Global supply chains have become increasingly complex and a critical source of competitive advantage, which makes the understanding of how supply chains create and distribute value an essential task. Prior literature on concentration risks has primarily focused on customer concentration and has overlooked the challenges posed by the major upstream supply chain partners. In addition, CEOs with an optimal mix of technical and behavioral abilities can shape the strategic decision-making process to obtain an advantage against the nonfinancial stakeholders. The existing literature has also overlooked the significant role of the CEO in reducing the impact of supplier-base/customer-base concentrations. Utilizing objective supply chain relation data collected from Bloomberg SPLC and Compustat, we map the supplier base and the customer base for each electronic and chemical manufacturing firm publicly listed under S&P1500 for the fiscal year 2017. We then construct objective measures of supplier and customer concentrations and examine their impacts on the focal firm's financial performance measured by Tobin's Q, gross profit margin, and net profit margin. The performance metrics also include the focal firm's payable period (against the supplier-base) and receivable period (against the customer-base). We also collect information related to the CEOs appointed by the focal manufacturing firm, such as gender, age, and tenure from Execucomp, and consequently investigate their impacts on the supplier concentration and the customer concentration. Our empirical analysis shows contradictory results in the context of supplier-base/customer-base concentrations: higher supplier-base concentration is observed to harm the focal firm’s financial performance, but higher customer-base concentration leads to an increase in the focal firm’s profitability. Although CEO characteristics such as tenure and age did not have any notable impact, female CEOs are found to reduce the adversarial impact of supplier-base concentration and are assumed to exercise a voluntary power restraint against the cooperative customer-base.

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Purpose: The purpose of this study is the purpose of this study is to gain a more in-depth understanding of customer experience management and how it enables growth within an organization. Background: Customer Experience Management has been described as a process where the entire experience of a customer with a product/service and a company is strategically managed. It has been highlighted as a key area for organisations to focus on, yet, CEM is continuously being researched both by researchers and business practitioners as there is still a vague understanding on the topic. Nonetheless, CEM has been displayed as a successful process, however, very little research has gone into showing that it could enable organizational growth.

The use of the Internet for marketing communication was studied in a sample of 200 lodge operators from Northern Ontario. These firms are located in remote areas relative to their United States-based clientele. The use of the Internet for marketing communications was perceived as important to keep existing clients and secure new ones. Results show a correlation between levels of website expenses and levels of responsiveness from prospective clients. There is an indication that investing more money and time in a website can improve customer-base diversification. _______ Nous avons étudié l'utilisation de l'Internet pour la communication commerciale par I'intermédiaire d'un échantillon de 200 hôteliers du nord de l'Ontario. Ces entreprises sont situées dans des régions éloignées de leur clientele américaine. L'utilisation de l'Internet pour la communication commerciale est considérée importante pour conserver la clientele existante et pour en acquérir une nouvelle. Nos résultats montrent une corrélation entre Ie niveau des dépenses Web et le niveau de réponse de clients éventuels. II semble qu'investir davantage d'argent et de temps dans un site Web puisse accroître la diversification de la clientèle. / The authors acknowledge and appreciate the support of CMA Ontario

This thesis deals with another possible approach to segmentation of the customer base in the surveyed company than the one currently used. Specifically, the issue of lifetime customer value is discussed. A review shows several possible approaches and some selected models will be applied to the customer base in the practical part of thesis. Work addresses not only the application of selected models, but especially the comparison of analysis results with the original segmentation. The aim is to track changes in segmentation after applying these models and provide the proof that this metric is an appropriate evaluation component in segmentation for a particular company. An integral part are therefore recommendations for management and sales representatives. Calculations are performed in Excel. At the end of each chapter are specific achievements and comparisons with the initial segmentation. The result of this work is to suggest several models of customer lifetime value calculation that the company may apply to benefit from when creating a new segmentation model.

Thesis advisor: Rui Albuquerque / Thesis advisor: Edith Hotchkiss / This dissertation consists of three essays which explorer the interaction between finance and product market choices. In the first essay, “A Corporate Finance Model with Customer Dynamics: The Leverage-Profitability Puzzle,” I develop a dynamic trade-off model with quantity and pricing decisions where firms take into account their short term impact on profitability and long term impact on customer base. The model provides a novel mechanism that explains the leverage-profitability puzzle and makes new predictions about the leverage-profitability relation that are supported in the data. In the second essay, “Quality versus Quantity Strategies in Product Markets,” we study the strategies that monopolistic competitive firms follow as they respond to traditional shocks to technology and to quality-improving shocks. Our main modeling assumption is that demand is more sensitive to quality than it is to market share. This assumption is responsible for having quality shocks be the main driving force for most of what corporations do as opposed to traditional technology shocks. It also helps explain why firms with higher quality products have higher debt and lower credit spreads. In the third essay, “Is Mismeasurement of Real Consumption Due to Product Turnover Relevant for Asset Prices?” I examine the long-standing equity premium puzzle, and test whether mismeasurement in real consumption due to ignoring quality changes embedded in product turnover has an effect. I find that the change in real consumption volatility is not sizable to account for the puzzle. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Carroll School of Management. / Discipline: Finance.

The dissertatsiya deals with a set of problems affecting the creation of an effective client base of an industrial enterprise. The ABC-analysis and expert evaluation of the existing client base on the market of molds have been done for Sverdlovsk Tool Factory as an example. Weaknesses of the enterprise have been identified. The main directions of improving the management of the enterprise were formulated to increase the efficiency of its client base. / В диссертации рассматривается комплекс проблем, влияющих на создание эффективной клиентской базы промышленного предприятия. На примере Свердловского инструментального завода выполнен ABC-анализ и экспертная оценка существующей клиентской базы на рынке пресс-форм, выявлены слабые стороны предприятия и сформулированы основные направления совершенствования менеджмента предприятия для повышения эффективности его клиентской базы.

