Showing papers by "David Bell published in 2014"

How to win in an Omnichannel world

Abstract: The omnichannel environment presents new challenges and opportunities for both information and product fulfillment. While all retailers need to effectively and efficiently manage fulfillment and information provision, there are important nuances to how this happens, depending on where and how the retailer got started and what kinds of improvement create the most leverage. This article delivers a customer-focused framework showing how to win in the omni-channel environment through critical innovations in information delivery and product fulfillment. The framework emerged from our research with both traditional and nontraditional retailers. To thrive in the new environment, retailers of all stripes and origins need to deploy information and fulfillment strategies that reduce friction in every phase of the buying process. This means simultaneously providing, in a cost-effective and narrative-enhancing way

A New Portfolio Formation Approach to Mispricing of Marketing Performance Indicators: an Application to Customer Satisfaction

Abstract: The mispricing of marketing performance indicators (e.g., brand equity, churn, and customer satisfaction) is an important element of arguments in favor of the financial value of marketing investments. Evidence for mispricing can be assessed by examining whether or not portfolios composed of firms that load highly on marketing performance indicators deliver excess returns. Unfortunately, extant portfolio formation methods that require the use of a risk model are open to the criticism of time-varying risk factor loadings due to the changing composition of the portfolio over time. This is a serious critique as the direction of the induced bias is unknown. As an alternative, we propose a new method and construct portfolios that are neutral with respect to the desired risk factors a priori. Consequently, no risk model is needed when analyzing the observed returns of our portfolios. We apply our method to a frequently studied marketing performance indicator, customer satisfaction, and using various ways of measuring customer satisfaction, we do not find any convincing evidence that portfolios that load on high customer satisfaction lead to abnormal returns.

Sun, sea, sand and silicone: mapping cosmetic surgery tourism

Abstract: This multi-site, mixed methods project charted the experiences of British, Chinese and Australian patients travelling abroad for cosmetic surgery. Cosmetic surgery tourism is a fast developing industry that incorporates novel forms of labour and organisational structures that cross national boundaries, as well as drawing together pre-existing medical and tourism infrastructure. While medical tourism has often been characterised as wealthy patients from the global south travelling to the global north for high quality medical treatment unavailable at home, cosmetic surgery patients often travel from global north to global south, but these patients are on modest incomes. Despite this they can sometimes access upmarket private hospitals beyond their reach back home, made possible by favourable currency rates, cheap flights and lower labour costs outside the richest countries in the world. UK and Australian patients travelled for surgeries that were popular back home – such as breast augmentation and uplift, ‘tummy tuck’, rhinoplasty and liposuction. Others travel regionally, for example within Europe, often also motivated by cost savings. There are important exceptions to this pattern: Chinese patients travelling to South Korea access more expensive but high quality cosmetic surgery unavailable back home. Here patients from abroad often seek particular types of surgery prevalent amongst South Koreans, for example eye or jawbone surgery, or high tech surgery, such as breast augmentation using the patient’s own fat and stem cells. Patients therefore travel from global north to global south, across regional borders, and many are also ex-patriates. UK patients in Spain were most usually already living in Southern Spain or Gibraltar. Monitoring the movements of cosmetic surgery tourists is important in predicting health tourism in the future. As public healthcare systems are increasingly squeezed, patients become consumers in search of cut price procedures, taking on the risks of the choices they make. This research aimed to broaden understandings of surgical tourist experiences, the organisations involved, and the implications for globalized