Diverse Customer Base Research Articles

Illinois Tool Works, Inc.

AbstractIndustrial Machinery and Equipment (MIC: 11.5 SIC: 3566 NAIC:333612)Illinois Tool Works is a manufacturer of highly engineered products and specialty systems. Co. has approximately 750 operations in 49 countries. There are four business segments, Engineered Products North America and International, and Specialty Systems North America and International. Engineered Products North America and International manufacture a variety of short lead‐time plastic and metal components and fasteners, as well as specialty products for a diverse customer base. Specialty Systems North America and International design and manufacture longer lead‐time machinery and related consumables, as well as specialty equipment and systems for a diverse customer base.

Illinois Tool Works, Inc.

AbstractIndustrial Machinery and Equipment (MIC: 11.5 SIC: 3566 NAIC:333612)Illinois Tool Works is a manufacturer of highly engineered products and specialty systems. Co. has approximately 750 operations in 49 countries. There are four business segments, Engineered Products North America and International, and Specialty Systems North America and International. Engineered Products North America and International manufacture a variety of short lead‐time plastic and metal components and fasteners, as well as specialty products for a diverse customer base. Specialty Systems North America and International design and manufacture longer lead‐time machinery and related consumables, as well as specialty equipment and systems for a diverse customer base.

Illinois Tool Works, Inc.

AbstractIndustrial Machinery and Equipment (MIC: 11.5 SIC: 3566 NAIC:333612)Illinois Tool Works is a manufacturer of highly engineered products and specialty systems. Co. has approximately 750 operations in 49 countries. There are four business segments, Engineered Products North America and International, and Specialty Systems North America and International. Engineered Products North America and International manufacture a variety of short lead‐time plastic and metal components and fasteners, as well as specialty products for a diverse customer base. Specialty Systems North America and International design and manufacture longer lead‐time machinery and related consumables, as well as specialty equipment and systems for a diverse customer base.

REACH – Opportunities and Risks for a Company Supplying Research Chemicals and Intermediates

REACH is the proposal of a new legislation to control chemicals in the EU and poses a major challenge to suppliers of chemicals. As a company engaged in supplying more than 80'000 individual substances to a very diverse customer base, Sigma-Aldrich is particularly affected. The impact of various aspects of REACH, both positive and negative, is discussed. Although the legislation is not yet available in its final version the overall impact is believed to be negative.

Delivering Value-Added Library and Information Services to a Diverse Student Customer Base

Delivering Value-Added Library and Information Services to a Diverse Student Customer Base

UK PATLIB: a skills audit

The new member states of the EPC will require assistance whilst developing their patent information services. The 13 PATLIB libraries of the UK offer diverse services to a diverse customer base and would have much to offer information officers in the new EPC States. An audit of the skills and experience within the UK PATLIBs was conducted. The results provide suitable information for the construction of programmes of mentoring and training. This audit consists of more than those skills relating to the use and dissemination of patent information. Assets such as language skills and cultural and economic connections with East European States were also investigated.

Revisiting customer participation in service encounters: does culture matter?

Service customers expend significant effort through a variety of behaviors, before, during, and after encounters, to increase the likelihood of satisfactory service experience or to salvage failing service encounters. Service customers’ satisfaction-seeking behaviors are both proactive and reactive in terms of both intent and execution. These behaviors include preparation, relationship building, information exchange, and intervention. This extension of the original research was presented by Youngdahl and Kellogg [Journal of Operations Management 15 (1997) 19]. It provides an examination of how robust the satisfaction-seeking behaviors are across cultures. The overall question is whether people in different cultures would use similar participative behaviors. We also examined whether or not culture is related to service customers’ effort and satisfaction. The counter-intuitive findings indicate that service customers’ satisfaction-seeking behaviors are not related to their cultural orientations. Additionally, culture is not related to effort or satisfaction level. The implication is that prescriptions derived from earlier research on these forms of service participation can be applied both across cultures and to any culturally diverse customer base.

Understanding Decision Support Systems

Customer expectations are creating specific demands upon managed care pharmacists for the 21st century. The AMCP Project, Pharmacy’s Framework for Drug Therapy Management in the 21st Century, holds our profession accountable for meeting the needs of our diverse customer base. 1 Readers of this article are encouraged to familiarize themselves with this important Academy project. The project should be of interest to employers, academicians, government officials, health plan administrators, pharmaceutical manufacturers, patients, nurses, and physicians. The Framework cites seven expectations commonly held amongst the professions’ customers. New information tools will be needed to meet or exceed these customer expectations. These new tools are going to be business intelligence and decision support systems. ■■ Decision Support Tools

THE CASE FOR DIVERSITY IN GLOBAL BUSINESS, AND THE IMPACT OF DIVERSITY ON TEAM PERFORMANCE

Those entrusted with leading corporations and organizations into the 215t century face profound changes. They must address severe competitive pressures, globalization of markets, and deregulation, as well as an increasingly sophisticated, diverse customer base. All this is taking place as the workforce is becoming more diverse and its values and expectations are changing in fundamental and challenging ways. As a result, it has become clear that leaders of organizations must quickly develop business strategies and manage performance in significantly more creative and flexible ways.

Information Technologies — Challenges of the 1990S: A Company View

The major challenges of the 1990s in the field of information services have already evolved from the so-called “information explosion” of the latter part of this century — namely, 1. coping with the volume of information and 2. processing it faster. Technologies that are already in place will become more sophisticated to help information specialists process their product to meet the needs of their diverse customer base. These constituents include colleagues within the company at all levels of management and from several departments, mainly sales, marketing, regulatory, research, and finance. Our customers outside include health-care professionals of various disciplines, as well as the more knowledgeable and active consumers. The latter group will likely form a larger percentage of our clients in the 1990sThe main technological aids that assist us presently are the computer, FAX machine, and the telephone. Computers help us retrieve, organize, store, and then reorganize, reretrieve, and disseminate large v...