The information society in California: Social factors influencing its emergence

The authors identify three elements which will influence California's future. First, demographic shifts in the state's population have altered California's ethnic and cultural foundations. Second, the state educational system does not seem prepared to train larger numbers for information work, especially members of its growing ethnic population. Third, almost half the state's workforce is now employed in information-oriented work, whether in the industrial, service, or agricultural sectors. The authors demonstrate that the interaction of these elements has profound implications for California's development.     

More effective sales force reporting

As the need for marketing intelligence by sales and marketing managers grows more essential, field sales personnel are increasingly being asked to gather and report information. Many executives realize the potential value of using salespersons to supply information useful to management decision making. The sales force is familiar with their territories, their customers' needs and sources of information inside customer organizations, their competitors' marketing activities, and trends in product acceptance. The incremental costs and effort required are low compared to other research methods, since information can be submitted within the context of a regular call report system [2, 6, 8].But salespersons have been found to be inadequate and uncooperative reporters in many instances. Numerous field salespersons believe that reporting infringes on their primary responsibility of selling, and furthermore that management apparently doesn't make use of the resulting information anyway. Thus, while salespersons have access to a wealth of marketing information of potentially great value to the firm, they are often inadequate, unreliable, and unmotivated reporters [4, 5].This article reports the results of a study designed to investigate what management practices contribute to, or detract from, effective reporting of marketing information by salespersons. Current practices in reporting are noted and some recommendations are made to help management improve sales force reporting.     

Critical path method for introducing an industrial product

New product development continues to be a vital evil for most organizations. Considerable attention has been directed toward this function in the consumer goods field but relatively little research has been directed toward this critical task for producers of industrial goods. Industrial goods marketing managers seem to agree that error at the announcement/ introduction phase of the new product development process is responsible for the greatest number of new product failures. This article suggests use of the critical path method to ensure success at this crucial stage.     

Zero-tolerance for genetic pollution: Rice farming,pharm rice,and the risks of coexistence in California

California’s Rice Certification Act (RCA) requires specific planting and handling protocols for rice, including genetically engineered (GE) rice that could pose commercial risks to rice growers. Based on interviews with growers, marketers, activists, and other stakeholders, as well as secondary sources, this paper describes this policy’s emergence and evolution using a global commodity chain approach. Several studies suggest that GE herbicide tolerant rice would yield profits for California growers struggling with rising weed control costs. Instead, GE rice was greeted with scrutiny by the California industry and legislators because Asian export markets had zero-tolerance for GE rice contamination. This paper examines how nature’s agency—the “unruly” qualities of agro-ecosystem functions, the movement of wildlife, seeds, and pollen across space—strengthened narratives about risk and industry consensus around zero-tolerance rules for GE rice. In addition to recounting the origins of zero-tolerance demands and containment regulations for California rice, this research explores how calls for food safety and zero-tolerance rules are mobilized as surrogate for wider political economic aims.     

How would compliance with dietary recommendations affect revenues for agricultural producers?

Nutritionists and other health experts have recommended a range of dietary plans, and these often differ significantly. Although the USDA food guides have been the most visible in the United States, other dietary plans now are achieving greater public recognition. Our analysis extracts the nutrient recommendations for seven dietary plans and models the recommendations as shifts in demand for the nutrients. Demand shifts for nutrients are combined with nutrient composition shares to simulate the revenue implications in selected agricultural markets. Based on current consumption patterns in the United States, we find that compliance with Harvard’s Healthy Eating Pyramid would generate the greatest revenue gains for specialty crop producers in California.     

怀安化肥厂——我国小氮肥改产尿素的标杆企业

<正>河北省怀安县化肥厂是国这家“七五”期间20亿元专项贷款改产4万吨尿素的小氮肥厂之一     

Comparing U.S. and Japanese corporate-level operating performance using financial statement data

This study uses financial statement data restated to a similar reporting basis to compare the operating performance of U.S. and Japanese companies, identifying possible strategic and environmental explanations for the differences observed. Comparisons are made for U.S. and Japanese samples as a whole, for groups of Japanese firms (keiretsu v. nonkeiretsu), and for 11 industries. The results show that neither country appears to generate systematically higher profit margins, but that U.S. firms turnover assets other than inventory more quickly and therefore have higher rates of return on assets. More intensive examination of these results suggests that environmental factors, such as cultural or structural differences, are the primary causes of the observed differences in the data analyzed.     

Pretesting the effectiveness of industrial advertising

This article addresses the pretesting of industrial advertising messages diffused through (mass) communications media such as professional and trade journals. It is based on case-study experience and presents a normative framework for pretesting industrial advertising.     

