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The study focuses on how to build long-term relationships with multi-channel agencies (MCAs) (dealers) who serve multiple manufacturers on a non-exclusive basis in a business-to-business (B2B) market. This study looks at the framework of relational benefits-commitment-long term orientation in a business-to-business context.

Data were collected from MCAs of three leading companies in the food distribution business. The survey used established scales to measure the relational benefits (core, operational, social and special treatment), commitment (affective and calculative) and long-term orientation (LTO).

The findings of the study show that core, social and special treatment benefits influence calculative commitment, and operational and special treatment benefits influence affective commitment. The study also supports that calculative and affective commitment play an important role in understanding the loyalty of MCAs.

The research examines how relational benefits impact commitment and loyalty among MCAs and manufacturers, in a non-exclusive relationship, in the business-to-business environment. This study incorporates social exchange theory (SET), relational benefits paradigm and commitment and long-term orientation in its framework and tests it within the food distribution industry. This study is the first of its kind to examine the effects of relational benefits on MCAs behavior in a food supplier–buyer setting.

This paper aims to exam the publisher’s online distribution strategies of print books between a reselling and a marketplace channel with the coexistence of e-book. This study extends the study of channel selection to the content products industry.

By constructing a publisher-leader Stackelberg game model, the authors investigate the publisher’s distribution strategies. The retailer holds a digital channel for e-book and reselling and marketplace channels for print books. The authors examine three-channel modes for the print book distribution: a pure reselling channel, a marketplace channel and a hybrid channel.

The results reveal that a hybrid channel always dominates a pure marketplace channel from the publisher’s perspective. Then, only when the print book’s margin cost and the marketplace’s slotting fee are not very high, the publisher prefers the hybrid to a pure reselling channel. The authors also found a Pareto zone where the hybrid channel mode improves publisher’s and retailer’s profits. Furthermore, the publisher is less likely to choose the hybrid channel as the acceptance of e-book increases. The authors also examine the situation where a publisher-authorized third-party distributor runs the marketplace channel and found the results still hold.

This paper fills a theoretical and practical gap for a structured analysis of the content providers’ online distribution channel selection of the physical products and digital products. Different from previous related studies, this study focuses on analyzing physical products’ channel strategies and finds physical products’ cost plays a crucial role in the content provider’s channel decision.

This paper aims to develop a crisis readiness framework for road traffic crisis response for law enforcement agencies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

A Delphi method was used that combined questionnaire-based survey and the analytical hierarchy process to collect quantitative and qualitative data from an expert panel of crisis readiness professionals on how they prioritise and weigh the different strategic criteria, sub-criteria and performance indicators in the context of law enforcement agencies’ traffic response.

The findings of this paper resulted in the identification, ranking and validation of ten key dimensions of crisis readiness clustered into three distinct sets of priority rankings: response planning, resources, training and coordination; information management and communication and risk and hazard assessment; and early warning, legal and institutional frameworks, recovery initiation and property protection. The results additionally established the relative priority of sub-criteria for each criterion and validated a broad set of key performance indicators (KPIs) for the top six ranked criteria.

The findings are based on a single case study focused on a specific area of operation within crisis response and one group of organisations of the UAE police sector. This potentially places a constraint on the wider generalisation of the findings to different operational areas and agencies, as they may have different priorities or organisational conditions that have implications for the framework application and the relative importance of certain criteria and sub-criteria.

This paper provides strategic guidance in the form of a prioritised list of criteria, sub-criteria and KPIs that can direct efforts to optimise different dimensions of crisis readiness at a strategic and operational level.

This paper makes an original contribution in identifying the key criteria and performance indicators of crisis readiness for road traffic situations. The findings contribute a comprehensive strategic readiness framework that supports planning and decision-making for the development of organisational capacities that can enhance response times of police to road traffic crises. This framework ranks dimensions of crisis readiness and key sub-criteria in order of priority and validates the key components of crisis readiness that can support practitioners to structure, standardise and benchmark key processes and elements of crisis response.

This viewpoint, based on research undertaken by Forrester Research, aims to assess the impact of technological change on consumer behaviour, especially media habits, and the implication this holds for marketing planners. Currently, it is believed that marketing planners are out of step with new customer behaviours growing out of the changing consumer technological environment. Left Brain Marketing Planning emphasises the need, opportunity and the means by which planners can adopt more analytical procedures to improve marketing planning by greater use of data‐driven approaches that permit the selection and allocation of marketing resources based on an holistic picture of customers across all points in the buying process.

A two stage approach adopted by Forrester Research. First, a marketing allocation tool was devised using Forrester's Consumer Technographics^® data to understand how consumers interact with 13 media. These were used to index each medium against four marketer inputs: business goals, target audience, product type, and targeting approach. Second, interviews were conducted with marketers and agencies to understand current marketing planning processes and best practices and their response to the marketing allocation tool. Interviews were also held with marketing planning experts for additional perspectives around how they anticipate marketing planning will change over the next five years.

Principally, current marketing planning processes are based on traditional approaches that take too little account of the new realities brought about by technological change. The media selected in the marketing planning process do not reflect the media habits of today's consumers. New technology has changed customer behaviour and new technology holds the means by which this can be monitored and evaluated to assess the effectiveness of marketing plans as they are implemented. Changes need to be made, and the means are at hand to achieve such changes, that allow more analytical approaches to marketing planning in understanding what is happening in today's marketplaces and not just an emphasis on marketing metrics for the purpose of meeting internal financial imperatives.

