Customer asset management in action: using customers portfolio for allocating resources across business-to-business relationships for improved shareholder value

Suvi Nenonen Customer asset management in action: using customer portfolios for allocating resources across business-to-business relationships for improved shareholder value Customers are crucial assets to all firms as customers are the ultimate source of all cash flows. Regardless this financial importance of customer relationships, for decades there has been a lack of suitable frameworks explaining how customer relationships contribute to the firm financial performance and how this contribution can be actively managed. In order to facilitate a better understanding of the customer asset, contemporary marketing has investigated the use of financial theories and asset management practices in the customer relationship context. Building on this, marketing academics have promoted the customer lifetime value concept as a solution for valuating and managing customer relationships for optimal financial outcomes. However, the empirical investigation of customer asset management lags behind the conceptual development steps taken. Additionally, the practitioners have not embraced the use of customer lifetime value in guiding managerial decisions - especially in the business-to-business context. The thesis points out that there are fundamental differences between customer relationships and investment instruments as investment targets, effectively eliminating the possibility to use financial theories in a customer relationships context or to optimize the customer base as a single investment portfolio. As an alternative, the thesis proposes the use of customer portfolio approach for allocating resources across the customer base for improved shareholder value. In the customer portfolio approach, the customer base of a firm is divided into multiple portfolios based on customer relationships’ potential to contribute to the shareholder value creation. After this, customer management concepts are tailored to each customer portfolio, designed to improve the shareholder value in their own respect. Therefore, effective customer asset management with the customer portfolio approach necessitates that firms are able to manage multiple parallel customer management concepts, or business models, simultaneously. The thesis is one of the first empirical studies on customer asset management, bringing empirical evidence from multiple business-to-business case studies on how customer portfolio models can be formed, how customer portfolios can be managed, and how customer asset management has contributed to the firm financial performance.

Customer asset management in action: using customers portfolio for allocating resources across business-to-business relationships for improved shareholder value

Suvi Nenonen Customer asset management in action: using customer portfolios for allocating resources across business-to-business relationships for improved shareholder value Customers are crucial assets to all firms as customers are the ultimate source of all cash flows. Regardless this financial importance of customer relationships, for decades there has been a lack of suitable frameworks explaining how customer relationships contribute to the firm financial performance and how this contribution can be actively managed. In order to facilitate a better understanding of the customer asset, contemporary marketing has investigated the use of financial theories and asset management practices in the customer relationship context. Building on this, marketing academics have promoted the customer lifetime value concept as a solution for valuating and managing customer relationships for optimal financial outcomes. However, the empirical investigation of customer asset management lags behind the conceptual development steps taken. Additionally, the practitioners have not embraced the use of customer lifetime value in guiding managerial decisions - especially in the business-to-business context. The thesis points out that there are fundamental differences between customer relationships and investment instruments as investment targets, effectively eliminating the possibility to use financial theories in a customer relationships context or to optimize the customer base as a single investment portfolio. As an alternative, the thesis proposes the use of customer portfolio approach for allocating resources across the customer base for improved shareholder value. In the customer portfolio approach, the customer base of a firm is divided into multiple portfolios based on customer relationships’ potential to contribute to the shareholder value creation. After this, customer management concepts are tailored to each customer portfolio, designed to improve the shareholder value in their own respect. Therefore, effective customer asset management with the customer portfolio approach necessitates that firms are able to manage multiple parallel customer management concepts, or business models, simultaneously. The thesis is one of the first empirical studies on customer asset management, bringing empirical evidence from multiple business-to-business case studies on how customer portfolio models can be formed, how customer portfolios can be managed, and how customer asset management has contributed to the firm financial performance.

