Practices of Relationship Marketing: A Domain Review

Kawsar Ahmmed,Nor Azila Mohd Noor,Shahidul Islam 한국유통과학회 2016 KODISA ICBE (International Conference on Business Vol.2016 No.-

This paper traces the issues relating to the practice of relationship marketing (RM) in the business-to-business context. Because of its inherent suitability, it generates fruitful result for the practicing organizations. Rapid technological advancement, adoption of total quality programs, rapid growth of the service industry, organizational redesigning and reengineering and an increase in competitive intensity leading to the growth of relationship marketing orientation. Relationship marketing has its long historical background. From the pre-industrial era to the present post-industrial era it is evolving and more and more organizations are embracing the relationship marketing stance. To do better with the RM approach its inherent characteristics including structural characteristics and process characteristics should be understood clearly by the practicing companies. As relationship marketing is a multi-dimensional construct consists of various elements like bonding, empathy, tangibility, reciprocity and trust, due attention needed to be availed by the organization to utilize the RM strategy properly. In addition, conditions for practicing relationship marketing should be understood well to avoid the situation made the approach less effective. Finally as divergences are available, its comparatively new area of key account management strategy is also examined.

Key Account Management: Towards a Multidimensional Definition

Kawsar Ahmmed,Nor Azila Mohd. Noor 한국유통과학회 2012 Asian Journal of Business Environment (AJBE) Vol.2 No.1

The aim of this paper is to propose an integrative definition of key account management (KAM) at the organizational level through a content analysis of the existing definitions of KAM available in the business literatures. A representative pool of definitions of key account management was generated through literature review from twenty three journals that covers the divergence of name variety like global account management, strategic account management, national account management, international key account management, key client management, major account management, key customers management and key account management. Relating to the definition of key account management various attributes are identified through content analysis and according to the relevance, profile for each attributes are developed. On the basis of these attributes a diagrammatic and textual definition is proposed that covers the different standpoints and aspects of key account management approach and captures its essence as well. Eventually, several strategic implications are derived that create the field for further empirical investigation.

Determinants of Key Account Management Performance in Business-to-Business Relationship: The Garments Industry in Bangladesh

Kawsar Ahmmed,Nor Azila Mohd Noor 한국유통과학회 2014 유통과학연구 Vol.12 No.11

Purpose – This study traces the determinants of key account management performance in the garments industry in Bangladesh. The key account management approach involves significant challenges for marketers to manage their strategically important customers and use this approach as a strategic weapon in their selling efforts. This study examines three categories of determinants of key account management performance including operational variables, organizational variables, and relational variables by exploring data from 100% export oriented readymade garments companies in Bangladesh. Research design, data, and methodology – Data were collected from 30 readymade garments manufacturers, considering a company as a unit of analysis. Using the data, instrument validity and reliability and, subsequently, data normality were examined using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software to isolate the important determinants of key account management performance. Results – The instruments are reliable and the data are reasonably normal. Conclusion – The study explored and validated the adapted instruments of various operational, organizational, and relational antecedent factors of key account management performance, most of which were thus far ignored.

Key Account Management in Business-to-Business Relationship: Identifying Top K Persuaders Using Singular Value Decomposition

Kawsar Ahmmed,Nor Azila Mohd Noor 한국유통과학회 2016 유통과학연구 Vol.14 No.9

Purpose - Key account management is a supplier company initiated relational approach that has received great attention from both academics and practitioners manifested in the business-to-business relationship literatures. However, there is widespread debate and contention on what should be the underlying theoretical base for defining this vital part of relationship marketing. With the insights from the social exchange theory, present paper explores how social exchange affects the dynamic nature of key account management relationship at the organizational level. Research design, data, and methodology - The paper follows a comprehensive review approach to examine the relationship between social exchange theory and key account management approach. Conceptual arguments and findings are assessed across studies with the main objective of showing how social exchange theory develops the governance mechanism in maintaining the key account relationship. Results - Since relational norm is considered as a glue for the maintenance of buyer-seller relationship in social exchange theory, factors develop the non-contractual governance mechanism ‘relationship’ in business-to-business relationship and this norm replaces or supplements more formal governance mechanisms such as contracts are explored. Conclusions - This paper advances central relational norm to manage the company’s most important key customers and demonstrates how this norm can be developed in buyer-seller key account relationship. Implications from this new perspective are forwarded.

Managing Key Accounts in the Readymade Garments Industry: To What Extent Bangladeshi Companies Perform

Kawsar Ahmmed,Nor Azila Mohd. Noor 한국유통과학회 2018 The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Busine Vol.5 No.4

With the paramount importance of key account management in business-to-business relationship, today companies are using this approach as a strategic weapon in their selling efforts targeted at the most important customers to solve their complex requirements with special treatment that eventually ensures both parties’ financial and nonfinancial objectives. The aim of this paper is to investigate the level of key account management performance among the export-oriented readymade garments companies in Bangladesh with regards to company’s experience in business, size of the company and key account serving capacity of the company. Using a questionnaire, data from 112 readymade garments companies in Bangladesh were collected and analyzed using descriptive analysis and ANOVA to test the level of key account management performance. Results show that the level of key account management performance by the garments companies did not vary by the company’s experience in business and size of the company respectively. In contrast, the level of key account management performance was found to be different concerning high, medium, and low customer service capacity. Apparently, companies with big number of customers show better performance than companies with small number of customer. Implications for this study are discussed along with suggestions for future research avenues.

