Journal of Business Strategy: Volume 14 Issue 1

Achieving a Sustainable Service Advantage

Kevin P. Coyne

Forbes magazine had dubbed Carmike Cinemas “the Wal‐Mart of theater chains.” Founded in 1982, the Columbus GA‐based chain of 1,400 screens pursues a strategy strikingly similar to…

Setting New Standards for Customer Advocacy

Laura McDonald

As the personal computer marketplace becomes increasingly competitive and PCs become more of a commodity, computer companies are finding that creating innovative technology alone…

A Vigorous Approach to Customer Service

E. Kears Pollock

Without customers, no business can exist. How a customer is treated — in the broadest sense — determines whether it maintains its relationships with a supplier and, therefore…

Designing—and Sustaining the Gains from—a Service Strategy

David G. deRoulet

Companies of all kinds are thinking harder today about customer service; most now consider it to be a fundamental part of their competitive strategy. For many managers, however…

How to Realize the Promise of Strategic Planning

James Whelan, James D. Sisson

Strategic planning is an important part of every company's management process. Its sole purpose is to improve the performance of the organization. This would appear to be common…

Avoid the Mismatch Between Strategy and Strategic Leaders

William E. Rothschild

The decade of the 1980s was the decade of analysis, portfolio management, and process development. The emphasis was on strategic planning and not on strategic leadership. Little…

Organizational Change Starts with a Strategic Focus

William A. Schiemann

Over the past decade, a succession of business professors, management consultants, journalists, and futurists have spent considerable time preaching the gospel of “renewal,”…