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Marketing has long emphasized the importance of being close to the customer. A research project that explored long-term relationships between industrial customers and their suppliers led to questions about how realistic this goal is and revealed other issues regarding patterns of customer-vendor behavior. Discussed here are the concepts of relationship marketing and transaction marketing and how customers' purchasing behaviors call for one or the other approach. To build and maintain lasting customer ties, and to outperform competitors, marketers will profit from careful and explicit consideration of their customer relationships.

Research on 38 entrepreneurs from a wide range of industries reveals them as achievement oriented, liking to take responsibility for decisions, and disliking repetitious work. Entrepreneurs tend to be visionary, creative, and have high levels of energy. The industries and jobs they create stimulate the economy. But their strong personality traits can make them difficult people to work with. Difficult characteristics include: a need for control, a sense of distrust, desire for applause, and particular defenses.

When introducing a new technology to their company, implementation managers must bridge the gap between the designers and the users of the innovation, and make the transition as smooth as possible. This task is especially difficult when they are met with employee ambivalence and resistance. Moreover, those employees who enthusiastically accept the innovation may not be regarded as leaders in the company. Implementation managers, then, must learn to see themselves as internal marketers, guiding the innovation from the laboratory to the workplace and meeting both developer and user needs, while preparing the organization to receive the technology.

Decision scenarios structure the future into predetermined and uncertain elements and aim to transform the thinking of managers during times of change and uncertainty. In the aftermath of the 1973-74 oil shock and in the midst of a serious recession, for example, managers at Royal Dutch/Shell turned their attention to the short term. Planners responded to their concerns in 1975 by analyzing the predetermined elements of change and developing two medium-term scenarios. By presenting managers with alternative ways of seeing the world, decision scenarios enable them to anticipate and understand risk and to discover new strategic options.

Even as the notion of strategic planning has come to dominate business education and practice in the United States, manufacturing companies in this country often miss goals and lag behind foreign competitors. Under certain circumstances, the problem lies with the logic shaping the strategic planning process: establish ends, develop ways to attain them, and assemble the necessary means. A reverse logic--means-way-ends--may be more appropriate in a changing environment. A company can develop broad capabilities (means) and match these with technological and market opportunities as they arise (ways). A shared vision of what the company can become rather than a set of directions or controls provides the guiding force for such an organization.

Describes the background to the recent agreement between Campbell Soup Co. growers and Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) settling a seven year dispute and boycott. This agreement serves as a possible model for resolving farm labor disputes and may provide a basis for legislation to regulate the two and a half million farmworkers in the United States.

Describes events and raises issues subsequent to Charlie McCall's acceptance of the job of CEO at CompuServe.

Describes events and raises issues subsequent to Charlie McCall's acceptance of the job as CEO at CompuServe.

Describes events and raises issues subsequent to Charlie McCall's acceptance of the job of CEO at CompuServe.

The Heinz Ketchup product manager discovers she does not have sufficient finished inventory and production capacity to meet trade demand for a new plastic bottle ketchup. Alternatives include cancelling promotion events and putting the trade on allocation.

Describes the thought process an entrepreneur should undergo before committing to a course of action. Covers understanding the opportunity--assessing the critical skills, resources, relationships, and approvals--developing an action plan; forming a business entity; controlling the venture; harvesting the venture; and then a brief summary. Provides a useful framework to be used by entrepreneurs starting their own venture.

Population Services International (PSI) was a not-for-profit agency founded to disseminate family planning information and to market birth control products, primarily in less developed countries seeking to curb their population explosions. In 1976, PSI concluded an agreement with the government of Bangladesh to conduct a social marketing program, with the objective of using modern marketing techniques to sell subsidized contraceptives through commercial outlets. Seven years later, three PSI managers were meeting at PSI's Washington, D.C. headquarters to discuss 1984-86 marketing strategy for two products: Raja condoms and Maya birth control pills. Of particular concern was the fact that the marketing approach that had proven extremely successful for Raja was yielding poor sales results for Maya. The PSI managers needed to devise an action plan for improving Maya Sales.

Describes two different approaches to the process of action planning and implementation. Offers specific advice for action planning and for learning how to action plan.

Contains a description of a decision confronting an employee of IBM in late 1981. Should he leave IBM to become head of a new venture capital fund which will specialize in technology investments? The case is designed to expose students to the nature of the opportunity confronting venture capitalists. The students will have to assess the fit between Peter Wendell, the particular opportunity, and the terms being offered.

Contains brief introductory material for the body of the case, which is Nixon's August 15, 1971, speech announcing the suspension of the convertibility of gold and wage-price controls. The case will allow discussion of the problems of the Bretton Woods system, the relationship of domestic and international economic problems, and the process of institutional change.

The Heinz Ketchup product manager must decide whether or not to launch a new plastic bottle and, if so, what marketing program and support to place behind it.

Manufacturing companies are confronted today with an array of new systems to improve production efficiency. Chief among these are: materials requirements planning (MRP), kanban (the Japanese just-in-time system), Israel's optimized production technology (OPT), and the latest approach, flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). A rundown of each methodology explains strengths, weaknesses, and trade-offs to help managers choose a system to match their needs. Examples of applications of each system worldwide are included.

Entrepreneurs draw up business plans for new ventures to make marketing, pricing, financial, and other projections. More often than not, though, their estimates bear little relationship to reality. Planning for new enterprises differs fundamentally from planning for existing companies, given the inherent instability of start-ups. Entrepreneurs should summarize milestone events in a project's plan in order to learn about the enterprise's viability and make adjustments in strategy and goals as necessary. Examples of ten milestones a new product or service might experience are included.

In an effort to retain more corporate earnings, exercise more managerial control, and meet demands of local constituents, governments worldwide are seeking greater domestic ownership of foreign subsidiaries within their borders. A study of corporate responses to India's Foreign Exchange Regulation Act of 1973 (FERA) shows that multinational corporations facing forced equity dilutions have at least four strategic options available: strict compliance, exit, negotiation, and preemptive action. Certain practical considerations limit management's strategic options: the implications of setting a precedent, the corporation's decision-making structure, the level of bargaining power, the political climate, and management's own biases.

To reduce high manufacturing overhead, companies should look beyond their direct labor and materials costs to the costs of transactions. These transactions are the exchanges of materials and/or information that are necessary to move production along. They do not directly result in physical products but instead in a kind of "augmented product" that the customer buys--on-time delivery, quality, variety, and design improvement. Three approaches to managing the costs of these transactions are to analyze which transactions are necessary and improve the methods of carrying them out, to increase the stability of operations, and to rely on automation and systems integration.