This study has a twofold purpose. The first is to demonstrate the state of the art of corporate planning and forecasting activity, and the second is to determine the existence of any differences between the planning practices of the consumer service industry and the producer service industry. The study is organized into seven chapters. The introduction chapter contains background information, a description of the problem and opportunity followed by a definition of terms, the purpose of the research, hypothesis of the research. It also describes the scope of the research, methodology, significance and limitations of the study and provides a chapter bibliography. The study finds that though certain segments of the service industry have sophisticated planning capability, it is not generally widespread. The study concludes there is no significant difference in the planning methods between consumer services and producer services industries

The dissertation has three main chapters on product quality innovation. First, we compare innovation effort and social welfare between monopoly, duopoly, and the social planner in a dynamic model with quality dependent on a continuous know-how stock. The technology frontier--the largest reachable know-how socks--does not always positively depend on competitiveness, i.e. a duopoly may technologically surpass the social planner. However, social welfare is always positively tied to competitiveness. Second, with a general equilibrium model, we derive a relative price function expressing productivity and quality effects, and develop a method for inferring relative quality changes. An application to services versus goods of the US from 1946-2006 provides evidence on aggregate quality changes and suggests us to incorporate quality variations when explaining relative prices. Third, we build a two-product model where productivity changes lead to reallocations of labor between quantity production and quality innovation. The correlation between relative productivity and relative quality is negative for low-range substitutability and positive for medium-range substitutability between two products. Looking at services versus goods of the US, the correlation is negative and productivity-driven quality can play a significant role in general quality development.