Property development firms IPOs in Brazil： Was there overpricing or not？

Between September 2005 and October 2007, representative companies of the Brazilian residential real estate market adopted a strategy intended to increase their investment capacity by Initial Public Offer （IPO）. The setting at that time was favorable for constructing residential real estate designed for the middle class, in view of two main factors： First, in 2005, a restructuring of the Brazilian finance system had relaxed requirements needed to receive financing for the purchase of residential property; Second, there was substantial demand in the middle class market because most developers had been focusing on the upper class market in order to guarantee the sale resources in the production phase. Thus, it was necessary to enhance the investment capacity of the real estate companies to attend the middle-class demand. These two factors, associated with a favorable outlook for the Brazilian, as well as the global economy, encouraged those representative companies to rapidly increase their investment capacity by IPO in a short time. The focus of this article is to analyze the quality of the investments in the stock of these real estate companies （21 offers were taken into account in the analysis）. In order to identify what these companies＇ expectations were and how they supported their decisions to enter BOVESPA with their designated prices and amounts, correlating offers against the BOVESPA Index （market index） were also analyzed. The results allow concluding that these offers were not supported by validated procedures of pricing, but rather were just speculative offers, even though we do take into account the investment grade granted to the Brazilian economy within the period concerned in our analysis.     

The Performance of Agricultural Market Advisory Services in Corn and Soybeans

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the performance of market advisory services for the 1995–2003 corn and soybean crops. A new database from the Agricultural Market Advisory Services (AgMAS) Project is used in the evaluation. This database should not be subject to survivorship and hindsight biases. Overall, the results provide little evidence that advisory services as a group outperform market benchmarks, particularly after considering risk. The evidence is more positive versus the farmer benchmarks, even after taking risk into account. Results also suggest that it is difficult to predict the pricing performance of advisory services across crop-years.     

Relationship portfolios and capability development: Cases from the moulds industry

A number of authors within business marketing and purchasing, have stressed that the heterogeneity of relationships in customer and supplier portfolios are a source of managerial problems and opportunities. This paper looks at the use and development of firms’ capabilities in the context of relationship portfolios. Two case studies about producers of moulds are used to illustrate how their contrasting trajectories in terms of degree of specialisation can be related to the variety found and sought in their portfolios of relationships. Our study suggests that portfolio interdependencies are best understood in the context of the development of idiosyncratic capabilities, which include interpretations and experiences in using and influencing that variety.     

Users' satisfaction evolution of a metropolitan transit system in a context of economic downturn

As the worldwide financial crisis is directly connected to the transport sector, public transport systems become a central player to support economic recovery. Transit services are facing a number of challenges as a consequence of this severe crisis. However, each attribute characterizing transit services has evolved in a different manner, thereby raising some chances and opportunities at some specific areas. This study investigates the evolution of service quality on a metropolitan transit system under economic crisis conditions. We used data from three customer satisfaction surveys (2008, 2011, and 2014) conducted at the bus transit service of the metropolitan area of Granada (Spain). Principal component analysis (PCA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) approaches were applied. PCA results show that the attributes describing the service were grouped into two levels of dimensions according to their impact on users' overall satisfaction (Transport Service Factors and Comfort and Convenience Factors). Subsequently, following a competing model strategy, the existing relationships between users' satisfaction and perception of service quality dimensions were ascertained. Finally, three SEMs were calibrated, one for each year under study, and were subjected to a multigroup analysis to test for equivalence among the three models. The outcomes show that fare of the ticket has lost importance as the financial crisis has become more noticeable and that Transport Service Factors had lower influence and users' satisfaction in 2011, when downturn was more intense.     

Green Product Development and Product Portfolio Management: Empirical Evidence from an Emerging Economy

Few studies have explored the relationship between green products development (GPD) and product portfolio management (PPM). When considering evidence from emerging economies, the knowledge gap is even deeper. Consequently, the objective of this work is to analyze how green and traditional practices of new product development (NPD) influence product portfolio and NPD performance. In addition, we explore how GPD opens new markets and technology opportunities. The empirical evidence is based on a sample of firms that are developing products and belong to innovative industrial sectors in Brazil. In general, the framework developed and tested in this research indicates the following: (i) the adoption of GPD practices significantly influences product portfolio performance; (ii) the adoption of GPD practices tends to generate positive results with regard to obtaining technological and market opportunities; (iii) the adoption of traditional PPM practices influences the dependent factors. Unexpectedly, correlations between a firm's size or age and its performance were not confirmed. This is the first empirical evidence relating GPD, PPM, and market and technology opportunities in Brazil. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment