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How can customer service be so bad in an era when companies collect endless data on customer interactions? The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the important challenge of elevating customer service delivery by providing guidelines for when and how to select optimal measures of customer service measurement using a new decision framework.

The paper uses a comprehensive, multi-dimensional review of extant literature related to customer service, journey mapping and performance measurement and applied a qualitative, taxonomic approach for model development.

A process model and customer journey mapping framework can facilitate the selection and application of appropriate and relevant customer service experience metrics to enhance customer service experience strategies, creation and delivery.

The taxonomy of customer service metrics is limited to current publicly and commercially available metrics. The dynamic nature of the customer service environment necessitates continuous updates of the model and framework.

Selection of customer service performance measures should match relevant stages of the customer journey; use perception-based, operational and outcome-based metrics that track employee and customer behaviours; improve omni-channel measurement; and integrate data-sharing and benchmark measurement initiatives through collaboration with customer service communities.

A reimagined perspective is offered to the complex challenge of measuring and improving customer service, providing a new decision-making framework for customer service experience measurement and guidance for future research.

Expenditures for sales promotion activities have increased dramatically during the past decade. Along with this added emphasis, however, have come some undesirable effects. This article considers some of the key issues that influence sales promotion decisions. It describes current sales promotion activities, identifies some of the negative consequences of these activities, introduces a cost‐benefit philosophy for sales promotion decisions, and proposes a specific method for making those decisions.

Considers the impact of multi‐faceted measures of job satisfaction on customer‐oriented behaviours demonstrated by service providers. Reveals how overall job satisfaction, together with specific satisfaction related to supervision, colleagues, promotion and work are positively related to customer‐orientation, while satisfaction with pay is not of significance in this case. Discusses recommendations for management and suggestions for further research.

In recent years the importance of market‐related information obtained by the sales force and used in marketing decision making has been recognized, but seldom studied. Where investigations have explored the sales force intelligence‐gathering function, researchers have focused on selected aspects of this activity and generally ignored the overall system in which information collection and transfer take place. This article attempts to satisfy the need for such a system by presenting a model of the sales force intelligence‐gathering function.

Considers the need to select customer contact personnel who already exhibit the desirable trait of adaptability, thus reducing the need for training. Discusses the issue of adaptability in service employees and how to select for adaptability. Examines several methods which can be used in the selection process, such as abstract questioning, situational vignette interviewing, role playing. Concludes that whiletraining is vital for all employees, creative interviewing techniques can help to secure service‐oriented employees who represent the most potential for service businesses.

This case involves the March of Dimes (MOD) Foundation, the “leading nonprofit organization for pregnancy and baby health.” MOD’s mission was to support medical research, organize volunteer workers, and provide community services and education to save babies’ lives (www.marchofdimes.org). The strategic issue in the case involves creating awareness of both the mission and services of MOD and the critical issue driving that mission – premature births. The organization must create a desire for various target markets to take action in response to the problem. The main protagonist is Doug Staples, Senior Vice President for Marketing and Communications.

Data were collected via personal interviews with the primary protagonists, Doug Staples, and Mike Swenson of the Barkley agency. The MOD provided quantitative Gallup studies they commissioned, as well as documents unveiling the roll-out in the San Jose, CA region. The Barkley Agency provided qualitative data from a study which consisted of eight focus groups conducted in two markets and ten personal interviews. Secondary research was used to provide a support for industry and market data, to supplement organizational facts provided by the MOD, and to identify and link marketing theory to the situations provided in the case. The organization, facts and characters in this case were not disguised. MOD was consulted throughout the case development process.

This case study is recommended for marketing courses at the undergraduate level. It is most appropriate for marketing management, introductory marketing, or marketing strategy classes. Additionally, this case is a good fit for courses focused upon not-for-profit marketing issues.

The strongest opportunities to apply theory using this case relate to branding (see De Chernatony and Dall’Olmo Riley, 1998 for a content analysis of the brand literature). These theories include brand image and personality (Aaker, 1997; Belk, 1998; Grohmann, 2009), brand awareness (Aaker, 2002), brand involvement and customer loyalty (Brakus et al., 2009), brand engagement (Sprott et al., 2009), brand relationships (Breivik and Thorbjornsen, 2008), and brand equity (Aaker, 2002, 2008). Specifically, question 2 addresses brand personality, and questions 3 and 4 explore relationships with the brand such as the emotional power of the brand and brand association. Question 6 focuses on positioning strategy.

This paper aims to examine the impact of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA). It is expected that returns would have increased in response to the law’s passage, as it imposed a number of restrictions on unions vis-à-vis management and instituted many rules regulating unions’ internal affairs.

This paper uses event study methodology, which examines the impact of the law’s passage on the shareholder returns to the firms likely to have been affected by the law. Three different samples are used. Shareholder returns are examined on critical dates associated with the passage of the law to assess whether it benefited the firms in the samples.

Shareholder returns to firms expected to have been affected by the LMRDA fell in comparison to their competitors’ returns, indicating that the law was viewed by investors as being beneficial for firms. Presumably, the restrictions the law placed on unions were judged to be more important by investors than the improvement in unions’ image that might have resulted from the law, indicating that the law benefitted firms.

This is the first paper that has examined the impact of the LMRDA empirically to assess its impact on firms.

The significance of the search for sales organization effectiveness is underlined by the major costs represented by the field salesforce for many organizations, and it is heightened by the pressures of global competition and new challenges to develop long‐term customer relationships as the foundation for competitive and sustainable marketing strategies. A study of sales management in British companies adds to an emerging research stream by identifying certain characteristics of superior performance and effectiveness in the business‐to‐business sales organization. We find that conventional measures of salesforce size, call‐rates, costs and productivity reveal relatively little about the differences between more effective and less effective sales organizations and may be dangerously misleading. The hallmarks of effective sales organizations we found to be: balanced compensation strategy; successful salesperson characteristics, in terms of motivation, customer orientation, team orientation, and sales support orientation; high performance in the drivers of sales effectiveness, i.e. sales presentation, technical knowledge, but most particularly adaptiveness, teamwork, sales planning, and sales support; the use of behaviour‐based control approaches involving effective monitoring, directing, evaluating and rewarding activities by sales managers; and, sound organizational structures. The research findings contribute benchmarks to a powerful management agenda to be addressed by executives in pursuing sales organization effectiveness.