Collective Network Capability in International Project Business Networks - A Case Study of the Business Network for the Ashanti Electrification Project in Ghana

Despite thirty years of research in interorganizational networks and project business within the industrial networks approach and relationship marketing, collective capability of networks of business and other interorganizational actors has not been explicitly conceptualized and studied within the above-named approaches. This is despite the fact that the two approaches maintain that networking is one of the core strategies for the long-term survival of market actors. Recently, many scholars within the above-named approaches have emphasized that the survival of market actors is based on the strength of their networks and that inter-firm competition is being replaced by inter-network competition. Furthermore, project business is characterized by the building of goal-oriented, temporary networks whose aims, structures, and procedures are clarified and that are governed by processes of interaction as well as recurrent contracts. This study develops frameworks for studying and analysing collective network capability, i.e. collective capability created for the network of firms. The concept is first justified and positioned within the industrial networks, project business, and relationship marketing schools. An eclectic source of conceptual input is based on four major approaches to interorganizational business relationships. The study uses qualitative research and analysis, and the case report analyses the empirical phenomenon using a large number of qualitative techniques: tables, diagrams, network models, matrices etc. The study shows the high level of uniqueness and complexity of international project business. While perceived psychic distance between the parties may be small due to previous project experiences and the benefit of existing relationships, a varied number of critical events develop due to the economic and local context of the recipient country as well as the coordination demands of the large number of involved actors. The study shows that the successful creation of collective network capability led to the success of the network for the studied project. The processes and structures for creating collective network capability are encapsulated in a model of governance factors for interorganizational networks. The theoretical and management implications are summarized in seven propositions. The core implication is that project business success in unique and complex environments is achieved by accessing the capabilities of a network of actors, and project management in such environments should be built on both contractual and cooperative procedures with local recipient country parties.

Use of Customer Information: An Ethnography in Service Development

Service researchers have repeatedly claimed that firms should acquire customer information in order to develop services that fit customer needs. Despite this, studies that would concentrate on the actual use of customer information in service development are lacking. The present study fulfils this research gap by investigating information use during a service development process. It demonstrates that use is not a straightforward task that automatically follows the acquisition of customer information. In fact, out of the six identified types of use, four represent non usage of customer information. Hence, the study demonstrates that the acquisition of customer information does not guarantee that the information will actually be used in development. The current study used an ethnographic approach. Consequently, the study was conducted in the field in real time over an extensive period of 13 months. Participant observation allowed direct access to the investigated phenomenon, i.e. the different types of use by the observed development project members were captured while they emerged. In addition, interviews, informal discussions and internal documents were used to gather data. A development process of a bank’s website constituted the empirical context of the investigation. This ethnography brings novel insights to both academia and practice. It critically questions the traditional focus on the firm’s acquisition of customer information and suggests that this focus ought to be expanded to the actual use of customer information. What is the point in acquiring costly customer information if it is not used in the development? Based on the findings of this study, a holistic view on customer information, “information in use” is generated. This view extends the traditional view of customer information in three ways: the source, timing and form of data collection. First, the study showed that the customer information can come explicitly from the customer, from speculation among the developers or it can already exist implicitly. Prior research has mainly focused on the customer as the information provider and the explicit source to turn to for information. Second, the study identified that the used and non-used customer information was acquired both previously, and currently within the time frame of the focal development process, as well as potentially in the future. Prior research has primarily focused on the currently acquired customer information, i.e. within the timeframe of the development process. Third, the used and non-used customer information was both formally and informally acquired. In prior research a large number of sophisticated formal methods have been suggested for the acquisition of customer information to be used in development. By focusing on “information in use”, new knowledge on types of customer information that are actually used was generated. For example, the findings show that the formal customer information acquired during the development process is used less than customer information already existent within the firm. With this knowledge at hand, better methods to capture this more usable customer information can be developed. Moreover, the thesis suggests that by focusing stronger on use of customer information, service development processes can be restructured in order to facilitate the information that is actually used.

Guessing under source uncertainty with side information

We study the problem of guessing the realization of a finite alphabet source, when some side information is provided, in a setting where the only knowledge the guesser has about the source and the correlated side information is that the joint source is one among a family. We define a notion of redundancy, identify a quantity that measures this redundancy, and study its properties. We then identify good guessing strategies that minimize the supremum redundancy (over the family). The minimum value measures the richness of the uncertainty class.

