Linking Marketing and Operations
研究了营销活动导致运营流程变化、增加客户服务时间，进而通过排队等待时间影响客户忠诚度和保留率，并提出了一个结合运营分析和财务模型的框架来评估营销计划的净效果。
In theory, it is a simple proposition: Make customers wait longer, and fewer of them will come back. But actual practice is complicated. Marketing develops a new product, service, affinity plan, and so on. This new marketing initiative causes changes in operational processes that increase customer service times. When waiting lines form, a small increase in service times for each customer magnifies into a significant increase in waiting time for the customer at the end of the line. The increase in waiting times causes a reduction in customer loyalty, which leads to lower customer retention, and hence, repurchases. Consequently, the marketing initiative has costs as well as benefits. Blockbuster, Inc. has developed a model that combines operational process analysis, waiting line simulation, real versus perceived waiting times, a customer loyalty model, and a financial model to find the bottom-line impact from operational changes of new marketing programs.