Simulating Discount-Pricing Strategies for the GSM-Mobile Market

The article analyzes network effects on the German GSM mobile telephony market. The authors use an ACE-approach to examine how a new competitor can successfully gain ground in the market with a discount-pricing strategy. In particular they study the impact of several elements of a mobile phone contract like on-net-, landline- or off-net-fees on the competitor’s market share. It turns out that it is possible to successfully enter the market with a prepaid contract using a discount-pricing strategy where the single fees only marginally exceed the termination rates, which have to be transferred to foreign network operators. Accepted after one revision by Prof. Dr. Buhl. This article is also available in German in print and via http://www.wirtschaftsinformatik.de: Schade S, Frey T, Mahmoud N (2009) Simulation von Diskontpreis-Strategien im GSM-Mobilfunkmarkt. WIRTSCHAFTSINFORMATIK. doi: 10.1007/11576-009-0178-6.     

Services and the Single Market

The single market programme of the EU covers services as one of the four fundamental freedoms. While the legislative effort has been impressive and positive results evident in areas such as mobile telephony and low cost air transport, the impact on many services has been weak as yet. This holds in particular true for a group of services that share specific characteristics such as the overriding importance of quality, the existence of asymmetric information and the need to produce in a tailor-made way. The combination of these characteristics and trends such as globalisation, the usage of ICT and enlargement, calls for a fresh view on the functioning of the single market. An effective future single market is based on a bottom up approach, integrating single market policies with other policies, starting from the functioning of national markets and being less uniform in nature.     

Innovation in retail internationalisation: Tesco in the USA

This paper examines the market entry of the UK's largest retailer (Tesco) into the USA. Tesco's launch of a new brand – Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Markets – in virgin territory is a bold move, notwithstanding the firm's considerable success with its overseas investment strategy (which within ten years has resulted in more than 50% of the firm's operating space being outside its ‘home’ market). The paper contextualises the study by taking a historical view of innovation in the retail industry, which reveals that generally - and certainly for the most part of the twentieth century – innovations have dominantly flowed from the US to the UK. The paper suggests that Tesco's US experiment is unusual both in terms of the innovatory aspects of its market entry and the reversal in that conventional direction of knowledge transfer. The Fresh & Easy story is then examined in terms of ten ‘dimensions of innovation’ involved in the market entry. The paper concludes by drawing out from these ‘dimensions of innovation’ a number of important issues for management scholarship raised by the study, stressing the need to incorporate insights from a wider social science literature.     

Co-creation of value at the bottom of the pyramid: Analysing Bangladeshi farmers' use of mobile telephony

Existing literature offers scant evidence of how BoP (bottom of the pyramid) consumers with limited product knowledge and interaction with product designers and marketers can co-create value. The current paper addresses this issue by analysing Bangladeshi farmers' use of mobile telephony. The findings suggest the value-in-use is facilitated or inhibited by product features, socio-economic practices, individuals' capabilities and the appropriation of mobile telephony. The paper demonstrates how BoP customers can co-create value with or without direct support from marketers and offers a theoretical framework for the co-creation of value and contributes to the current understanding of BoP market dynamics.     

基于产业链整合的移动支付商业模式的构建与创新

随着移动支付技术的快速发展和应用范围的不断扩大,我国移动支付产业也进入到培育商业模式的关键时期。由于移动支付产业链的复杂性和多样性,运营模式尚不统一。本文提出,应当构建起银行、运营商、第三方支付机构三方结盟的模式,从而多方共赢。     

Declining first-mover advantage in mobile telecommunications markets

First-mover advantage may be more remarkable in the inherently oligopolistic mobile telecommunications market. This study evaluates the impact of market experience and competition on market share and profitability in mobile markets. Specifically, the study estimates regression equations for market share and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) service margin as a proxy for profitability, relying on a panel of mobile network operator (MNO) data from 27 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development member states for the period 1998–2009. The empirical results demonstrate that market experience (relative time in the market) exerted a clearly positive effect on the market share and the EBITDA service margin for MNOs. On the other hand, this first-mover advantage declines over time with accumulated competition experience, especially in the latter half of the 2000s.     

