Managers in manufacturing environments often engage in fire‐fighting rather than taking a more proactive approach to management. It is argued that, although often necessary, fire‐fighting has negative consequences associated with a focus on solving organizational symptoms rather than...

This paper presents research results and implications in the literature for the last 15 years, and suggests guidelines on how to make the best use of the information to develop strategies that “fit” a service operation. There are considerable benefits of customer satisfaction, loyalty and...

This study examines the activities and congruence of positioning strategies in the UK store card sector. Using a triangulation research methodology, the results confirm the prevalence of challenging and aggressive branding activities. The findings identify “Service”, “Value for money”,...

This article reports on the results of a research project into the development activities undertaken during the launch of 132 new financial services in Greece. According to the results, business analysis and marketing strategy formation as well as launch are the stages of the new service...

In this paper, manufacturer dealer return policies are examined for high volume part sales for long‐life cycle products. Exclusive suppliers often use simple returns policies for high‐value products to persuade their independent dealers to stock and price items aggressively. For low‐value...

The purpose of this article is to draw the reader’s attention to service productivity and its connection to service quality and eventually to profits. In service operations the customer plays an active role in influencing productivity and quality. Furthermore, contemporary companies are...