Developing Efficient Supply Chain Links Using Web Services

ABSTRACT

The concept of Web services has attracted a lot of attention during the last few years. Web services allow a distributed system that is made up of many different computers to communicate over the familiar network, the Internet, to form one system. The communication standards and protocols used in Web services are universally accepted open standards. Web services are designed for machine-consumption that expose a Web-accessible program interface. This kind of service can be requested by any type of client application–Web-based, desktop or mobile. The authors of this paper provide an overview of Web services and discuss the potential of improving supply chain processes through the use of Web services.     

Promotional strategies on the World Wide Web

Business managers that use the Internet as a major component of their marketing communications strategy face great challenges. The popularity of the Internet with consumers and businesses drives thousands of firms to promote their products and services using World Wide Web (known hereinafter as the Web) sites. Technology has created a competitive arena that enables exposure to consumers worldwide, who can now easily communicate with each other. This potential for exposure has dramatic implications for any business considering the Internet as a promotional vehicle. The growing popularity of Internet sites, where users may discuss their feelings about companies and products, allows an increased scrutiny of all aspects of business. If companies do not deal effectively with this scrutiny, brand equity is vulnerable to erosion. Therefore, all contingencies inherent in promotional efforts on the Internet must be weighed carefully. Businesses which examine the ramifications of on-line exposure are better able to create and maintain a positive Internet presence which facilitates effective Web site promotion. Planning, implementation and control must be integrated into the on-line marketing communications of businesses, regardless of business size.     

中国分地区进出口贸易与经济增长关系研究

从1981～2004年的统计数据看,我国同亚洲、非洲、欧洲、拉丁美洲、北美洲和大洋洲地区的进出口贸易与我国经济增长之间具有内在关系。我国同各地区的进出口贸易对经济增长的贡献存在明显差异。就长期而言,我国对欧洲地区的出口贸易对经济增长的贡献率最大,进口方面则是从北美洲的进口对我国经济增长的贡献率最大。这一结论为我国贸易政策的分地区调整提供了实证依据。     

Determinants of industry performance: region vs. country effects in knowledge-intensive service industries

Recent variance decomposition studies have started trying to determine the relative importance of industry and firm on profitability, but little research has been done to investigate exactly how much the difference in regions and countries could explain the variation in industry performance. This study explores the sources of knowledge-intensive service industry performance by comparing the relative importance of region, country, and industry effects. Using a variance components model fitted to a new data set, we find that while the country effects dominate industry performance around the world and in all regions (North America, South America, West Europe, East Europe, and Asia), industry effects too play a role in developing the worldwide knowledge-intensive service industries. We also find that regional effects have little significant influence on industry performance.     

印度对中国改革开放的借鉴

世界经济中心和重心由欧洲转移到美国,然后继续向西-亚太地区移动,这是经济史角度的观察和判断。而在未来新的经济中心构造过程中,中国和印度成为最有潜力的两极,对于中印谁将领先的讨论日渐激烈。印度是公认的继中国之后又一个经济改革成功的例子。本文尝试对中印两国的改革开放过程加以对比,对两国未来的发展做出预测和建议。     

Interfacing with Amazon Web Services Using Java and .NET: A Comparative Study

ABSTRACT

Web service has been touted by many as the next big thing in IT in recent years. It is a promising technology that opens up new avenues for software developers and permits businesses to explore new markets and forge new business partnerships. Amazon.com is one such business that is using Web services to improve sales of its products. This research activity involves developing a client application that consumes the Amazon Web services. The client application has been developed using the two competing environments, .NET and Java, and the experience of this activity has been thoroughly documented. The relative strengths and weaknesses of the two architectures are compared and contrasted and recommendations are provided for beginning and experienced developers wishing to get started with Web services.     

Advertising Controversial Products in the Asia Pacific: What Makes Them Offensive?

The advertising of controversial products/services and the use of controversial images to "cut through the clutter" in the marketplace appears to be increasing around the world. However, apart from the general ethical issue regarding the deliberate use of controversial/offensive images for public viewing that may offend some people, it is important to determine what makes a controversial advertisement offensive? A questionnaire was distributed to 1014 students across four different countries in the Asia Pacific region to determine what type of products are seen as offensive and the reasons they are offensive. The results present some important implications for international marketers.     

