Quality, Competitors and Competitiveness

How can we measure a product's competitiveness? How does product quality affect competitiveness? To measure product competitiveness involves two interconnected stages. First, to choose a perspective from which to compare the product with its competitors. Second, to decide which are the product's main competitors. One perspective we could take is that of the product's ideal consumer – that is, the person most likely to buy. This perspective offers some fascinating insights into measuring product competitiveness and identifving competitors, and can help us understand why a nation may be losing its share of the market.     

FOCUS: Moral Responsibilities to Competitors

Are there any moral restraints on how a company should behave towards its competitors, or is all fair in love, war - and business? Dr Higginson is Director of the Ridley Hall Foundation, Cambridge CB3 9HG. The Foundation is concerned with the application of Christian faith and values in business, and conducts research, seminars, publications and speaking engagements to that end. This paper was first presented at a Seminar on Teaching Business Ethics held at London Business School on Friday, 10 March, 1995.     

The Congruence of Successful International Competitors:

This paper examines the marketing strategies and organization of a matched triad of American, British and Japanese companies competing in the UK market. The sample includes leading companies in industries identified as being under threat by the EC. The relative success of business was measured and strategies identified using multiple depth interviews with senior managers within the businesses. The strategies of successful companies were found to be similar and not dependent on their country of origin or industrial sector. The most successful companies had a balance of marketing, innovation, planning and entrepeneurial orientation. More of these successful firms were Japanese than American, and very few were British.     

开元之战

<正>还来不及细数2010年的战果,2011年的新年钟声就已经敲响。新年伊始,破旧迎新,一切都应有个崭新的开始,商家们自然也希望在新年开个好头,于是,抖擞精神,各显神通。元旦刚到,节日气息逐渐浓郁,各行各业的顾客争     

Blissful Insularity: When Brands are Judged in Isolation from Competitors

The need to evaluate a single brand in isolation, without explicit comparisons to competitors, is ubiquitous in consumer judgment because competitors are often not readily apparent. Although consumers routinely make such judgments, in this paper we show that when a brand is judged in isolation, the judgment is often overly favorable. Moreover, we explore when and why this tendency occurs. Data from 259 participants across 3 experiments that considered very different product categories, and that were conducted with student and adult consumer samples, converge to show that; (1) isolated brand evaluations on average are characterized by a favorableness bias, (2) this bias results from consumers' selective processing of information about the focal brand, (3) favorableness bias is attenuated if context leads consumers to consider alternatives to a salient focal brand, and (4) the isolated brand judgments of experts are much better calibrated than are those of novices.     

中国及主要竞争国家产品质量在美国市场上的对比分析

基于跨国比较视角,考察了中国与其主要出口竞争国家的产品质量在美国市场上竞争力及其变化趋势。在将中国出口产品与金砖其它国家、日本、韩国、加拿大、墨西哥、德国和英国等经济体的出口质量进行对比时,发现中国出口产品整体绝对质量虽然上升速度加快,但与日本、加拿大等国在美国市场上的绝对质量均值还存在着一定差距。另外,中国整体相对质量升级速度较低,而日本、英国、加拿大等发达国家却一直保持着较高的相对出口产品质量。     

Vendor assessment for partners in supply

In 1992, as the purchasing function was beginning to take a more valued role within the business operations of Crosfield Electronics Limited, with a subsequently increased impact on profitability, it was time to review how we could change and what we could change, in order to increase purchasing's contribution to the bottom line of the business. While incremental improvements were already a part of the basic culture (both in the purchasing function and the business), a step change in the purchasing function's core operations was required to lead us from being a mediocre contributor to becoming a major contributor. The basic concepts of supplier partnerships were explored through a number of media: conferences, technical literature, and benchmarking practical experiences. In reviewing both the benefits and the pitfalls of supplier partnerships we recognized that we had to change our basic operating methodologies in order to manage and eliminate the risks and to develop and reap the potential benefits. A culture change was required within the purchasing function at Crosfield. This paper describes our approach, methodology and implementation, the barriers and results that we found, and the benefits and opportunities for improvement.     

