【正文】 enience measures the amount of shopping time and effort that needs to be out by the customer. Higher convenience is offered by making the product available in more number of places. As an example some household furniture manufacturers offer their products through department store, mass merchandisers and other independent department stores whereas Ethen Allen offers its products only at its own Allen retail stores.Lot size refers to the number of units that can be purchased in each transaction. A customer who wish to buy larger quantity of items for example 12 or 24 rolls of paper towels to get a lower unit price can get it from Sam’s Club and Costco. However they can buy single rolls from grocery or convenient stores. The basic tradeoff in such purchases is between the unit price and the storage or maintenance cost of such volumes.Waiting time is the amount if time a customer has to wait between ordering and receiving products. The lower the waiting time, the higher is the level of service. Buying products from retail or grocery stores has no waiting time however if someone wants to order from a catalog or via the Internet, he has to wait for the product. Although higher waiting time is associated with inconvenience, customers are rewarded in the form of lower prices.Product variety refers to the different assortments or variety offered to the consumers and endusers. Supermarkets offer a large variety of items, whereas the warehouse stores offer a much less variety. And convenience stores offer even lesser variety.3. What is meant by availability in logistics customer service? Provide examples of the different ways to monitor a firm’s performance in availability.Availability is the capacity to have inventory when desired by a customer. As simple as this may seem, it is not at all unmon for an organization to expend considerable time, money, and effort to generate customer demand and then fail to have product available to meet customer requirements. The traditional practice in organizations is to stock inventory in anticipation of customer orders. Availability is based on three performance measures: Stockout Frequency, Fill Rate, and Orders Shipped Complete.Stockout Frequency: For example, a study of retail supermarkets revealed that at any point in time during a week, the average supermarket is out of stock of approximately 8 percent of the items planned to be on the shelves. It is important to note, however, that a stockout does not actually occur until a customer desires a product. The aggregation of all stockouts across all products is an indicator of how well a firm is positioned to provide basic service mitments in product availability. While it does not consider that some products may be more critical in terms of availability than others, it is the starting point in thinking about inventory availability.Fill Rate: For example, if a customer wants 100 units of an item and only 97 are available, the fill rate is 97 percent. To effectively consider fill rate, the typical procedure is to evaluate performance over time to incIude multiple customer orders. Thus, fill rate performance can be evaluated for a specific customer, product, or for any bination of customers, products, or business segments. Fill rate can be used to differentiate the level of service to be offered on specific products. In the earlier example, if all 100 products ordered were critical to a customer, then a fill rate of 97 percent could result in a stockout at the customer39。s plant or warehouse and severely disrupt the customer39。s operations. Imagine an assembly line scheduled to produce 100 automobiles that receives only 97 of its required brake assemblies. In situations where some of the items are not critical to performance, a fill rate of 97 percent may be acceptable. The customer may accept a back order or be willing to reorder the short items at a later time. Fill rate strategies need to consider customer requirements for products.Orders Shipped Complete: The most exacting measure of performance in product availability is orders shipped plete. It views having everything that a customer orders as the standard of acceptable performance. Failure to provide even one item on a customer39。s order results in that order being recorded as zero in terms of plete shipment.4. Compare and contrast speed, consistency, and flexibility as optional performance activities. In some situations,is one activity more critical than others?Performance cycle speed is the elapsed time form when a customer establishes a need to order until the product is delivered and is ready for customer is an essential ingredient in many justintime and quickresponse logistical strategies as fast performance cycles reduce customer inventory requirements.Order cycle consistency is measured by the number of times that actual cycles meet the time planned for logistical managers place greater value on consistency because it directly impacts a customer’s ability to plan and perform is own issue of consistency is fundamental to effective logistics operations as it is being increasingly mon for customers to actually specify a desired date and even specify a delivery appointment when placing orders.Flexibility involves a firm’s ability to acmodate special situations and unusual or unexpected customer requests.In some situations,adjustments can be implemented to prevent or acmodate special situations,thereby preventing one may be more critical than others.5. Why is perfect order service so difficult to achieve?An order should be delivered plete,delivered on time,at the right location,in perfect condition,with plete and accurate of these individual elements must ply with customer ,plete delivery means all product the customer originally requested,on time means at the customer’s specified date and time.6. Using the ten categories of customer expectations in Table 31, develop your own examples of how customers might ev