Export Credit Agency Activities in Developing Countries

International trade has been considered one of the main reasons for wealth increase in many countries. In the past, more developed countries were able to reach their current prevailing economic conditions mainly by exporting to less developed countries, especially through capital goods and by financing local projects. More recently, the pendulum has swung in the direction of the developing world, especially toward China and South Korea in East Asia, Brazil and Argentina in Latin America, and Hungary and Turkey in Europe. All of these countries have their particular financial and macro-economic pros and cons, but they have in common an export-driven approach. As exportation requires financing, the capabilities of banking systems and institutionalized export credit agencies have become increasingly important since they enhance these countries’ ability to take part in world trade. In this study, individual country facts and financial systems are analyzed in economic terms, and the support of the export credit agencies will also be evaluated.     

The Evolving Global Wine Market

Fifty years ago, a few countries in Western Europe accounted for virtually all world exports of wine and most of its production and consumption. This has changed dramatically: now every continent has major producing and/or consuming countries. Much of this change has been driven by technology and science, resulting in increasing quality, bringing new countries into the ranks of global winemakers, and increasing the productivity of traditional countries. Much of it has also been driven by economics, in particular the rising income and changing tastes of consumers throughout the world, and by public policy that has created surpluses in Europe. This paper shows the magnitudes of the shifts in consumption and production and discusses the economic and social factors that drive them.     

A study and implementation of business-to-business e-commerce with the OBI standard

Internet based e-commerce has flourished in the business-to-consumer world. The lack of well-accepted standards is hindering the success in providing business-to-business e-commerce solutions. Open Buying on the Internet, or OBI, standard is one of the recent efforts in bringing business-to-business e-commerce into corporate purchasing. OBI is a common standard, based on the existing industry standards, that guides trading partners in implementing interoperable purchasing systems on the Internet. In this paper, we present a field study project on how companies may use OBI. We also survey the additional desirable services expected from managers who may use OBI-based e-commerce systems. We then describe a prototype implementation to enable the OBI capability in the IBM Net.Commerce merchant server software. With our implementation, existing merchant servers can be easily augmented to adopt the OBI standard for business-to-business e-commerce. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Regional development of German foreign trade in the 1990s

With a double-digit growth rate, Germany's export sector was again very successful last year. While the industrialised countries continue to be Germany's main trading partners, growth in the past few years has been stimulated by trade with the booming regions of Southeast Asia and Central and Eastern Europe as well as with Central and South America. The current crisis in Southeast Asia has led to an abrupt slowdown in the region's economic development. What will be the consequences for global trade in general and for German foreign trade in particular?     

Allocating Capacity Among Quality Differentiated Products: Evidence From Airline Industry

Prior analytical literature has shown that the capacity-allocation decisions depend on the quality differentiation and the resource consumptions of products. However, there has been no empirical investigation on this topic in vertically differentiated markets. In this article, the authors investigate the airline industry in three regions of the world; Asia Pacific, Europe, Middle East, and Africa, and North America. They explore how the customer perceived quality and the resource-consumption differences of the products may affect the capacity-allocation decisions. They find that both attributes have a significant impact in all the regions, yet at a different scale in each region.     

E-Commerce Patterns in South Asia: A Look Beyond Economics

ABSTRACT

Conflicting and complex forces are shaping the diffusion patterns of the Internet and e-commerce in South Asia. Drawing upon the literature on institutional theory, we explore the drivers and inhibitors of the Internet in South Asian countries. We examine the influence of the three pillars of institutions (Scott, 1995) on the digital world of South Asia. The paper discusses how regulatory, normative, and cognitive institution–such as laws, relationships, culture, and habit–have shaped the diffusion patterns of the Internet and e-commerce in South Asia.     

Interview with Jean‐Philippe Courtois,CEO, Microsoft EMEA

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software, services, and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. One of the most successful corporations in the world by any standard of measurement, Microsoft EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) is highly committed to a vast and particularly varied region, with more than 12,000 employees and over 60 local offices delivering products and services in 139 countries across the region. Gabriele Suder interviewed Jean‐Philippe Courtois, CEO of Microsoft EMEA and senior vice president in the Microsoft Corporation, about the company's case at the European Commission, and about the significance of the European business environment to international operations. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Creating Retail Web Sites for Different Consumer Shopping Orientations

Abstract

As the number of Web sites continues to expand and consumers increase their use of the Internet, companies must find ways to convert visitors to buyers and boost return visits to their sites. Most sources that offer guidelines for developing Web sites assume that all Internet shoppers are the same. An examination of customers' shopping orientations would, however, indicate that this is unlikely to be the case. To develop a more effective Web site, it is important to consider the shopping orientations of the target market. This article describes five different shopping orientations and offers ways to address these differences when creating a Web site.     