Mobile Telephony and Economic Growth in Africa

This article analyzes the impact of mobile telephony on economic growth in Africa. It uses panel data on 36 African countries over the period 1995 to 2010, and estimates an econometric model made up of two equations–one expressing output as a function of mobile telephony, and the other, a demand function, reflecting the possibility of a reverse causation from the former to the latter. Given the importance of telecommunication in the development process and the dire state of fixed‐line telephones in Africa, the explosive growth in mobile telephony on the continent could potentially contribute to addressing some of the important challenges it faces today, including the lack of robust economic growth and of poverty alleviation. Employing panel data estimation procedures, this study finds evidence that supports the view that increased mobile penetration contributes to the growth rate of real gross domestic product (GDP). However, the increase in mobile telephone use was not found to have been significantly influenced by GDP growth. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Deutschlands Position in der Weltwirtschaft

In recent years, German exports have increased at a slower pace than before the global financial crisis. Moreover, the growth contribution of foreign trade was significantly smaller. This article examines how German exports have developed since the turn of the millennium, both globally and in specific regions, and relative to world trade. The results are threefold. A look at the most important trade partners reveals that, firstly, the European economies continue to absorb the largest part of German exports. Asia and the US follow as the largest sales markets outside Europe. Secondly, the German world market share is mainly driven by the development of Germany’s market position in the EU and the US; China and the remaining Asian countries play a subordinated role in this respect. Thirdly, a comparison between the growth rates of German exports and world trade is not always useful for statements about the change in the German global market share.     

Exchange Rate Pass-Through and the Role of Market Shares

This paper examines the effects of changing market shares on exchange rate pass-through to US import prices. Based on a static model of imperfect competition, I predict that a country with a larger share of a host’s import market will have lower pass-through than its competitors. Using highly disaggregated data on US imports, I implement rolling regressions to calculate unique quarterly values of pass-through for specific goods from each exporting country. These values are compared across market shares, indicating a general trend of decreasing pass-through for larger shares. Most specifically, as predicted by the model, the country holding the largest share of the market has significantly lower pass-through than its competitors. The negative relationship between pass-through and market share holds across most categories of goods, most notably the larger categories of imports. Lastly, I show the market share effect is stronger following larger fluctuations in the exchange rate, particularly after large dollar appreciations.     

First-mover and incumbency advantages in mobile telecommunications

The present study analyzes data of 191 mobile network operators from 49 countries in order to identify the extent of first-mover and incumbency advantages. A large number of new market entry opportunities and involvement of many previous state-owned monopolists have characterized the mobile telecommunication services industry over the last 20 years. The results of this study show that both, first-movers and incumbents in the mobile telecommunication services industry are more successful regarding market share and operational financial results than later entrants. A pioneer position and incumbency are only loosely connected, with success originating both from first-mover and incumbency advantages. Moreover, the timing effect is stronger and more sustainable for market share compared to operating margin, indicating that followers successfully compensate part of their market share disadvantages with strategies like SIM-only tariffs, outsourcing and alternative distribution approaches. In addition, the typical rank-based measurement of timing position reveals somewhat stronger associations than a variable that is using the time elapsed between commercial launches of pioneers and followers.     

How may the nature of family firms explain the decisions concerning international diversification?

This study explores how the ownership structure of family firms gives these organizations a distinctive nature in terms of international diversification. We argue that the heterogeneity of family firms may cause variations in the degree of international diversification among these types of businesses. We have studied three factors related to ownership structure: the degree of family ownership and the type and degree of ownership of the second largest shareholder (another family or a financial company). The empirical evidence is provided by a sample of European and Asian family firms (2004–2008). Our results show that the degree of family ownership has a negative impact on the degree of international diversification. However, the presence and ownership share of a financial company as the second largest shareholder in a family firm favor this diversification. This study also reveals the importance of the financial company as a second owner in the preference family firms show for growth in international markets.     

Consumers’ preference modeling to price bundle offers in the telecommunications industry: a game with competition among operators

Network operators are merging their services, such as fixed or wireless telephony, internet or television, into single offers, called bundles. It is essential to understand consumers’ preferences to define the most profitable bundles, with their associated prices, especially in the fierce competitive current market. We start by defining a random linear utility model and then, analyze the competition between an integrated operator and new entrants proposing substitutable services. Each operator ignores the consumers’ reservation prices for his offers and has to deal with uncertainties about the marketing strategies of competitors, due to potential different size and cost structure. A two-level game is introduced and solved by backward induction. In the second level, the operators determine their optimal offer prices for each possible combination of marketing strategies while the consumers select their most profitable purchasing processes; the natural framework is that of Bayesian game theory. Finally at the top level, knowing the outcome of the other level, the operators identify which marketing strategy to use between market share expansion, segment targeting or multi-level price discrimination, to maximize their expected utilities conditionally to their private informations.     

