Assessing resources, logistics service capabilities, innovation capabilities and the performance of container shipping services in Taiwan

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationships between resource, logistics service capability, innovation capability and the performance of Taiwanese container shipping service firms based on the resource-based view (RBV). A structural equation modeling (SEM) approach was employed to test the research hypotheses. Results indicated that resource had a significant positive effect on logistics service capabilities and innovation capabilities. In addition, the findings indicated that logistics service capability had a positive effect on the performance of container shipping service firms. However, resource and innovation capability were not found to have significantly positive effects on firms’ performance. Theoretical and managerial implications of the research findings for container shipping service firms are discussed.     

Quality infomediation in search markets

We examine the effects of informational intermediation by a third party ‘infomediary’ in a search model with heterogeneous seller qualities and asymmetric information. The infomediary earns revenue by selling a list of accredited sellers (a ‘guidebook’) to buyers and selling accreditations to sellers. We show that such information always improves welfare but can hurt informed buyers (as well as the uninformed) if it is not sufficiently informative about seller qualities. The model also provides a number of insights concerning the private and social incentives to create information, and the determinants and nature of demand for infomediation services by buyers and sellers.     

Misuse of the ‘modified’ t statistic in regulatory telecommunications

Since the enactment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 (1996), extensive expert testimony has justified use of the ‘modified’ t statistic (Brownie et al. Biometrics 46 (1990) 259–266) for performing two-sample hypothesis tests on Bell companies’ CLEC and ILEC performance measurement data. This paper demonstrates how key statistical claims made about the ‘modified’ t in this setting are false, leading not only to incorrect inferences as it currently is being used, but also to the possible undermining of the primary stated objective of the Act—the promotion of competition in the newly deregulated local telephone service markets. A simulation study provides strong evidence for the use of several other easily-implemented statistical procedures in this context; they should be useful in other settings as well.     

Managing reverse logistics to enhance sustainability of industrial marketing

In this paper, a sustainable industrial marketing framework of latest requirement of green and sustainable operation is proposed. When literatures in strategy, marketing and operation have provided insight about the efficiency of reverse logistics and business value for the customer, the interrelationship is still under explored. This raises the question whether manufacturers could determine ecological friendly strategies to address their customer's environmental conscious needs and design the suitable solution to strike the balance between ecology and economics. Based on the case study of a medical product manufacturer, this study addresses this question by investigating how manufacturers identify the problem of reverse logistics; design and develop of sustainable product and service by enhancing the efficiency of operations, and market competencies that add value to their customers' business processes. Within the strategy for designing for effective reverse logistics, these findings contribute to understand the use of information system and technology for reverse logistics to enhance the customer's business process and provide value-added process for customer retention.     

Satellite broadcasting to homes: Service options,policy issues and costs

Comsat's proposal to launch a direct-to-home broadcast satellite (DBS) service has stimulated a vigorous policy debate on a wide range of issues. The authors examine briefly the economic and technological factors that seem to favour new DBS services, suggest a panoply of services that could be provided via DBS, and relate the policy issues to specific potential services. They also present a financial analysis of a hypothetical firm's DBS pay-TV service, enabling them to suggest the possible shape of a new DBS industry.     

Opportunism and menus of two-part tariffs

We show that a menu of two-part tariffs can solve the opportunism problem identified by McAfee and Schwartz (1994) [McAfee, R.P., Schwartz, M., 1994. Opportunism in multilateral vertical contracting: nondiscrimination, exclusivity, and uniformity. American Economic Review, 84 210–230] in vertical games with sequential contracting, provided the sunk costs incurred by the first firm to invest are not too large. If the seller were to engage in opportunism with a second firm in an attempt to shift rents from the first firm, the first firm could mitigate the dissipation of its rents by choosing from its menu of contract options the tariff with the higher marginal price and lower fixed fee. The prospect of the first firm's choosing the ‘wrong’ two-part tariff in the event of opportunism is, in some environments, sufficient to make opportunism unprofitable for the seller.     

The effect of household wealth on the adoption of improved maize varieties in Zambia

Production and price risks that could render input use unprofitable sometimes prevent rural households from benefiting from input technological change. The household’s ability to cope with such risks and hence benefit from input technological change is often positively related to its wealth or stock of productive assets. Empirical evidence, however, suggests a non-linear relationship between wealth and adoption of new agricultural technologies so that within a rural community, households on the lower wealth continuum behave differently from those on the higher level. Using farm level data collected from 300 randomly selected households in three districts of Zambia in 2004/2005 crop season, this paper first stratifies households into poorly- and well-endowed households based on their access to productive assets and estimates separate double-hurdle models for the adoption of improved, high yielding maize (IHYM) varieties for each group. The results show that factors influencing the adoption and use intensity of IHYM varieties differ between the two groups. This draws attention to the need for recommending wealth group-specific interventions to increase the adoption and use intensity of such varieties and their subsequent impacts on food security and general livelihoods of the households. The explicit testing for the possibility that differences in household wealth affect the way in which other variables influence adoption decisions is the paper’s unique contribution to the adoption literature.     