Assessment of Menopausal Symptoms among Early and Late Menopausal Midlife Bangladeshi Women and Their Impact on the Quality of Life

( Kawsar Ahmed ),( Papia Jahan ),( Israt Nadia ),( Farzana Ahmed ),( Abdullah Al Emran ) 대한폐경학회 2016 대한폐경학회지 Vol.22 No.1

Objectives: Every physical abnormal criterion has an impact on the health. Late menopause causes different physiological problems which alike early menopause. The research interest is associated with both early and late menopausal women of Bangladesh as only few menopausal studies available in South East Asia especially in Bangladesh. The aims of this study are not only to assess the symptoms of menopausal abnormality but also to determine the impact of these symptoms on the quality of life (QOL) of the female society in Bangladesh. Methods: Data mining techniques are used to rank the 22 factors (conducted with questionnaire) commonly associated with menopause. Among the participants menstruation that stops before 45 years was considered as early menopausal status and after 50 years as late menopausal. The mean of age and mean length of time in years, since menopause for all participants were 61.55±10.7 and 14.13±11.17, respectively. Recorded data indicated 67% were early menopausal women and 33% were late menopausal women. Results: Results indicated that feeling tired or lacking in energy and dizziness (83%) and depression (82%) have worst impact on QOL among all factors, respectively. The next prevalent symptoms included hot flashes (64%), osteoporosis (72%), sweating at night (63%), concentration problem (75%), irritability (63%), feeling tense (77%), headache (66%). However, less frequent factors included breathing problems (33%), loss of feeling (31%), coherent heart disease (13%) and type2 diabetics (9%). Conclusion: Our study indicates that early menopausal women are facing more physiological problems than the late menopausal women on their QOL. (J Menopausal Med 2016;22:39-46)

Theorizing Length of Relationship as Moderator of Key Account Management Performance- Repeat Order Link

Kawsar Ahmmed,Nor Azila Mohd Noor 국제융합경영학회 2014 융합경영연구 Vol.2 No.1

In today’s highly competitive and fast changing business environment, key account management-a supplier company initiated relationship marketing approach targeted at the most important customers to solve their complex requirements with special treatment that eventually ensures both parties’ financial and nonfinancial objectives- has regarded as a strategic weapon of many companies’ sales efforts to manage their strategically important customers. On the basis of the existing studies, this research introduces a theoretical model highlighting the hypothetical relationship between key account management performance and repeat order. In addition, moderating effect of length of relationship on the relationship between key account management performance and repeat order is also introduced. We theorize the conditions under which key account management performance influences key customer repeat order behavior as well as the influence of moderating variable of length of relationship on key account management performance-repeat order relationship. Theoretical and managerial implications are provided along with suggestions to isolate a platform for future empirical research.

Antecedents and Consequence of Key Account Management Success: a Review, Framework and Research Agenda

Kawsar Ahmmed,Nor Azila Mohd,Noor 강원대학교 경영연구소 2013 Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Vol.4 No.1

This paper traces the issue of key account management success which has regarded as a pressing concern of many companies’ sales efforts at the organizational business-to-business context. Based on the extensive review of extant literatures, we introduced a theoretical framework that covers the antecedents and consequence of key account management success. We theorized the conditions under which organizational and relational factors influence the success of key account management approach. We endeavor to develop research propositions for each construct and provide necessary suggestions to isolate a platform for future empirical research. Beyond this span, an improved understanding from this framework will help developing policies for successful key account management approach.

Prottoy Middleware Platform for Smart Object Systems

Fahim Kawsar,Kaori Fujinami,Tatsuo Nakajima 보안공학연구지원센터 2008 International Journal of Smart Home Vol.2 No.3

This paper presents a middleware platform, Prottoy for the development of smart object systems. A smart object has some specific characteristics e.g., augmentation variation, perceptual feedback provision, push-pull model, etc. In addition a smart object could be stand-alone, co-operative or associated with an external application. Generic pervasive middlewares have no clean support for accommodating all these characteristics of smart objects. Prottoy is designed by carefully observing the characteristics of smart objects and it has taken a core-cloud approach to represent them digitally. A smart object’s common functional features are combined together as a generic core and a collection of supplementary service profiles represents the cloud that can be plugged-in atop the core. Application developers are offered unified interfaces to interact bi-directionally (senseactuate) with the underlying smart objects isolating access issues completely regardless of the smart objects' types and properties. Prottoy's hybrid architecture allows a smart object to be stand-alone, co-operative or a part of an application. The benefit of our approach is twofold. Firstly, the core-cloud artefact framework provides a lucid representation of smart object that accommodates its specific features leading to a generic smart object model. Secondly, Prottoy allows rapid development of smart object systems by providing unified interfaces with high-level abstractions. In this paper, we discuss the background, technical details and the qualitative evaluation of Prottoy.

Early Detection of Lung Cancer Risk Using Data Mining

Ahmed, Kawsar,Abdullah-Al-Emran, Abdullah-Al-Emran,Jesmin, Tasnuba,Mukti, Roushney Fatima,Rahman, Md. Zamilur,Ahmed, Farzana Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention 2013 Asian Pacific journal of cancer prevention Vol.14 No.1

Background: Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide Therefore, identification of genetic as well as environmental factors is very important in developing novel methods of lung cancer prevention. However, this is a multi-layered problem. Therefore a lung cancer risk prediction system is here proposed which is easy, cost effective and time saving. Materials and Methods: Initially 400 cancer and non-cancer patients' data were collected from different diagnostic centres, pre-processed and clustered using a K-means clustering algorithm for identifying relevant and non-relevant data. Next significant frequent patterns are discovered using AprioriTid and a decision tree algorithm. Results: Finally using the significant pattern prediction tools for a lung cancer prediction system were developed. This lung cancer risk prediction system should prove helpful in detection of a person's predisposition for lung cancer. Conclusions: Most of people of Bangladesh do not even know they have lung cancer and the majority of cases are diagnosed at late stages when cure is impossible. Therefore early prediction of lung cancer should play a pivotal role in the diagnosis process and for an effective preventive strategy.