Systemic Cooperative Actions among Competitors: the Case of a Furniture Cluster in Brazil

The purpose of this article is to describe cooperation practices observed in competitors companies in a furniture cluster in Brazil. The literature refers to it as coopetition. The research method was the multiple case study. The main research technique was the semi-structured interviews with practitioners of the cluster. The study created a theoretical framework for cooperative practices in industrial clusters formed by four types of practices: logistics, marketing and sales, formation of the workforce, and innovation and technology. The study investigates these four types of cooperation in five large companies that compete in the same market, the anchor companies of the cluster. The only entirely complied type of collaboration is the formation of the workforce of the cluster. In the other practices, cooperation involving competitors is lower than reported in the literature. The main reason for this low cooperation is excessive rivalry and mutual distrust in the cluster, and competition by differentiation, which partially prevent the gain of scale provided by cooperative actions.     

Shell, China＇s CNPC sign Qatar gas deal

China, the world＇s secondbiggest fuel user, is seeking overseas partners to help build fourth- generation nuclear reactors to meet rising clean-energy demand.     

Working partners: Career-committed mothers and their husbands

A sampling of more than 1,700 career-committed mothers and their husbands indicates that seven out of ten find it difficult to pursue both career and motherhood, but more than three-fourths are determined to make the combination work. Seven out of ten husbands are offering significant help, and what once was known as “women's work” is becoming shared “home work.”     

国际饭店与餐馆协会和Jamendo职业音乐网站达成伙伴关系

国际饭店与餐馆协会和Jamendo音乐网站近日宣布他们结成伙伴关系,这将会让国际饭店与餐馆协会的成员酒店分享到音乐的简单快乐。Jamendo音乐网站将为协会30万家成员酒店和800万家餐馆提供专属的背景音乐。Jamendo.com网站发起于2009年,是世界上领先的免费、合法的音乐下载网站。网站提供有八种语言的服务,是世界上最大的创作共用许可音乐平台,涵盖来自世界各地9500位艺术家的超过2万张专辑。     

Goal achievement and satisfaction of joint venture partners

Joint venturing is recommended to avoid some of the obstacles to successful business venturing, such as capability limitations and organizational resistance. However, the high dissolution rates for joint ventures suggest a need to learn how to utilize this cooperative strategy more effectively. Two frequently reported problem areas in joint venturing are unrealistic corporate expectations and inadequate planning. Thus, this study sought to examine the impact of strategic intent on joint venture success as measured by partner goal achievement and satisfaction.A review of the literature on strategic goals and goal consensus suggested that two variables are likely to affect joint venture performance: the number of partner goals pursued and the overlap in partners' goals. The type of goals pursued may also affect performance; that is, some goals may be more achievable through joint venturing than are other goals.The purpose of this research was two-fold: (1) to empirically explore the relative importance of a variety of partner goals for their joint ventures, and (2) to determine if goal disparity, and the number and type of goals pursued affected joint venture success. This approach draws attention to the expectations of partners rather than to the venture itself, the traditional focus in entrepreneurship.The hypotheses and exploratory propositions were tested using data from U.S. firms involved in manufacturing joint ventures. A categorization of partner goals was developed through factor analysis, in which five categories of goals emerged: knowledge transfer, market power, financial performance, efficiency, and financial structure. Partners were found to have pursued multiple goals simultaneously, with knowledge transfer and market goals being most frequently rated as critically important. These findings suggest the need to expand traditional performance measures to account for the diverse and nonfinancial nature of partner goals.When examined separately, it was found that a large goal set facilitated partner goal achievement and satisfaction, and that an overlap in partners' goals promoted partner satisfaction. The large goal set was argued to be necessary in the volatile environments that are often attractive for joint venturing. A large goal set reflects adaptation to environmental change and facilitates prudent strategy selection by subjecting alternatives to multiple goal hurdles. The overlap in partners' goals reflects a meshing of individual partner goals and helps to minimize conflict, which could stall strategy development and drain resources. However, when an integrated model was developed from multiple regression findings, the overlap in partners' goals became a moderator variable. This model exposed the negative as well as the positive effects of the overlap in partners' goals.Analysis further suggested that the joint venture strategy may be better suited to achieving efficiency goals than financial goals. Possible explanations for the difficulty in achieving financial goals include: insufficient time (or short lifespan of the joint venture), the complex structure inherent in joint ventures, and the possibility of disagreement between the partners about how the financial goals should be achieved. On the other hand, efficiency goals, such as vertical integration and economies of scale, require expansion or extension of operations and thus fit well with the pooling of skills and resources that are characteristic of joint venturing. Further, both partners contribute to and gain from efficiency goals, unlike with market access or knowledge transfer goals where one firm contributes more than it gains or vice versa for that particular goal.Additional analysis revealed that the goal types explained more variance in partner goal achievement and satisfaction than did the size of goal sets or the extent of overlap in partners' goals. Taken in combination, the various aspects of partners' goals explained 26% of the variance in partner goal achievement and 38% of the variance in partner satisfaction. When partner goal achievement was included in the multiple regression model for partner satisfaction, the amount of explained variance increased to 69%. The results suggest that a partner firm may be able to significantly enhance its chances of judging a joint venture to be successful if its goals focus on efficiency rather than revenues and profits, if it has a relatively large goal set, and if it concentrates on achieving the set of stated goals.     

