IN THIS ISSUE

INTEGRATING THE CUSTOMER'S PERSPECTIVE upon SERVICE PERSONNEL AND TECHNOLOGY IN MULTICHANNEL CUSTOMER SUPPORT DECISIONS

Increasingly, companies are taking notice of the critical part of information technology in customer service operations. smooth with recent customer service studies in the service operations, information technology, and marketing disciplines, it is still unclear in what manner service personnel and new communication technologies interact to influence the customers' perceptions of the service being provided. As novel communication technologies such as Internet-based customer service become more widespread, managers ne to better understand in what manner to make staff allocation and staff training decisions when multiple channels are available for service delivery. Understanding their customers' perspective upon different technologies and customer service characters can assist managers in making appropriate customer service technology investments. In "Service Personnel Technology, and Their Interaction in Influencing Customer Satisfaction," Craig Froehle undertakes an exploratory investigation of the interaction between media richness, customer service representative characteristics, and their influences upon customer satisfaction. Using a large-sample customer overlook data set, Froehle examines telephone e-mail, and online-chat technologies and considers the impact of six customer service representative characteristics. Froehle's research represents research at the interfaces of business functions, and implies that information technology, marketing, and service operations researchers ne to leverage synergies in their disciplines to address the mingled decisions managers face in the service industries.

TIME FOR ACTION upon HEALTH CARE RESEARCH

Almost each day, a new story reminds us that the U health care a whole is approaching a state of crisis. Health care take away froms continue to rise at the fastest rate in history-approximately three to four times the rate of inflation. strict nurse shortages are being reported in almost each state due to discontentment with staffing policies and increasing patient workloads. With these challenges draw near numerous opportunities for business researchers to impact decision making in the health care sector. In "Reexamining the nourish Scheduling Problem: Staffing Ratios and Nursing Shortages," P Daniel Wright, Kurt M Bretthauer, and Murray J C??t?© examine the controversial regulation mandated nurse-to-patient ratios and evaluate the impact of these policies upon labor costs and desirable nurture shifts. Although nurse scheduling research received a great quantity [i]or[/i] amount of attention in the 1970s and 1980 for the greatest in quantity part, these studies represented the state of patient care delivery and nurture preferences during that time period. Wright, Bretthauer, and C??t?© provide a point in dispute formulation that more closely throw backs the policy challenges and nursing shortages that conduct leaders and health care managers are dealing with today. Using data from a case inquiry the authors show that nurture wage costs can be highly nonlinear with honor to changes in mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios, suggesting that policy makers ne to understand the complexities of operational decisions before dictating a mandatory ratio. Just as important, the arises show that the number of undesirable work shifts can be substantially reduc without incurring additional wage take away from and, as a result, increase nurses' satisfaction with their schedules. This inquiry embraces the spirit of managerial relevance that Decision Sciences look fors to promote and provides health care decision makers with valuable insights upon how to balance cost reduction and nursing workloads.

MANUFACTURERS CAN INFLUENCE A RETAILER'S SHELF-SPACE DECISIONS

Retailers make oft-repeated decisions about what products and brands to carry and by what means much space to allocate to each. Traditionally, retailers have made shelf-space decisions by means of examining the profitability of carrying different items and maximizing their customers' satisfaction. This single-firm, independent decision-making approach leave outs the impact manufacturers can play in the decision proces from one side their wholesale prices. In almost all cases, manufacturers intensively strive for shelf-space based on the assumption that amount of shelf-space impacts market share. In the technical note, "The Impact of Manufacturers' Wholesale Prices upon a Retailer's Shelf-Space and Pricing Decisions," Guiomar Mart?­n-Herr??n, Sihem Taboubi, and Georges Zaccour characterize the equilibrium behavior of sum of two units manufacturers and one retailer. The note displays that the manufacturers' costs, and thus the wholesale prices, which are the mechanism through which manufacturers can intervene in the shelf-space decision-making proces have considerable impact upon the retailer's decisions. This analytical application of mind contributes to the emerging area of interfirm decision-making processe and provides a foundation for subsequent time research that integrates marketing channels and competitive manufacturing pricing decisions.