Price matching and product differentiation strategies considering showrooming

Showrooming, a phenomenon in which customers use brick-and-mortar stores to assess products and then purchase them from online retailers (o-retailers) for lower prices, is considered a great threat to traditional retailers (t-retailers). To combat showrooming, many t-retailers have executed price matching which enables customers to pay o-retailers' lower prices for the identical product. To avoid direct competition with t-retailers who execute price matching, many o-retailers have begun to sell differentiated products from t-retailers, which weakens the information advantage to customers from practicing showrooming. Motivated by these observations, we construct a duopoly game, where a t-retailer and an o-retailer sell products in a same category, to study the profitabilities of product differentiation and price matching in the context of showrooming. The results show that in the scenario without price matching, the o-retailer is likely to benefit from product differentiation only when the o-retailer's differentiated product is more popular with customers than the t-retailer's product. However, in the price matching scenario, the o-retailer also has the opportunity to benefit from product differentiation when the o-retailer's differentiated product is less popular with customers than the t-retailer's product, and product differentiation can be a win-win strategy for the two retailers under certain conditions. Considering the o-retailer's product differentiation decision, the t-retailer is only likely to execute price matching if the non-digital attributes of the product category sold by two retailers are not very obvious.     

Growth,Distribution, and External Constraints: A Post-Kaleckian Model Applied to Brazil

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this research is to analyze whether the Brazilian economy behaved under a wage-led or profit-led regime between 1960 and 2011, considering a Post-Kaleckian model in a context of external constraints. The time span is limited by data availability (i.e., 2011). To answer the question of whether the Brazilian economy works under a wage-led or profit-led regime, we propose a simple Post-Kaleckian model. The model suggests that a profit-led regime is more probable for Brazil. Moreover, a wage-led regime occurs when a balance of payments constrained growth model is taken into consideration. Likewise, the real exchange rate has a positive impact on economic growth through the export channel. This result is a novelty in the recent literature about the relationship between real exchange rate and economic growth within a Post-Kaleckian model. The Brazilian economy was chosen as it is one of the biggest economies in Latin America.     

国内外众创经济研究述评——基于文献计量与扎根理论分析

立足众创时代特征,运用文献计量对1999—2018年间1701篇国内外众创文献挖掘分析,探寻众创经济特点主题,探析众创发展知识基础,探求众创研究演进脉络,并获取众创经济视域下核心语句和高频词语,运用扎根理论对抽取的126篇的众创文献样本进行三级编码,进而构建众创研究的整合性理论框架,探究众创研究的系统性发展图景。研究表明,众创理论假说大量问世,众创文献热点主题包括六类,众创经济研究存在两种演进趋势,众创经济治理系统理论具有三个维度;未来应关注众创主体思辨性、众创要素系统性和众创技术本土化等专题研究。     

Doing more and doing better are two different entities: Different patterns of family control and environmental performance

Family firms bear two types of agency costs, including type I and type II agency problems, in corporate environmental practices: (1) Outside executives at family firms hesitate to engage in environmental strategies, which can lead to drops in profits; (2) Controlling families employ opportunistically environmental management to achieve their interests. We argue that a primary cause for the agency problems lies on ineffective internal corporate governance at family firms, which can cause loss of managerial (or power) balance between outside executives and family executives. Our findings show that family firms with ownership and strategic control (FSC), which family executives and outside executives monitor and constrain each other, can achieve the highest environmental performance. Moreover, external controls, including product market competition and provincial environmental regulations, substitute effective internal control of FSC. The environmental performance premium of FSC is more prevalent when the production market competition is lower. Family firms with ownership, operational, and strategic control (FOSC) can achieve higher environmental performance within a province with more stringent environmental regulations.     

CEO hometown identity and firm green innovation

Drawn on the upper echelons theory, this study investigates how chief executive officer (CEO) hometown identity drives firm green innovation. We propose that CEO hometown identity has a positive impact on a firm's green innovation performance. Furthermore, we explore the moderating role of managerial discretion determined by organizational and environmental factors (i.e., institutional ownership and market complexity). We propose that institutional ownership negatively moderates the positive relationship between CEO hometown identity and green innovation, but market complexity plays a positive moderating role. Using Chinese publicly listed firms from 2002 to 2016 in heavily polluting industries, our findings support these hypotheses. Our research contributes to the upper echelons theory and corporate social responsibility literature and has substantial practical implications.     

Feeling trusted and taking-charge behaviour: An internal branding perspective based on self-categorization theory

Although the mechanism of internal branding is related to both organizational factors and employees’ personal factors, the existing research mainly focuses on organizational factors. Thus, the literature on the formation and function of internal branding from the employee perspective is scarce. In this multisource study, we applied self-categorization theory to test the relationships among employees’ feeling trusted, perceived insider status, self-efficacy and taking-charge behaviour within the framework of internal branding. Data from 169 employee-supervisor dyads from the hotel industry in Northwest China revealed that employees’ perception of feeling trusted is an important factor that causes them to internalize their hotel employer’s brand and categorize themselves as “insiders” who regard the hotel brand as part of themselves and present brand-aligned behaviour to achieve brand success. In addition, employee self-efficacy is an important boundary-level variable that facilitates the transformation of brand internalization to brand-aligned behaviour. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

交通运输行业超限超载与黑车治理困境及突围——来自赏金猎人制度的借鉴

交通治理现代化是交通强国建设的重要支撑。交通运输行业超限超载与黑车现象屡禁不止的现实困境,一方面源于早期制度设计阶段遗留的逻辑障碍,一方面源于目前缺乏行之有效的规则来对此类问题进行限制和制约。尽管各级政府对黑车治理高度重视并采取了多种措施,但依然存在黑车辨识难、管理成本高、效率低等问题,尚未达到我国现有施政路线的要求。鉴于此,可抓住管理型政府向服务型政府转型的契机,遵循合法、合理、高效、经济的原则,通过比较分析美国赏金猎人制度来形成制度改革的借鉴。赏金猎人模式作为国外长期摸索得到的经验,有很多值得参考之处。现阶段,赏金猎人模式在我国已经具备试行的基础条件,不仅能够开拓视野,为当前我国面临的交通运输行业治理问题提供制度层面的启示,而且更为重要的是,能够为解决我国超限超载与黑车治理问题提供新的思路。当然,为避免简单借鉴或全盘照搬而导致的水土不服等落地性难题,需要围绕黑车治理困境和超限超载运输这两个具象背景,对不同国别法律解释上的差异加以创新并实现本地化,使之在立法层面稳固的前提下展示其优越性。     

Exploring the motivations to use online meal delivery platforms: Before and during quarantine

Online meal delivery platforms (OMDPs), like UberEats, have received more attention since quarantine was established to prevent the spread of COVID-19. The research into antecedents of satisfaction and continuous usage intention for OMDPs, in general, is under researched. The current study compared the antecedents of satisfaction before quarantine to the antecedents during quarantine through the lens of Expectation-Confirmation Theory. Through multiple regression analyses, the researchers found that before quarantine, sharing economy ethos, price-value, food quality, ease of use and confirmation of beliefs had a significant impact on satisfaction while during quarantine, food quality, service speed, ease of use, and confirmation of beliefs were significant. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.     

集成管理理论在建设项目全过程造价咨询业务中的应用研究

建筑企业为了进一步扩大盈利空间,在项目运行期间于造价管理工作中引入集成管理理论,采用全过程造价咨询管控方式,提升项目成本管控能力。论文考虑到造价管理对建筑企业的重要性,着重介绍集成管理理论在全过程造价咨询领域的应用方式。