Wilbur I. Smith

Target costing for supply chain management: criteria and selection

This article examines the use of target costing as a means to improve the management of supply chains. A discussion of the shortcomings of traditional and activity‐based cost management approaches to supply chain management provides the basis for exploring the use of target costing within supply chains. Customer requirements and supply chain relationships are identified as key criteria for selecting the most appropriate method of target costing for supply chains. Price‐based, value‐based, and activity‐based cost management approaches to target costing are discussed, and recommendations for their use based upon customer requirements and supply chain relationships are offered. Conclusions are provided on the use of target costing to enhance a supply chain’s ability to improve customer satisfaction.

A strategic alignment approach for effective business process reengineering: linking strategy, processes and customers for competitive advantage

Abstract Global competition has forced firms to rethink their approach to providing products and services to their customer base. Business process reengineering has been adopted by many firms in an effort to improve their competitive position and enhance their ability to provide customer satisfaction and delight. Although many firms have implemented business process reengineering programs, approximately 60–80% of these programs have failed. Therefore, an approach is needed to increase the probability of success for reengineering programs. This article presents a conceptual framework and key principles for effective business process reengineering. The principles are derived from a case study of a successful reengineering program instituted by the Cummins Engine Company, and a strategic alignment framework which examines the congruency between a firms strategy, business processes, and customer requirements.

Supply-Chain Excellence for Accelerated Improvement

Many firms have begun employing an integrative approach called supply-chain management (SCM) to manage their raw-materials-supply-production-distribution systems. 3M Company uses SCM to achieve its companywide goals of increasing customer satisfaction and loyalty, doubling the speed of key business processes, and reducing inventories and costs. 3Ms experience indicates that to derive tangible benefits from SCM a firm must (1) create a clear vision of what it wants to accomplish, (2) establish and communicate companywide supply-chain goals, (3) develop a definition of its supply chain and formulate goals for improving supply-chain operations, (4) develop a process for implementing SCM, and (5) develop measures for assessing progress toward achieving business-unit and companywide goals.

Target Costing for Supply Chain Management: An Economic Framework

Facing mounting evidence of their inability to sustain competitive advantages in product quality, functionality, or cost, many companies have begun adopting the principles of supply chain management. However, to realize the benefits promised by this management innovation, companies must first discontinue reliance on deficient cost management practices. This article contends that both traditional and activity-based cost management practices are deficient, then offers an economic framework for replacing them in supply chains with target costing processes. The framework combines the two market variables, customer requirements and supply chain agility, to define strategies for performing target costing. The contents of these strategies set the key features of three unique target costing processes for supply chains. Thus, the article provides an economic rationale for applying target costing to supply chain management.

Management and national development in Kenya: toward a normative framework

Purpose – This paper aims to propose a normative framework focusing on the need to enhance the roles of the four fundamental environmental forces of management – socio‐demographic, techno‐economic, politico‐institutional, and cultural. The objective is to create a business climate of certainty so that Kenya can achieve its goals of national and private sector development and of elevating its global competitiveness in terms of foreign direct investment and exports.Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses secondary data to describe Kenyas development goals, its current level of private sector development, its position in the global economy, and the historical and cultural dimensions of its management practices. Against that backdrop, the article combines systems thinking and broad‐based reasoning to develop a normative management framework for policy makers and for domestic and international business managers. After using data to describe Kenyas status with respect to the four environmental forces, th...

Advertising in Black Magazines

Abstract The African American consumer has been studied since the 1960s. Now a major segment of the national economy, this consumer group represented more than

The Civil Rights Movement and Social Sensitivity

631 billion of buying power in 2002. Prior research has shown that this market segment has distinct product and service preferences and that the African American consumer responds more favorably to advertisements containing African American models as opposed to white models. In focus groups comprised of African Americans and conducted by Ketchum Public Relations (KPR) in 1998, several companies were identified, some as mosttrusted and others as least-respected. When queried about the advertisement outlets, Black Enterprise, Ebony and Essence were among those named as mosttrusted black print media. In light of this finding, we advance the proposition that the advertisements in these media sources should reflect the spending patterns and other consumer preferences of African Ameri Ashanti Y. Ragoonan is an MBA student, School of Business & Industry, Florida cans. To explore this issue, we analyzed a sample of 2,845 advertisements in 12 issues of each of Black Enterprise, Ebony and Essence, spanning from May 1997 to April 1998-a timeframe that corresponds to the 12-month period prior to the KPR study. The findings of this exploratory study support our propositions about the effectiveness of using African American models in advertisements and the frequency of ads related to the top five expenditure categories of African Americans. We also found modest support for our proposition about the advertising patterns of the most-trusted and the least-respected companies.

On the Strategies that Blacks Employ in Deductive Reasoning

Abstract African American consumers, totaling 35 million and with an annual income of

Cultural Exploration and Understanding: A Framework for Global Business

601 billion in 2001, constitutes a huge target market in the United States. Given the growing practice of target marketing, the consumer behavior of African Americans has attracted a great deal of research attention. Some of the studies have explored the question of their social sensitivity when making purchasing decisions. But the research has invariably been framed narrowly to examine, for example, the response of African American consumers to marketing variables such as type of ad or media representation. Such studies are largely devoid of sociohistorically-grounded conceptual analysis. Consequently, the marketing literature is generally missing historically-based research, research which examines the critical role of the Civil Rights Movement (CRM) in developing the African American consumer market and in engendering a collective sense of social sensitivity in their consumer behavior. The present study represents an attempt to redress this research gap. It provides a conceptual discussion of how the CRM was instrumental in the emergence of the African American consumer market, as well as in the emergence of social sensitivity in their consumer behavior, and it reports an empirical analysis of the social sensitivity of African American consumers, using primary data from a random national survey designed and conducted by Ketchum Public Relations Worldwide. The overall findings of this study reveal that, while some African American consumers are influenced by traditional marketing variables such as product availability, a large majority of African American consumers studied, namely, those who are older, more educated, with higher income, are inclined to use their purchasing power to further social change within the business community. Their open manifestation of social sensitivity is not only a matter of cultural preferences and identification but is also a form of political action in pursuit of socioeconomic justice and parity.

A Gravity Model Analysis of the Benefits of Economic Integration in the Pacific Rim

Over the past two decades, Wasons Four-Card Selection Task has attracted such a large amount of research and has generated such varied, interesting, and controversial results that it has come to be regarded as a standard paradigm for looking at how people reason deductively. Nevertheless, this article, which replicates Griggs and Coxs (1983) second experiment with a sample of 192 undergraduate college students, reports the first systematic study of the strategies that Black Americans use in the selection task. The results largely parallel those reported by Griggs and Cox as well as those that have been reported by other researchers. Still, the present results do differ in a number of ways from prior findings. We report an atypically high rate of accuracy for the standard version of the selection task. Also, the effect of problem content on processing strategy is curiously small, and its structure is unprecedented. On balance, the results of this study challenge monolithic notions of cognitive development that universally ascribe deficits in reasoning ability to Blacks. Some Blacks, notably those researched here, appear to acquire conceptual rules for logical reasoning that are as powerful and as fallible as any developed by people in Western, literate societies. Future research should explore the etiology of individual differences in reasoning ability and proclivities among Blacks.