Diese Dissertation setzt sich aus fünf Forschungspapieren zusammen. Jedes Kapitel enthält ein Papier. Das erste Kapitel untersucht den Zusammenhang zwischen der Größe des Kundenstamms einer Firma und ihrem Gewinn in einem Markt mit Wechselkosten. Entgegen unserer Intuition wird gezeigt, dass Firmen nicht immer von einer Vergrößerung ihres Kundenstamms profitieren, weil diese die Intensität des Wettbewerbs beeinflusst. Kapitel 2 führt eine ähnliche Untersuchung durch, aber für einen Markt, in dem die Konsumenten unvollständig über die Standorte der Anbieter informiert sind. Es zeigt sich auch hier, dass eine Firma nicht immer von einem großen Kundenstamm profitiert. Die zugrunde liegenden Mechanismen unterscheiden sich jedoch deutlich von denen in Kapitel 1. Kapitel 3 ist eine Erweiterung des Modells mit unvollständiger Konsumenteninformation hin zu einer vollständig dynamischen Version. Im Zentrum der Analyse stehen nun die dynamischen Eigenschaften des Modells. Unter den Annahmen über die graduelle Verbreitung von Information auf der Konsumentenseite entsteht Trägheit in den Marktanteilen der Firmen. Dynamik entsteht im Modell ausschließlich aufgrund der Verwendung von gemischten Preisstrategien. Kapitel 4 analysiert Wettbewerb in einem vertikal differenzierten Markt. Hier gibt es keine Trägheit auf der Nachfrageseite. Das Hauptergebnis der Analyse ist, dass Wohlfahrtsverluste, die im Duopol aus ineffizienter Qualitätswahl resultieren, in Märkten mit drei oder mehr Wettbewerbern fast vollständig verschwinden. Dieses überraschende Ergebnis resultiert aus einem Regimewechsel in der Art des Wettbewerbs, der beim Übergang vom Duopol zum Markt mit drei Wettbewerbern auftritt. Kapitel 5 ist eine Erweiterung von Kapitel 4. Während in Kapitel 4 ein quadratischer Zusammenhang zwischen Kosten bzw. Zahlungsbereitschaft und Qualität angenommen wurde, wird die Analyse nun für eine allgemeinere nicht-lineare Abhängigkeit durchgeführt. Es werden grundlegende Einsichten über das Funktionieren von vertikal differenzierten Märkten vermittelt. So zeigt sich, dass der allgemein postulierte Vorteil der Firma mit der höheren Produktqualität nicht allgemeingültig ist. Ob dieser besteht, hängt von der Art der strategischen Interaktion ab. / This dissertation consists of five independent research papers. Each chapter represents one paper. The first chapter analyzes the shape of the relation between the size of a firm’s customer base and profit in a market with consumer switching costs. Contrary to common wisdom, it is shown that a firm is not automatically better off with a larger customer base, as the size of its customer base affects the intensity of price competition. Chapter 2 performs a similar exercise, but for a market where consumers are not fully informed about the locations of the different suppliers. Once more, it is shown that firms do not always benefit from an increase in the size of their customer base. However, the underlying mechanisms are rather different than in the model with switching costs. Chapter 3 is an extension of the model introduced in chapter 2 to a fully dynamic game. The focus of chapter 3 is on the dynamics in a market with incomplete consumer information. Under the assumptions about the gradual diffusion of information among consumers, there is inertia in the market shares. Dynamics are generated solely by the firms’ usage of mixed pricing strategies. Chapter 4 analyzes competition in a vertically differentiated market. There is no inertia on the demand side. The main result of the analysis is, that welfare losses that stem from an inefficient choice of qualities in the duopoly case, disappear almost completely as soon as three or more competitors are in the market. This surprising result is related to a regime change in the nature of competition that occurs at the transition from duopoly to triopoly. Chapter 5 is an extension of chapter 4. Whereas the model introduced in chapter 4 was based on a quadratic relation between costs or willingness-to-pay and quality, the analysis is now extended to a more general non-linear dependency. The analysis provides fundamental insights into the functioning of vertically differentiated markets. Interestingly, the well-known high-quality advantage is not a robust feature of these markets. Whether it is obtained, depends on the nature of strategic interaction between the firms.

Customer lifetime value (CLV) is a forecasted expectation of the future value of a customer to the firm. There are two customer behavioral components of CLV that represent a particular modeling challenge: 1) how many transactions we expect from a customer in the future, and 2) how likely it is the customer remains active. Existing CLV models like the Pareto/NBD are valuable managerial tools because they are able to provide forward-looking estimates of transaction patterns and customer churn when the event of a customer leaving is unobservable, which is typical for most noncontractual goods and services. The CLV model literature has for the most part maintained its original assumption that the number of customer transactions follows a stable transaction process. Yet there are many categories of noncontractual goods and services where the stable transaction rate assumption is violated, particularly seasonal purchase patterns. CLV model estimates are further biased when there is an excess of customers with no repeat transactions. To address these modeling challenges, within this thesis I develop a generalized CLV modeling framework that combines three elements necessary to reduce bias in model estimates: 1) the incorporation of time-varying covariates to model data with transaction rates that change over time, 2) a zero-inflated model specification for customers with no repeat transactions, and 3) generalizes to different transaction process distributions to better fit diverse customer transaction patterns. This CLV modeling framework provides firms better estimates of the future activity of their customers, a critical CRM application.