德商寻求中国伙伴

“亚洲第一优先”：这是即将于2004年12月7-8日在德国法兰克福举行的“21世纪出口”洽谈与博览会的标识语,这次会展由英国利德博览会集团公司（Reed Exhibitions）组织,会展的一大目标是让德国出口公司和中国潜在合作伙伴共聚一堂,本次会展的组织者,当地一家跨国集团老板汉斯’盖恩说,“中国投资促进机构、咨询机构、物流提供商或制造商部在德国寻找合作伙伴。     

Guilty by Association: The Perils of Celebrity Endorsement for Endorsed Brands and their Direct Competitors

The objective of the research presented in this article is to examine the possibility that the adverse effects on consumer brand attitudes engendered by the involvement of a celebrity endorser in a negative event may spill over brands of the same product category (i.e., competitors). The results of an experimental study with 165 adult consumers showed that a scandal involving an athlete endorser had a negative impact not only on the attitude toward the endorsed brand, but also on the attitude toward competitor brands. This suggests that brands strongly associated with one sport may be vulnerable in the context of a scandal falling upon a celebrity athlete endorsing one of their direct competitors.     

Comovement in GDP trends and cycles among trading partners

It has long been recognized that business cycle comovement is greater between countries that trade more intensively with one another. However, nations face shocks to both the cyclical and trend components of their GDP series. Contrary to the result for cyclical fluctuations, we find comovement of shocks to the trend component of real GDP is weaker among countries that trade more intensively with one another. We simulate changes in ten-year output growth correlations corresponding to the estimated effects of trade and show that the impact of trade on trend comovement is quantitatively more important than its effect on cyclical comovement.     

Comovement in GDP trends and cycles among trading partners

It has long been recognized that business cycle comovement is greater between countries that trade more intensively with one another. However, nations face shocks to both the cyclical and trend components of their GDP series. Contrary to the result for cyclical fluctuations, we find comovement of shocks to the trend component of real GDP is weaker among countries that trade more intensively with one another. We simulate changes in ten-year output growth correlations corresponding to the estimated effects of trade and show that the impact of trade on trend comovement is quantitatively more important than its effect on cyclical comovement.     

Unemployment and relative labor market institutions between trading partners

This paper contributes to the literature that highlights the role of trading partners' institutions for a country's unemployment rate. The objective is to study whether the results established in the minimum wage-setting of Davis (1998) hold when unemployment is driven by search frictions. This paper finds that relative labor market institutions matter for equilibrium unemployment as they generate comparative advantages, but there are two main differences with Davis. With North-North trade, unemployment decreases in the low-regulation country. When South is brought into the picture, low-regulation North is not insulated, and unemployment increases in both developed countries as a result of specialization.