MIT Sloan Management Review

Increasingly, information technology isn’t just for supporting the strategy, it is the strategy. Unfortunately, many CEOs send their managers negative signals about IT’s role. Only the “believer CEO,” who demonstrates through daily actions a belief in the strategic value of IT, can help others manage effectively in the Information Age. The authors offer examples of such CEOs and give some techniques for addressing blind spots to improve an organization’s competitiveness.

Why a company can lose touch with its market and how to reorient it through a successful change program.

Delivering quality to customers in a competitive marketplace dictates the need to continually enhance a customer’s experience and satisfaction. However, evidence indicates that satisfying customers is not enough to retain them because even satisfied customers defect at a high rate in many industries.

Several new strategies are emerging that enable firms to capitalize on their chief corporate asset: information about their customers.

Strategic failure usually comes from an inability to make clear choices on which customers to target, what products to offer, and how to improve efficiency. Incumbents routinely bow to upstarts that innovate in those areas. The author shows established companies how to prepare for and counter such disruption with a dynamic process of continual strategic renewal.

New technologies and emerging market trends, including a shift in power to retailers, are converging to alter traditional branding and brand management.

Effective service recovery is vital to maintaining customer and employee satisfaction and loyalty, which contribute significantly to a company’s revenues and profitability. Yet most customers are dissatisfied with the way companies resolve their complaints, and most companies do not take advantage of the learning opportunities afforded by service failures. The authors provide a research-based approach for helping managers develop a comprehensive service recovery system.

Companies must understand their customers’ needs, appoint a manager to oversee the production of high-quality information, and recognize that information is not just a byproduct.

How to make negotiations more effective by improving interactions both inside and outside the organization.

Three leading professional service firms have succeeded by creating capabilities for collaboration and learning that leverage individual competency into enhanced problem solving for clients.

Three forces are changing the customary rules of distribution channel management: proliferating customer needs, shifts in the balance of power in channels and changing strategic priorities. The authors propose a strategic approach to planning for future channel configurations, control of the channel and resource commitment.

The contention that loyal customers are always more profitable is a gross simplification, according to the authors. They posit that such schemes do not fundamentally alter market structure and, instead, increase market expenditures without really creating any extra brand loyalty. Dowling and Uncles suggest ways to design an effective program.

To improve service, companies must use multiple research approaches among different customer groups to ensure that they are hearing what customers are saying and responding to their suggestions.

As the corporate sponsorship of sports events has grown, so too has the practice of ambush marketing. Is the practice legal and ethical? How can a legitimate sponsor counteract the effects of an ambusher?

IBM is making a comeback. Although many observers had counted the company out — “It’s a dinosaur, an implosion, a wreck,” various commentators said — its revival was probable, even predictable, because cycles of decline and revitalization have been the company’s pattern through many decades.P

Positioning products in a complex market is one of a company’s hardest decisions. In determining whether to combine or maintain separate product lines, Hewlett-Packard used strategic market modeling (SMM) to design “what if” scenarios and run simulations forecasting market behavior. SMM combines demographics, user needs and competitive-perception data into a database for testing alternative positioning strategies. The author describes SMM’s development and the lessons learned.

The Internet promises to revolutionize the dynamics of international commerce and, like the telephone and fax machine, may be a major force in the democratization of capitalism.

In the mid-1980s, I purchased my first car (a Honda Civic) and my first personal computer (an IBM PC AT) at about the same time and for about the same price ($6,000 to $7,000; the price of the computer included a monitor and a printer).

Throughout the 1990s, interest in private label brands in the U.S. grocery industry has increased. Store brands currently account for slightly less than 15 percent of total dollar sales.

Marketing was easier when the economy was expanding and consumer disposable income was growing. For three decades after World War II, marketing strategies generally were built around the development of growth markets.