Ralph W. Jackson

An empirical investigation of the differences in goods and services as perceived by organizational buyers

Abstract This research contributes an organizational buyers viewpoint to the study of differences in marketing goods and services. Most services marketing research focuses on consumer markets. Few studies have examined services marketing in the case of industrial services. Fewer still have examined industrial services marketing from the perspective of the organizational buyer. A survey of organizational buyers from a variety of industries indicates buyers perceive significant differences in the task of buying industrial services. These differences are described in terms of six latent dimensions.

Food Shopping and Preparation: Psychographic Differences of Working Wives and Housewives

A research study is described which compared the responses of 246 working wives and 181 housewives to several food shopping- and preparation-related psychographic statements. Results show that working wives tended to have a greater dislike for food shopping and cooking that seemed to stem primarily from time considerations. Working wives also exhibited a tendency to be less concerned with the impact of their food shopping and preparation activities on other family members.

An investigation of the need for algorithmic validity

It has been noted that the adversarial and warlike aspect of the game of chess is the genesis of today’s business games. As traced by Cohen and Rhenman (1961) the movement from the chess board and its diversified opposing forces to &dquo;New Kriegspiel,&dquo; with its actual battlefield maps and opposing wooden figures, was an apparent and logical one (Thomas, 1957). Although both chess and New Kriegspiel possessed the qualities of formality and abstraction, the next development in war gaming was a response to the opposing demands for greater game realism to effectuate higher levels of learning versus the needs for greater game playability, construct clarity, and administrative ease (Weiner, 1959). Accordingly, war gaming branched into the separate paths of &dquo;Rigid Kriegspiel&dquo; and &dquo;Free Kriegspiel,&dquo; although the underlying pedagogical issues were not resolved. The advent of the digital computer in the late 1940s and its widespread dissemination in the 1950s brought about even higher degrees of realism and processing ease to educational gaming. With this grand tool the business gaming field had the ability to program and process thousands of integrated algorithms, which, when combined in a ratio-

The use of approved vendor lists

Abstract This article describes a research project that investigated the use of approved vendors lists. The study sampled purchasing managers in five different industries and sought information on their use of approved vendors lists and how they derived those lists. The results contain some useful information for industrial marketers.

The Yellow Pages as An Advertising Tool for Small Businesses

The yellow-pages are an important advertising medium for small businesses. However, the effectiveness of advertising in the yellow-pages is not well understood. This study examined the use of the yellow-pages by a sample of 147 consumers in a southwestern city. The results showed these consumers frequently used the yellow-pages, although their use of it varied considerably depending on the type of business they were seeking. The results also indicated the effectiveness of yellow-pages advertising varied, depending on the size and position of the ad on the page.