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Based on analysis of six companies, three each from India and US, it is found that companies using cultural values as anchors for acquiring and building competitive capabilites have outsmarted other companies that followed only conventional routes such as product and process innovations, operating efficiencies, responsiveness to consumers and quality of products and services to build competitive advantage. These six case companies have leveraged their performance by focusing on traditional as well as newly emerging cultural values and practices at the level of an individual, family and professional group. Culture often means “corporate values” in the United States whereas it means “social and sociological values” in India. The cultural management perspective is indeed much broader in India, where Indian managers often refer to a very old history and national culture, to multicentury values and traditions, whereas American managers develop strategies mainly based on emerging values and fashions.

The aim of this article is to offer readers several useful paths of thought on a “deepened” and “widened” approach to the notion of interface, taking into account several types of stakeholder in the exchange.

Three case studies are developed and organised around those two dimensions which seem essential in interface management.

Since the very essence of service is linked to relations and exchanges, it seems important that the range of stakeholders directly or indirectly influencing service processes should be taken into consideration.

Owing to the multiplicity and complexity of the ties that connect them to the service provider or to clients, the management of these groups is often difficult, involving internal and external cultural considerations. However, a well carried out analysis of these involved parties and ties constitutes a major source of innovation and differentiation on the market of intangibles.

The purpose of this paper is to show how yield management and dynamic pricing, which originated in the airline industry, are now diffusing in other service industries. The aim is to demonstrate that these techniques can be profitably applied to telecommunications and similar sectors and to examine the particular conditions of their implementation, development and efficiency.

The main concepts of yield management, dynamic pricing and CRM are carefully scrutinized. Also discussed is the concept of natural demand curve that aims at reaching a better compromise between the capacity of a company and the demand in an environment where services cannot be sold in advance. In order to sustain the analysis and demonstrate its managerial implications, five case studies are presented that exemplify some aspects of yield management techniques in the telecommunication sector.

Since the telecommunications are undergoing a process of increased competition and dynamic convergence, yield management techniques can help telecom operators to optimize the benefits they can derive from a subtle management of information networks and partnerships. However, such an approach is more difficult to implement in the telecommunication industry than in the airlines sector because of the difficulty to control (and sometimes refuse) network access to customers.

Capacity and revenue management become critical differentiation factors in improving service quality, loyalty and profitability. Given the increase in competitive pressure, the main objective of operators to sell customer access database to potential partners represents a radical change in the nature of financial and information flows and leads to a “customized management of services supply”.

The purpose of this research is to take into consideration the country effect in online and offline environments and compares price levels and dispersion online v. offline across the two largest Continental European markets, thus adding a new dimension in price comparisons and multichannel pricing strategies.

Based on an empirical analysis of data collected in one product category (CDs), our findings for France and Germany show that price levels ‐including shipping costs – are always higher online than offline in each country and price dispersion is persistent across markets. Calculating mean prices for the two countries, ANOVA tests reveal significant differences among the two sets of data. Using standard deviation as the measurement for price dispersion, Levene statistics reveal a higher degree of online price dispersion than offline and statistically significant differences between the two sample countries.

Even if our approach need to be extended to more product categories and more countries, our article may be interesting for practitioners, policy makers and managers. It clearly shows that the “frictionless capitalism and cost transparency hypothesis” has proven to be wrong most of the time even if many retailers still believe they must sacrifice the possibility of pricing up when they go on the internet. As demonstrated by our findings, retailers can take advantage of online relative indifference to price to capture some margin premium and enjoy excellent results.

Our results also demonstrate that, even if results show some similarities and common trends, differences among France and Germany still remain important. As a consequence, marketers should continue to approach the European marketplace with full awareness of its diversity.