Fertilizer market liberalization and private retail trade in Kenya

This paper examined the factors influencing the entry and sales decision of private traders in fertilizer retail trade in a liberalized market using survey data from Kenya. A two-stage econometric model is used to examine traders’ entry and sales decision. The results provide insights into factors that are associated with private retail traders’ entry and sales decisions in an era of liberalized fertilizer markets. It shows substantial entry into fertilizer retail trade following market liberalization. Relatively limited investments in trading assets and equipment are predicted to hold back firm expansion. Implications drawn from the study provide insights into likely research and policy interventions.     

Lead time reduction through ICT application in the footwear industry: A case study

This paper analyses some relevant supply chain management issues for Italian firms operating in the footwear industry. The analysis is carried out on representative firms, located in a specialized regional district with a high density of shoe manufacturing companies. Companies were experiencing substantial problems in the management of supplier relationships, as well as in the commercial/distributive channel. Specifically, synchronization issues in the logistics pipeline were weakening firms’ lead time performances.The case study presented strives to highlight the critical points in the set up of the supply chain management programme, as well as the main results obtained. The case study also shows that the adoption of tailored Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools has the potential to save significant lead time in supplier/buyer relationships. From the case study, generalities can be drawn and transferred to the footwear industry.     

Communication technology transfer : Impact on economic development

International technology transfer is defined and described from the economics perspective, with emphasis on costs. Its role in economic development is discussed, including its impact on social values and the question of ‘appropriate’ technology for developing countries. Examples are provided for communications technology, particularly in the areas of telecommunications and satellite communications.     

From TDF to international data services

TDF is a live subject, constrained by old confusions and worn out issues. Under a suggested new term ‘international data services’, which applies itself directly to the problems involved, this paper examines the current environment and addresses the pressing issues. The author discards matters that are no longer applicable to examine those that are neglected, and he stresses the need for a broad international agreement on pressing issues.     

Australian consumer attitudes to health claim – food product compatibility for functional foods

This study with Australian consumers investigated how appealing different health claims combined with particular food carriers were to Australian consumers, and compared the results of a similar study with Dutch consumers. 149 shoppers considered up to 30 different food concepts, rating how ‘attractive’, ‘believable’, and ‘new and different’ they found each concept and their ‘intention to try’. Each variable was significantly related to intention to try (p < 0.001) and together explained 56% of the intention score. Claims and carriers independently had a significant effect on ratings of attractiveness and intention to try but, unlike the Dutch study, the carrier was a more important predictor of intention to purchase than the claim. Implications for regulation of health claims for food are discussed.     

Sunk costs, windows of profit opportunities, and the dynamics of entry

This article adds two elements to a standard model of monopolistic competition: First, the number of potential entrants is limited in each period and increases only over time. Second, the potential entrants differ with respect to the consumers’ valuation of the variant they could offer. The resulting simple model exhibits a rich dynamic structure covering the product life cycle, a path dependent equilibrium and the traditional textbook case of entry. The welfare analysis confirms the view that there cannot be too much entry. Even entry of ‘inefficient’ firms improves welfare.     

A business and ICT architecture for a logistics city

The city of Melbourne, Australia, stands to benefit from achieving the logistics city status. The planning theme of a logistics city is designed around achieving efficiencies and long term sustainability out of the legacy of dispersed groups of intensive “logistics activity areas”. This is not to re-invent solutions particularly in Melbourne, where the existence of a legacy logistics infrastructure and ad hoc growth has resulted in the business architecture that is constantly in the “catch-up” mode. This is seen as a unique opportunity for developing business models to meet the future challenges of the growth of trade, freight movement and maintaining economic, environmental and urban sustainability. Enterprise architecture will enable attention to be focused on the development of a collaborative business model, which will help to achieve efficiencies in view of the complex set of economic, social and environmental parameters. The logistics city business architecture responds to the shift to a services economy, which is generating different patterns of workforce travel to ensure good access to skilled workers, to other services, to business clients and to national and international markets.     

The impact of economic reforms on R&D by the Indian seed industry

Declining support for public research and advances in technology and new forms of legal protection have induced more private agricultural research. In developing countries, this has sparked a debate about appropriate policies regarding private research. In this context, we examine empirically the consequences of reforms in India’s seed policies which loosened various restrictions on the private sector. The period since the reforms has shown a remarkable increase in R & D effort and an increase in the number of private technology suppliers . We argue these changes were largely due to policy reforms.     

