Comprehensive Approach to Customer Experience Quality Assessment in the Context of Sales Management Goals and Rising Retail Trade Competition Trends

In the current conditions of increased retail trade competition, which include the pandemic, further decrease in consumers’ purchasing power, tougher competition between federal and regional retail chains and digitalization, it is crucial to improve the customer experience quality, ensuring its compliance with new customers’ requirements and the opportunities presented by digital technologies. In this context, the need to solve the problem of improving the validity of the assessment of the customer experience quality, which is considered the most important object of sales management and a factor of competitiveness of trading companies, becomes particularly relevant. The study of various approaches to conducting this assessment made it possible to identify such problems as lack of consensus on the essence of the concept of ‘customer experience quality’, incomplete accounting of factors affecting the customer experience quality, lack of systematization of indicators of its assessment, insufficient development of approaches to assessing the customer experience quality compared to the competitors. The author clarified the definition of ‘customer experience’ from the standpoint of the interests of trade companies interested in assessing the customer experience quality as a tool that provides an increase in the level of sales management and competitiveness. Based on the proposed approach to the systematization of indicators for assessing the customer experience quality, an integrated approach to its assessment is presented, which allows not only calculating integral indicators for assessing the customer experience quality and comparing it with that of competitors, but also private indicators that allow identifying directions of its improvement.

Exchange rate appreciation, trade competition and technology transaction: evidence from China

PurposeThe purpose of this study is mainly to investigate the stimulating effect on technology transactions of trade competition resultant from RMB appreciation.Design/methodology/approachThis study uses Chinese provincial panel data from 1998 to 2015 and utilizes GMM method to estimate the stimulating effect of RMB appreciation on technical transactions through trade competition.FindingsThe results demonstrate that RMB appreciation can encourage enterprises to make use of domestic technology market resources for innovation. Specifically, the increase in imports due to the appreciation of RMB can generate technology spill-over and significantly promote technology trade. The export competition resultant from RMB appreciation can also encourage domestic and foreign enterprises to enhance export competitiveness through increased technology transactions.Originality/valueThe current research investigates the impact of exchange rate on independent innovation, but this study demonstrates the influence of exchange rate on technology transactions. In addition, the data in this study cover 1998–2015 in China and thus contributes to determining the effects of exchange rate appreciation in emerging countries.

Product Mix and Firm Productivity Responses to Trade Competition

We document how demand shocks in export markets lead French multi-product exporters to re-allocate the mix of products sold in those destinations. In response to positive demand shocks, French firms skew their export sales towards their bestperforming products. We develop a theoretical model of multi-product firms and derive the specific demand conditions (with endogenous price elasticities) needed to generate these product-mix reallocations. Under those demand conditions, the increased competition from demand shocks in export markets also induce productivity changes within the firm. We empirically test for this connection between demand shocks and the productivity of multi-product firms. We find that this connection is economically substantial.

COVID-19 poses supply chain dilemma for East Africa

Significance Kenya and Tanzania, whose ports are the main gateways into the region, offer a critical trade conduit for their landlocked neighbours. However, rising COVID-19 caseloads in both countries -- and Tanzania’s laissez-faire approach to the virus -- are aggravating regional tensions as the virus tracks trade across borders. Impacts The entire region is vulnerable to global economic shocks, but small, landlocked nations will be especially exposed to trade bottlenecks. Supply chain issues will greatly exacerbate food insecurity, which is already under threat from a locust plague and major floods. Kenya-Tanzania tensions may rise, as differences over containing COVID-19 graft on to longstanding trade competition.