Evolution and decay of cylindrical and spherical nonlinear acoustic waves generated by a sinusoidal source

The present work gives a comprehensive numerical study of the evolution and decay of cylindrical and spherical nonlinear acoustic waves generated by a sinusoidal source. Using pseudospectral and predictor–corrector implicit finite difference methods, we first reproduced the known analytic results of the plane harmonic problem to a high degree of accuracy. The non-planar harmonic problems, for which the amplitude decay is faster than that for the planar case, are then treated. The results are correlated with the known asymptotic results of Scott (1981) and Enflo (1985). The constant in the old-age formula for the cylindrical canonical problem is found to be 1.85 which is rather close to 2, ‘estimated’ analytically by Enflo. The old-age solutions exhibiting strict symmetry about the maximum are recovered; these provide an excellent analytic check on the numerical solutions. The evolution of the waves for different source geometries is depicted graphically.

Narrowband Detection of Acoustic Source in Shallow Ocean using Vector Sensor Array

The problem of narrowband CFAR (constant false alarm rate) detection of an acoustic source at an unknown location in a range-independent shallow ocean is considered. If a target is present, the received signal vector at an array of N sensors belongs to an M-dimensional subspace if N exceeds the number of propagating modes M in the ocean. A subspace detection method which utilises the knowledge of the signal subspace to enhance the detector performance is presented in thisMpaper. It is shown that, for a given number of sensors N, the performance of a detector using a vector sensor array is significantly better than that using a scalar sensor array. If a target is detected, the detector using a vector sensor array also provides a concurrent coarse estimate of the bearing of the target.

Joint Source-Channel Coding over a Fading Multiple Access Channel with Partial Channel State Information

In this paper we address the problem of transmission of correlated sources over a fast fading multiple access channel (MAC) with partial channel state information available at both the encoders and the decoder. We provide sufficient conditions for transmission with given distortions. Next these conditions are specialized to a Gaussian MAC (GMAC). We provide the optimal power allocation strategy and compare the strategy with various levels of channel state information.

A study of geotechnical properties of Cochin Marine Clays

Most of the Greater Cochin area, which is undergoing rapid industrialisation, consists of extremely soft marine clay calling for expensive deep foundations. This paper presents a study on the physical properties and engeering characteristics of Cochin marine clays. These marine clays are characterised by high Atterberg limits and natural water contents. They are moderately sensitive with liquidity indices ranging over 0.46 to 0.87.The grain size distribution shows almost equal fractions of clay and silt size with sand content varying around 20%. Use of a dispersing agent in carrying out grain size distribution test plays an important role. The fabric of these clays had been identified as flocculant. The pore water has low salinity which results in marginal changes in properties on washing.Consolidation test results showed a preconsolidation pressure of up to about 0.5 kg/cm2 with high compression indices. Compression index vs liquid limit yielded a correlation comparable to that of published data. The undisturbed samples have a much larger coefficient of secondary consolidation as a result of flocculant fabric. These clays have very low undrained shear strength.

Characterization of compact ICP ion source for focused ion beam applications

A compact, high brightness 13.56 MHz inductively coupled plasma ion source without any axial or radial multicusp magnetic fields is designed for the production of a focused ion beam. Argon ion current of density more than 30 mA/cm(2) at 4 kV potential is extracted from this ion source and is characterized by measuring the ion energy spread and brightness. Ion energy spread is measured by a variable-focusing retarding field energy analyzer that minimizes the errors due t divergence of ion beam inside the analyzer. Brightness of the ion beam is determined from the emittance measured by a fully automated and locally developed electrostatic sweep scanner. By optimizing various ion source parameters such as RF power, gas pressure and Faraday shield, ion beams with energy spread of less than 5 eV and brightness of 7100 Am(-2)sr(-1)eV(-1) have been produced. Here, we briefly report the details of the ion source, measurement and optimization of energy spread and brightness of the ion beam. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Köyhyyden perintö : Tutkimus kulttuurisen tiedon sisällöistä ja jatkuvuuksista suomalaisissa elämäkerta- ja sananlaskuaineistoissa

