An experiment was conducted to determine the effects of two types of hearing protectors on auditory localization performance. Six listeners localized a 750-ms broadband noise from loudspeakers ranging in azimuth from -180 degrees to +180 degrees and in elevation from -75 degrees to +90 degrees. Independent variables included the type of hearing protector and the elevation of the source. Dependent measures included azimuth error, elevation error, and the percentage of trials resulting in a front-back confusion. Performance on each of the dependent measures was found to be mediated by one or more of the independent variables. Actual or potential applications include the generation of improved design guidelines for hearing protectors and workplace alarms.

In an effort to address industry's concern that business graduates are too narrowly focused, the new AACSB guidelines recommend that business curricula have at least half or more of the required undergraduate degree credits outside the business school. This article contrasts two business schools' efforts to redesign their business curricula to meet AACSB standards and describes the changes for a fourth-generation marketing curriculum.

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Today, product-oriented businesses focus on shortening the time to market, reducing costs and increasing product quality in the design and manufacture of new products. Quality function deployment (QFD) is one means to achieving these product development objectives. Central to the QFD process is the voice of the customer to drive design. Cross-functional product teams consisting of design engineers, operations management experts, and marketing researchers work closely to ensure that the customers' needs are included in the design process. The House of Quality exercise described in this article represents the initial step in the QFD process and emphasizes marketing's role in the voice of the customer research.Quality function deployment (QFD) is changing the way that products are designed, produced, and marketed. The QFD methodology consists of a set of tools for building the voice of the customer into product designs. It is a team tool that captures customer requirements and translates those needs into characteristics about a product or service. Initially developed at the Kobe, Japan, shipyards in 1966 by Akao, QFD was used to get engineers to consider quality early in the design process. Gradually, as QFD techniques were improved on, the Japanese automobile industry adopted the process to reduce development time. The results included fewer change orders after production, thereby reducing costs while product quality was improved (Hales, Lyman, and Norman 1998). In the early 1990s and after much study of Japanese product design practices, QFD techniques were adopted by U.S. firms to reduce time to market, decrease costs of design and manufacture, and increase overall product quality (King 1987). Today's successful product-oriented companies are focusing on these three main goals to improve their competitive advantage. As more American industries adopt QFD techniques, it is time to examine how marketing students are taught to think about product design.QFD actually is a four-phase approach in which the product development team deploys customer requirements into product characteristics, product characteristics into part characteristics, part characteristics into process characteristics, and finally process characteristics into production characteristics (Hales et al. 1998). QFD uses four "houses" to present data in the product design process (see Figure 1). The key element in QFD is the voice of the customer to provide products and services that are more readily accepted by the marketplace. The first house links customer needs to product characteristics, which are engineering measures of product performance. The second house links these product characteristics to steps (i.e., parts characteristics) that the firm can take to improve design. The third house links actions to implementation decisions that affect manufacturing process operations, and the final house links the implementation to production planning. The first house is referred to as the House of Quality (HOQ) and is the initial effort in any product design ...

A well-chosen corporate name communicates much information and emotion to a firms publics. Despite the tremendous costs involved in a corporate name change, many corporations change names when pursuing a new strategic direction. In this study, we examine the relationship between functional name characteristics and stock performance around name change announcements. The results show that distinctiveness is the most important explanatory variable of abnormal stock returns.

Technological changes and innovations have created the means by which organizations can centralize the selling function into a call-center environment. While there are numerous benefits to this centralization, the fact that potential customers are drawn to a call center via telephone or Web-based communication media from a wide geographic area heightens the need for sales representatives to perform adaptive-selling behaviors. In this study we found evidence to confirm this belief, suggesting that a premium is placed on sales representatives who can accurately assess each situation using limited information (e.g., through tone of voice) and then to correctly adapt their behavior to fit the situation. The results also offer implications for Web-based call centers that link sales representatives with potential customers through text-based communication.

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Considers the response of US firms to the recent decline in productivity, growth etc and the subsequent adoption of just in time manufacturing pioneered by Japanese industry. Examines the concentration on the reduction in time and costs of the early stages of the product life cycle and the flexibility this allows the subsequent pricing strategies. Highlights the emphasis placed on distribution scheduling and the consolidation of transportation services. Concludes that US firms have accepted that JIT and cost and time reduction programs have been necessary in order to compete in the 1990s.