Managing market entry in Oman: The case of Nawras

This article focuses on the challenges faced by the mobile operator Nawras when entering the Omani telecom market in 2005. The source material consists of auto‐ethnographic accounts of two European managers who worked at Nawras during the launch period. The result is a rich and highly personal account of market‐entry challenges and managerial efforts to overcome such challenges in a newly deregulated Gulf country. The Nawras story suggests that entrants into a Gulf market such as Oman need a great deal of flexibility and improvisation capabilities in order to become successful. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Young Entrepreneurs in the Mobile Telephony Sector in Ghana: From Necessities to Aspirations

Despite increasing research interest in the mobile telephony sector, only a few studies have devoted attention to informal businesses in the sector. Using qualitative field data collected on young mobile telephony entrepreneurs in Accra, this paper argues that despite the businesses being ‘informal’, they cannot be dismissed as ‘necessity’ enterprises unworthy of support. On the contrary, many young entrepreneurs have aspirations which are influencing their desire to stay in business. The article thus questions the bifurcated nature of entrepreneurial motivations, using the burgeoning mobile telephony sector as a case study, and draws out implications for policy support for youth-run businesses in the informal sector generally.     

基于制度理论的企业非相关多元化与绩效关系研究

传统战略管理理论认为非相关多元化对企业绩效有负向影响。然而在中国这样的转型经济国家,由于制度的缺失导致市场有效性相对较弱,非相关多元化可以使企业形成内部市场从而弥补制度的欠缺,通过对中国500强企业的实证研究也证明非相关多元化与企业绩效正相关。由于中国民营企业的非相关多元化程度较国有企业更高,民营企业非相关多元化与企业绩效的关系也较国有企业更为显著。     

Hedonic study on mobile telephony market in France: pricing–quality strategies

This paper provides a hedonic price analysis of mobile telephony services for the French market. We adopt the hedonic price theory to examine the relationship between changes in price levels and the evolution of the market for mobile telecommunications industry in France from June 1996 to December 2002. The results support the hypothesis that there was price competition between service providers in the earlier period. There were also large differences in prices set by individual service providers which, however, did not persist over time. Next, using estimates from hedonic-price equation for each operator separately, we found that the three-mobile providers seemed to adopt similar pricing strategies over the period 1996–2002. Quality indexes are also calculated. The results of a comparative analysis indicate that in the period 2000–2002 neither the quality nor the price indexes show significant changes for the three mobile providers. These results are of some consequence, especially after the French competition authority decision in December 2005 which stated the existence of collusion on the mobile market during the same period (2000–2002). Surprisingly, our primer results supporting the assumption of potential collusive conduct in France are not re-affirmed when comparing the French and German markets.     

Mobile Telephony,Financial Inclusion and Inclusive Growth

ABSTRACT

The paper employs the multipurpose nature of mobile telephony to investigate its welfare implications using a large sample of households in Ghana. We use seemingly unrelated probit and instrumental variable procedure to test for two related issues: First, we investigate whether mobile telephony promotes pro-poor development by helping households to efficiently allocate consumption and navigate out of poverty. Second, we analyze whether access to a broad array of financial services enhances the capacity of households to live worthwhile lives. The results show that mobile penetration and financial inclusion significantly reduce the probability of a household becoming poor and increase per capita household consumption of food and non-food items. Our results show that the welfare benefits of mobile telephony and financial inclusion are not more pronounced in female-headed households. These insights serve as useful guide for government and other stakeholders who are looking for avenues to improve livelihoods.     

俞永福 下一站——美国

<正>拥有了3亿多季度活跃用户,掌握着手机浏览器这一平台级移动互联网入口产品,UCWebCEO俞永福有了更大的梦想:向全球市场进军。美国将是UCCEO俞永福的下一个目标。他曾是年薪百万元的联想投资副总裁,在中国企业家"教父"柳传志身边工作过6年。而在出人意料地加入UC之后,他用了6年时间,把产品"卖"到了全世界。     

Geographic export diversification: Determinants and their link with export performance

This study examines company‐specific factors that may help explain the choice of an export‐market strategy and explores how the selected export strategy contributes to explaining company's export performance (XP). Concentrating on a specific area within a broad spectrum of export behavior analysis has enabled us to examine these factors in greater depth. The results of our research, which was carried out using a sample comprising Spanish exporting companies, show a firm's size, a firm's age, and a firm's greater foreign ownership in its share capital are all determining factors for adopting a strategy geared to export‐market diversification. A greater level of investment in R&D and greater international commitment are also important in this regard. We suggest reinforcing these two factors because there is evidence of a better XP among firms that have a wider range of foreign markets.