There is much debate about the dynamics in marketing planning between creative approaches and a greater emphasis on marketing metrics to ensure greater marketing accountability. This paper highlights the importance of analytical approaches that do not, of themselves, limit creativity. While encouraging the use of measurement and analytical tools, the paper emphasises the need to use these throughout the planning process and exploit the facilities enabled by new technology to assist in the process of better understanding consumers and communications and buying processes.

The objective of this paper is to point out the potentialities of customer relationship management (CRM) in the building of government reputation by raising key aspects of corporate reputation theory that can be strengthened by similar CRM strategic orientations and supported by the deployment of CRM solutions.

From a public sector perspective, the authors develop a comparative approach to corporate reputation and CRM premises, concepts, and practices. They draw aspects from both theories that can enable the building and management of corporate reputation in the public sector with the support of CRM solutions.

Challenging the popular criticism that most public agencies and departments are bureaucratic, slow, and incapable of taking immediate action, governments are striving to revert this negative image by adopting new business approaches and applying new information technologies to optimize their processes. In this context, CRM has a potential value to fulfil government needs to become more responsive to the public.

The considerations raised in this paper provide relevant issues for future research aimed at studying CRM and reputation in the government context. Public managers may benefit from the practical aspects and cases provided in this paper.

A theoretical link is developed between CRM and corporate reputation, bringing a new dimension to the matter. Many public managers are leading projects to adopt customer‐focused strategies without realizing they are also working on government reputation. An attempt is made to bring this awareness to the surface by linking some aspects of corporate reputation theory with CRM. Focusses on the public sector, which usually faces the problem of public cynicism.

The paper aims to provide a benchmark study of the European Union (EU) e‐government policy within the e‐Europe programme. The main objective of the European strategy for the development of e‐government was that the member states should ensure “online public services”. To monitor this policy the European Commission defined two indicators.

The European Commission developed a list of 20 basic public services. The Commission and Capgemini defined a framework to evaluate the online availability of each of the services in each of the EU member states, plus Norway, Iceland and Switzerland.

The study finds that since 2001 a considerable improvement in online public service provision was measured, even so the 2004 result of 65 per cent online sophistication of public service delivery in the EU still shows an important gap with the 100 per cent objective, the result was considered a positive. When considering the different types of public services, income generating services including income tax, VAT and corporate tax are by far the most developed online. The new member countries seem to be only two years behind in the development of online public service. The most advanced countries exceed 80 per cent but seem to evolve to a “plateau”. They have developed their most feasible services, demanding less effort, now only the “hard” ones are undeveloped, mostly services delivered at a decentralised level.

The study provides information on the online development of public services, i.e. the provision and interactivity of public services through the internet. It does not analyse the provision of services through other channels, neither the quality of the service delivery, nor the use or impact of these new ways of public service supply. Therefore a new EU e‐government measurement system must change the focus from “availability” of e‐government services, to “use” and desired positive “impact” of e‐government programmes.

This study provides the only available data measured scientifically over a longer period concerning the development of e‐government in the EU.

This paper seeks to discuss how an environmental change for an organisation can be a catalyst for the take‐up of intellectual capital (IC). In particular, it uses Laughlin's “colonizing” model of organisational change to understand the catalyst for change, being an ageing workforce, and the resultant formation of an accounting of IC.

This paper presents a case study of an Australian public sector organisation, which has created and implemented IC practice.

In this case, the impending retirements of the “baby boomer” generation were an environmental disturbance and a catalyst that allowed for an accounting of IC, especially its human capital.

This case study is limited to the presentation of findings of a phenomenon within a particular organisation within the Australian public sector context. Other forces may also have had an effect on the organisation, if not for the presence of the “ageing workforce” disturbance.

The paper contributes to the literature on IC by examining the impact of the take‐up of IC from inside a public sector organisation perspective.

This paper aims to define and frame the understanding of customer journeys, associated areas of consumer decision-making process stages and touch point categories based on an ownership perspective.

The research is based on a detailed literature review of customer journeys, in peer-reviewed marketing and retail journals, within the last decade. The Chartered Association of Business Schools (ABS) academic journal guide marketing discipline list was used because it only includes peer-reviewed journals, based on an internationally accepted quality ranked list.

The detailed analysis of the journals identified three groups of touch points (brand owned, partner owned/managed and outside the control of brand owner/partner) and three decision-making process stages (pre-purchase, purchase and post–purchase) that informed a clearer definition and understanding of the customer journey.

Limitations concern the ABS database was used and a ten-year date period was selected, which may exclude some relevant journal articles, particularly those written in a language other than English.

The authors have provided a revised definition of customer journey, clarified the decision-making stages and subsequent categorisation of touch points from an ownership perspective.

Recent technological advances have led to the growing popularity of traffic-related social media platforms which facilitate drivers to easily share, consume and exchange traffic information instead of the traditional ways using TV or radio. By integrating the information systems success model, social capital theory and dedication-based commitment mechanism, the purpose of this paper is to examine the varying degree of effectiveness in maintaining user’s continuance intention between two different social media platforms for traffic information.

The data were collected through online questionnaires from two platforms. One is a multi-channel traffic information community that has been specialized in traffic information for many years and has adopted several kinds of social media to engage with its audience. The other is a community-based traffic application created to help people exchange and contribute traffic information with real-time navigation.

The findings show that the effects of satisfaction and affective commitment on continuance intention are stronger in the community-based traffic application while their antecedents play different roles in shaping satisfaction and affective commitment due to the nature and characteristics of these two groups.

This study will be the first attempt to understand what matters to users and what can retain users to routinely use a specific traffic-related social media platform in their daily lives. This is also one of the first empirical studies that examine both transactional and relational points of view on users’ continuance intention.