Web Services for Negotiation and Bargaining in Electronic Markets: Design Requirements, Proof-of-Concepts, and Potential Applications to e-Procurement

Information Systems researchers continue to develop Web services hoping that, in a near future, these services will be widely offered in the e-marketplace, using a Web-based protocol that is universally adopted for posting, locating and invoking available services. Posting services does not, however, necessarily lead to market transactions, and a number of brokering activities are needed to facilitate trade. These include, but are not limited to, service discovery and ranking, price negotiation and contract preparation. We propose a set of Web services that support the process of negotiation and bargaining to facilitate the matching of supply and demand of Web services. As a market broker, these web services would help (a) discover the supply/demand of web services in e-marketplaces; (b) find the most appropriate available service for a specific request; (c) facilitate services be modified if needed to satisfy user's needs; (d) arbitrate the pricing mechanism with the recourse to bargaining whenever necessary; and (e) generate a contract. As a proof of concept, we illustrate the potential use of Web services for negotiation and bargaining in e-procurement.     

Globalization and regionalization: Toward the shaping of a tripolar world economy?

Trade relations today are undergoing more fundamental change than at any time since immediately after World War II. The rules of the game in international economic relations have changed dramatically, particularly since the early 1980s. The multilateral trading system is facing a severe test, with an apparent tilting of the preferences of its major players in favor of subglobal arrangements. At the same time, a growing number of developing countries are embracing unilateral trade liberalization. This article presents how new developments in international business and trade affect international relations and the evolution of a new world order. In doing this, the process of globalization and economic integration, the building of economic blocs in Europe and North America, and the response from Asia will be examined. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Founding entrepreneur’s dilemma: Stay or exit the firm following an acquisition? An international comparison

Many differences exist between founders that decide to maintain ownership of their firm and those that surrender ownership. Few studies have addressed what founders decide to do once their firm has been acquired, and even fewer have looked at this phenomenon from an international point of view. By utilizing Prospect Theory, we address this research question through a database of 6,271 founding entrepreneurs from North America, Europe, and Asia. We compare and contrast founders who choose to remain within the company with those that exit and move on to a different activity after their enterprise has been acquired. Our empirical analysis suggests that founders’ tenure, entrepreneurial experience, education level, international experience, and their world region of residence, together with the firm’s stock exchange listing, act as significant antecedents of the founding entrepreneur’s choice to exit the firm after acquisition.     

Openness to Foreign Direct Investment in Services: An International Comparative Analysis

This paper quantifies and analyses the extent of restrictions on inward foreign direct investment (FDI) in the service sector in developed and developing countries. Services account for an increasing share of global FDI. Recognition of the economic benefits of FDI clashes with nationalistic economic, political and national security concerns about foreign takeover of ‘strategic’ sectors, such as telecommunications, finance and transport. Consequently, almost all countries impose restrictions on FDI in services. Several different types of restrictions are considered: limitations on foreign ownership, screening or notification procedures, management restrictions and operational restrictions. These restrictions on FDI are computed at the industry level and then aggregated into a single measure for the service sector as a whole for 23 developed and 50 developing countries. Notwithstanding the worldwide trend towards liberalisation of restrictions, there remain substantial disparities between regions and individual countries in the severity of restrictions on inward FDI in services. The lowest restriction scores are in Europe and Latin America, whereas East Asia, South Asia and the Middle East have the highest levels of restrictions. The evolution over time of FDI restrictions is also presented for developed countries over the period 1981–2005, showing liberalisation in all countries, especially since the early 1990s, although to varying extents across countries. The severity of restrictions also differs considerably by sector, with electricity, telecommunications, transport and finance most restricted. The paper also finds a strong negative correlation of restrictiveness with inward stocks of FDI in services, suggesting that restrictions impede FDI.     

不同市场经济类型国家的公司治理结构模式比较及启示

着重分析和比较美、日、德等发达市场经济国家,东南亚和韩国等新兴市场经济国家、东欧和俄罗斯等转轨经济国家的股权结构和公司治理结构模式,并指出其各自特点及形成原因。在此基础上提出了我国选择有效的公司治理结构模式应该遵循的一些原则及其目标模式。