Understanding early diffusion of digital wireless phones

There is increasing empirical evidence from academic research and strong recognition among policymakers that wide diffusion and innovative uses of digital wireless phones are important sources of a country's economic growth and social development. Adopters do not necessarily adopt digital wireless phones at the same time though. Although the diffusion of innovation theory suggests five adopter categories according to their degree of innovativeness, this approach lacks theoretical justification and, more importantly, it makes a critical assumption of a normal distribution of adopters that needs empirical validation. This study investigates the basis for defining different adopter categories and factors that affect adoption decisions of digital wireless phones using the aggregate data on 46 developed and developing countries from 1992 to 2002. This paper utilizes a two-step analysis approach. The first step evaluates the distribution of adopters over time using various diffusion models. The second step uses iterative survival analysis to examine the patterns of influential factors on adoption behavior by evaluating the survival models using a 1% increment of cumulative penetration as the targeted events. The results of the best-fitting diffusion models indicate that digital wireless phone adoption patterns did not follow a normal distribution and did not map exactly into Rogers’ five adopter categories. The results from the iterative survival analysis suggest four adopter categories (innovators, early adopters, breakthrough adopters, and mainstream adopters) among the first 30% of adopters. Different factors are observed to influence various adopter categories’ adoption decisions. The results offer insights to support telecommunication operators to develop strategies to attract these adopters. It also supports policymakers’ efforts to design effective regulatory frameworks.     

The establishment of industrial branding through dyadic logistics partnership success (LPS): The case of the Malaysian automotive and logistics industry

Logistics partnerships across dyadic and triadic relationship networks have been the basis of extensive research in the extant literature. It is well understood that competitive advantage within logistics and distribution and within supply chains are driven by value-adding aspects of not only the core competencies of each tier in the network, but also via tangential supporting factors. It is also well understood that there is a strong relationship between logistics and distribution and marketing functions, particularly in product-based organisations. In addition to deepening our understanding of how successful partnerships throughout the source–make–deliver continuum can be optimised, this research also seeks to identify how a supporting element in terms of industrial branding and marketing can lead to relational sustainability. Hence, this paper outlines the relationship between logistics partnership success (LPS) factors and the inherent link to industrial branding establishment and business sustainability within the Malaysian automotive industry (specifically, car manufacturers). Adopting a multiple case study approach, findings suggest that there is a strong association between logistics service performance (LSP) provided by the third party logistics provider (TPLP) and the development and support of a mutual brand image for both the TPLP and the car manufacturer. We contribute to the extant literature on logistics partnership and industrial branding through linking LSP with the creation and maintenance of an industrial branding strategy for both parties in the context of the Malaysian automotive industry.     

Supply chain integration and performance: The effects of long-term relationships, information technology and sharing, and logistics integration

Supply chain integration is widely considered by both practitioners and researchers a vital contributor to supply chain performance. The two key flows in such relationships are material and information. Previous studies have addressed information integration and material (logistics) integration in separate studies. In this paper, we investigate the integrations of both information and material flows between supply chain partners and their effect on operational performance. Specifically, we examine the role of long-term supplier relationship as the driver of the integration. Using data from 232 Australian firms, we find that logistics integration has a significant effect on operations performance. Information technology capabilities and information sharing both have significant effects on logistics integration. Furthermore, long-term supplier relationships have both direct and indirect significant effects on performance; the indirect effect via the effect on information integration and logistics integration.     

财务信息技术与现代物流的融合创新与思考

大型煤炭企业现代物流正由传统物流向现代物流转变,财务管理作为大型煤炭企业现代物流不可缺少的管理系统,也在物流转型期间不断更新。现代物流是企业最后也是最有希望降低成本、提高利润的环节,同时也需要企业财务管理部门提供更强有力的支撑。指出了财务信息技术与大型煤炭企业现代物流业融合发展的必要性,提出了以财务信息技术推进大型煤炭企业现代物流发展的3项措施,即建立统一的物流财务信息平台、发展第三方物流企业和加强物流专门人才的培养与培训。     

Flexibility and quality in logistics and relationships

This research focuses on supplier-buyer relationships in a distribution channel. It uses a contingency theory to claim that, under different environmental conditions, logistics flexibility and relationship flexibility for a focal firm (a manufacturer in this study) will have distinct effects on logistics service quality (when treated as a controllable mediator) and the firm's satisfaction in its relationship with its key downstream account. Using data from a survey of manufacturers in China, it uses structural equation modeling to test the main effects and moderated regression together with moderated path analysis to examine the contingent effects of environmental uncertainty. The results show that, as distinctive capabilities, both logistics flexibility and relationship flexibility have significant positive effects on the level of logistics service quality that the manufacturer offers, which, in turn, enhance how much it values and is satisfied with its relationship with its key account. However, the direct effect of logistics flexibility on relationship satisfaction is stronger under an uncertain environment, while the direct and total effect of relationship flexibility on relationship satisfaction is stronger under a stable environment.