Using CRM to Model Firm Performance in a Business-to-Business Market

Customer relationship management (CRM) is the widely accepted approach for gathering, examining, understanding and translating information related to customers into managerial action. CRM is investigated in the context of new product performance (NPP). CRM enhances NPP as well as firm performance. This study investigates the impact of CRM on NPP through the moderation of top management support and an innovative culture, as well as the impact of CRM on firm performance through the mediation of NPP. A questionnaire survey is used for data collection from marketing managers of 159 firms in Pakistan in the B-to-B market. Hypotheses were tested using SEM in SMART PLS. This research shows that CRM directly affects firm performance, while NPP partially mediates the relationship of CRM and firm performance. These findings have significant implications for the practitioner. This study delivers insights to managers and academicians about the role of CRM in enhancing NPP and improving firm performance. In general, the study provides new insights into CRM by integrating top management support and an innovative culture. The research extends our understanding that top management support and innovative culture do not moderate the relationship of CRM with new product performance in a B-to-B context.     

Higher order game dynamics

Continuous-time game dynamics are typically first order systems where payoffs determine the growth rate of the players? strategy shares. In this paper, we investigate what happens beyond first order by viewing payoffs as higher order forces of change, specifying e.g. the acceleration of the players? evolution instead of its velocity (a viewpoint which emerges naturally when it comes to aggregating empirical data of past instances of play). To that end, we derive a wide class of higher order game dynamics, generalizing first order imitative dynamics, and, in particular, the replicator dynamics. We show that strictly dominated strategies become extinct in n-th order payoff-monotonic dynamics n   orders as fast as in the corresponding first order dynamics; furthermore, in stark contrast to first order, weakly dominated strategies also become extinct for n?2$n?2$. All in all, higher order payoff-monotonic dynamics lead to the elimination of weakly dominated strategies, followed by the iterated deletion of strictly dominated strategies, thus providing a dynamic justification of the well-known epistemic rationalizability process of Dekel and Fudenberg [7]. Finally, we also establish a higher order analogue of the folk theorem of evolutionary game theory, and we show that convergence to strict equilibria in n-th order dynamics is n orders as fast as in first order.     

Predictability and interpretability of hybrid link-level crash frequency models for urban arterials compared to cluster-based and general negative binomial regression models

Machine learning (ML) techniques have higher prediction accuracy compared to conventional statistical methods for crash frequency modelling. However, their black-box nature limits the interpretability. The objective of this research is to combine both ML and statistical methods to develop hybrid link-level crash frequency models with high predictability and interpretability. For this purpose, M5′ model trees method (M5′) is introduced and applied to classify the crash data and then calibrate a model for each homogenous class. The data for 1134 and 345 randomly selected links on urban arterials in the city of Charlotte, North Carolina was used to develop and validate models, respectively. The outputs from the hybrid approach are compared with the outputs from cluster-based negative binomial regression (NBR) and general NBR models. Findings indicate that M5' has high predictability and is very reliable to interpret the role of different attributes on crash frequency compared to other developed models.     

Impact of oil prices on firm stock return: industry-wise analysis

The study investigates the impact of oil prices on firm-level stock returns in case of Pakistan over the period 1998–2014, as this relationship is neglected by the previous literature. By using the panel data estimation, the results of full sample indicate significant positive effect of oil price changes on firm stock returns in the same period, whereas the lagged oil price changes have significant negative effect on firms’ stock return. Moreover, the industry-level analysis also confirms the similar findings; results indicate significant positive impact of oil price on firms’ stock return in full sample, textile, chemical and miscellaneous industry, while the lagged oil price changes negatively affect the stock returns of full sample and all the industries except tobacco, jute and vanaspati industries. The study confirms that rise in oil price transfers a positive signal in the stock market that boosts the firm-level stock returns in Pakistan. In contrast to the negative shocks, the stock returns are significantly affected by the positive oil price shocks.     

Continuous-time games of timing

We address the question of existence of equilibrium in general timing games with complete information. Under weak assumptions, any two-player timing game has a Markov subgame perfect -equilibrium, for each >0. This result is tight. For some classes of games (symmetric games, games with cumulative payoffs), stronger existence results are established.