratory approach. The data consists of ethnographic observations and interviews of elderly residents (primary customers), their family members (secondary customers) and nurses in two nursing homes.
Findings
Primary and secondary customers’ needs are interrelated (or unrelated) in four ways: they are separate, congruent, intertwined or discrepant. The vulnerability experiences fluctuate in intensity and over time, individually reflecting on these need dimensions.
Research limitations/implications
The study contributes to service research concerning customers’ experiences of vulnerability, secondary customers and their inclusion in services. Primary customers’ service inclusion may increase/decrease secondary customers’ service inclusion and their experience of vulnerability. Moreover, secondary customers’ inclusion is often necessary to foster primary customers’ inclusion and well-being.
Practical implications
Fostering service inclusion and well-being for primary and secondary customers requires balanced inclusion and acknowledging the needs of both groups. Service providers may need to act as moderators within customer entities if discrepant needs occur.
Originality/value
The study addresses the under-researched areas of family members’ customer needs, their relation to primary customers’ needs, experiences of secondary vulnerability and context-related vulnerability.