Articles

Formerly adversarial relationships between retailers and their suppliers are giving way to cooperative partnerships in which both try to improve merchandise and information flow in the distribution channel system. By cooperating, retailers and suppliers can speed up the replenishment of inventories, improve customer service, reduce the need for markdowns, and cut the cost of bringing goods to the customer. The authors outline the key features of channel partnerships and discuss the reasons for their rapid formation during the 1990s. They describe the changes needed in traditional merchandising and distribution systems to gain the benefits of a partnership and the requirements for a successful channel partnership.

Gray market goods are brand name products sold through unauthorized channels. Gray markets have recently become more threatening to multinational companies as a result of the increasing number of global products available and easily accessible price information about them. The authors present a framework to select the right approach to the gray market threat by coordinating price-setting decisions based on the subsidiary's local resources and the complexity of the product's market. Through examples from their sample of companies that have dealt with gray markets, they show how price coordination methods have been implemented.

A follow-up survey to one published in the Summer 1991 issue of Sloan Management Review ("How Much Has Really Changed between U.S. Automakers and Their Suppliers?" by Susan Helper) shows that long-term, closely linked relationships have performance advantages for automakers and their suppliers in both the United States and Japan. Although such high-performance relationships with customers are still more prevalent in Japan than in the United States, the nature of supplier relations in the two countries is converging in some respects. The current survey includes more than 600 automotive suppliers in the United States and almost 500 suppliers in Japan.

Although on the surface, toyota's development process seems extraordinarily cumbersome, it is a model of how to make better cars more quickly and cheaply. Toyota's engineers and managers delay decisions and give suppliers partial information, while exploring numerous prototypes. The authors examine what they call "set-based concurrent engineering," a method prevalent at Toyota but not at other Japanese and U.S. automakers. Toyota designers think about sets of design alternatives, rather than pursuing one alternative iteratively. They gradually narrow the sets until they come to a final solution. Through extensive research, case studies, and interviews, the authors present their argument - that this apparently inefficient system has made Toyota the fastest and most efficient developer of autos.

Although researchers have concentrated on various measures of customer satisfaction (CS) and the relationship of CS to firm performance, they have done little to determine what constitutes the best practices of firms focusing on CS as a corporate strategy. These authors report the results of their investigation into the best practices of four manufacturing firms with reputations for delivering high levels of customer satisfaction. They found that, although the firms developed a CS strategy for different reasons, each had similar characteristics that enabled them to concentrate on satisfying the customer. While the firms generally outperformed the average firm in their industry in profits and asset utilization after adopting a customer satisfaction strategy, they were not as successful in increasing market share; nor has the market valued them as highly as it has valued others in their industry. Finally, the authors suggest ways companies can improve their customer satisfaction measures and practices.

How will future traffic on the information superhighway affect each segment of an industry value chain? Will electronic markets provide new areas of opportunity for retailers, producers, and consumers as well? The authors suggest that the NII, or national infrastructure, will give consumers increased access to a vast selection of goods but will cause a restructuring and redistribution of profits among the stakeholders along the chain. There will also be an evolution from single-source sales channels to electronic markets. And electronic markets may lower coordination costs for producers and retailers, lower physical distribution costs, or eliminate retailers and wholesalers entirely, as consumers directly access manufacturers. Consumers' full access to the market will also be an issue that policymakers need to explore.

Companies are increasingly outsourcing information technology for a variety of reasons, such as concern for cost and quality, lagging IT performance, supplier pressure, and other financial factors. The outsourcing solution is acceptable to large and small firms alike because strategic alliances are now more common and the IT environment is changing rapidly. The authors offer their suggestions for determining when to outsource and how to structure and manage the resulting alliance. Most important, they suggest, is to view the outsourcing agreement as a strategic alliance and manage it as such.

Errors in data can cost a company millions of dollars, alienate customers, and make implementing new strategies difficult or impossible. The author describes a process AT&;T uses to recognize poor data and improve their quality. He proposes a three-step method for identifying data-quality problems, treating data as an asset, and applying quality systems to the processes that create data.