The Legacy of Poverty. A Study of the substance and continuity of cultural knowledge in Finnish biographical and proverbial texts The study focuses on the idea of the cultural knowledge and shared understanding that ordinary people, folk , have of the concepts and ideas about rural based poverty in Finland. Throughout 19th century and well into 20th century, the majority of the population remained agrarian and poor. By the 1950s, most people still lived in rural areas and a majority of them earned their living primarily from agriculture and forestry. Urbanization proceeded rapidly from the 1960s onwards. Even though the Nordic welfare state was firmly established in Finland by the 1970s, old forms of agrarian poverty still remained in the culture. The source material for the study consists of 99 biographies and 502 proverbs. Biographical texts include written autobiographies and interviewed biographies. A primary analyzing concept is called a poverty speech. The poverty speech has been analyzed by providing answers to the following three questions: What connotations do people attach to poverty when they speak about it? What sort of social relations arise when people speak about poverty? How is the past experience of poverty constructed in the present and in the welfare state context? Cultural knowledge is a theoretical and analytical tool that enables people to categorize information. The three questions stated above are crucial in revealing the schematic structure that people use to communicate about agrarian poverty. Categories are analyzed and processed in terms of cultural themes that contain the ideals and stereotypes of spoken motif and sub-themes. The application of theoretical and analytical premises to the poverty speech has shown that there are four cultural themes. The first theme is Power. The social connotations in the poverty speech are mostly in relation to the better-off people. Poverty does not exist without an awareness of welfare, i.e. the understanding of a certain standard of welfare above that of one's own. The second theme is about family ties as a resource and welfare network. In poverty speech, marriage is represented as a means to upgrade one's livelihood. Family members are described as supporting one another, but at the same time as being antagonists. The third theme, Work represents the work ethic that is being connected to the poverty. Hard working as a representation is attached to eligibility for `a good life´ that in Finland was to become an owner-occupier of a cottage or a flat. The fourth theme is Security. The resentment of unfair treatment is expressed by using moral superiority and rational explanations. The ruling classes in the agrarian society are portrayed as being evil and selfish with no social conscience because they did not provide enough assistance to those who needed it. During the period when the welfare benefit system was undeveloped, the poor expected the wealthier people to make a contribution to the distribution of material wealth. In the premises of cultural knowledge, both oral and written traditions are about human thinking: they deal with topics, ideas and evaluations that are relevant to their bearers. Many elements expressed in poverty speech, such as classifications and customs derived from the rural world, have been carried over into the next generation in newer contexts and a different cultural environment. Keywords: cultural knowledge, cognitive categorization, poverty, life stories, proverbs

On the use of weather radar for mesoscale applications in northern conditions

Mesoscale weather phenomena, such as the sea breeze circulation or lake effect snow bands, are typically too large to be observed at one point, yet too small to be caught in a traditional network of weather stations. Hence, the weather radar is one of the best tools for observing, analyzing and understanding their behavior and development. A weather radar network is a complex system, which has many structural and technical features to be tuned, from the location of each radar to the number of pulses averaged in the signal processing. These design parameters have no universal optimal values, but their selection depends on the nature of the weather phenomena to be monitored as well as on the applications for which the data will be used. The priorities and critical values are different for forest fire forecasting, aviation weather service or the planning of snow ploughing, to name a few radar-based applications. The main objective of the work performed within this thesis has been to combine knowledge of technical properties of the radar systems and our understanding of weather conditions in order to produce better applications able to efficiently support decision making in service duties for modern society related to weather and safety in northern conditions. When a new application is developed, it must be tested against ground truth . Two new verification approaches for radar-based hail estimates are introduced in this thesis. For mesoscale applications, finding the representative reference can be challenging since these phenomena are by definition difficult to catch with surface observations. Hence, almost any valuable information, which can be distilled from unconventional data sources such as newspapers and holiday shots is welcome. However, as important as getting data is to obtain estimates of data quality, and to judge to what extent the two disparate information sources can be compared. The presented new applications do not rely on radar data alone, but ingest information from auxiliary sources such as temperature fields. The author concludes that in the future the radar will continue to be a key source of data and information especially when used together in an effective way with other meteorological data.

The superfluid as a source of all interactions

The superfluid state of fermion-antifermion fields developed in our previous papers is generalized to include higher orbital and spin states. In addition to single-particle excitations, the system is capable of having real and virtual bound or quasibound composite excitations which are akin to bosons of spinJ P equal to0 �, 1�, 2+, etc. These pseudoscalar, vector, and tensor bosons can be massive or massless and provide the vehicles for strong, electromagnetic, weak, and gravitational interactions. The concept that the basic (unmanifest) fermion-antifermion interaction can lead to a multiplicity of manifest interactions seems to provide a basis for a unified field theory.