Experimental Research on the Relations between Stereoscopic Vision and Mechanical Designers' Activities, with a View to C.A.D. Teaching

This study examines the influence of two crossed factors upon the performance of a subject whose aim is to understand the functioning of a complex piece of technical apparatus, in this instance an automated arm from an assembly line. The primary factor was the encoding degree of the third dimension which constitutes the representation of the object. The methods of presentation were: a 3-D photograph, an axonometric perspective drawing and a first angle orthographic drawing. The second factor was professional experience. The subjects were, on the one hand, first year technology pupils (15--16 year-olds) and, on the other hand, professional draughtsmen from RENAULT. The results obtained with the 3-D photograph were twice as good as those obtained with the axonometric perspective or the orthographic drawing. It should be pointed out that experience did not effect the score. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Forecasting sales trends in the solid state industry

Through a study of the relationships between factors in the macro economy and solid state domestic sales, and with the use of econometric models, the solid state industry is attempting to forecast future business turns, both positive and negative, that affect long-term operations and profitability.     

Estimating Market Growth for New Products: An Analogical Diffusion Model Approach

There has been a lot of interest in diffusion models as a basis for prelaunch estimates of the sales of new products, and indeed there have been several models developed that have achieved fairly good acceptance by new product managers. One of the limitations of such models, however, has been the requirement that a sales history for the new product, even a short one from a test market, for example, be available to derive the parameters of the model. For some types of products—consumer durables, services, industrial products, for example—a sales history isn't available. In this article, Professor Robert Thomas suggests some steps toward the development of models that incorporate the attractive features of diffusion models. His approach is to use, in a systematic way, the sales histories of products that can be considered to have analogous features from a buyer's point of view. He illustrates the approach by forecasting the sales of a new service.     

“Salesforce deployment analysis”

An approach to designing a decision support system for salesforce deployment analysis is developed and illustrated with an application example. The approach incorporates research findings from salesforce decision modeling over the last decade. The features and limitations of decision models and methods of analysis are discussed. Guidelines are presented for each stage of decision support system development, while the possibility of expanding a basic deployment analysis system into a more comprehensive sales management decision support system is suggested.     

Bagging bundle benefits in broadband and media mergers: Lessons from Sky/Vodafone for antitrust analysis

The historic precedents in telecommunications antitrust findings have tended towards finding harm to competition when network operators integrate downstream and bundle the provision of applications and services. The reason for this is that market power in network provision is thought to be extended into the applications market(s). More recently however, proposed mergers have been between telecommunications and media distribution firms, both of whom have some degree of market power, already sell their own services in bundles, and who may or may not have been offering combined bundles already via contractual agreements. Examples include Sky/Vodafone in New Zealand, and Time Warner/AT&T in the United States as well as Vodafone/Unitymedia in Germany and Media Capital/Altice in Portugal. These complex proposed arrangements pose challenges to competition authorities, whose legal and procedural rules and precedents, especially those defining the relevant markets affected by the merger or vertical integration activity, have been developed from the analysis of simpler cases. These precedents may not be sufficient to analyse current cases, characterized by multiple products catering to heterogeneous consumer preferences, and consumers are not constrained to buying only one variant of the products in each of the upstream and downstream markets.We illustrate the challenges by way of a case study of the proposed merger between Sky and Vodafone, declined by the New Zealand Commerce Commission in February 2017. Limitations in existing market definition processes and the evaluation of market power where bundling already occurs risk overlooking complex demand-side interactions that influence the profitability and efficiency of various structural and contractual strategic choices. We propose that classic merger and antitrust analysis based on econometric cost-benefit analysis can be augmented by using simulation and numerical analysis of a range of bundle offers expected to be relevant in decision-making. We develop a simple model and use it to illustrate how it may be used to inform broadband and content mergers, and other complex antitrust cases, such the assessment of the effects of two-sided markets and firm pricing decisions.     

青少年身体素质敏感期测定及其体育课程设置探析

以河北省学生体质健康测试数据和河北省24所中小学生为研究对象,采用问卷调查、文献资料及数理统计等研究方法.针对不同年龄段的青少年身体素质发展规律安排了素质练习,并制订了合理的体育课程内容,提出了相应建议.     

Reforming the lifeline program: Regulatory federalism in action?

This paper considers whether common national standards for determining participants' eligibility and designating service providers in the Lifeline program are preferable to a decentralized system where state utility commissions have greater influence over these program parameters. Two recent decisions of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), a 2016 Order and its reversal in March 2017, on the designation of Eligible Telecommunications Carriers to provide broadband Lifeline service, centered on this question. Statistical analysis of program data demonstrates that state-by-state variations in enrollment may be attributed to state-level policy actions, after controlling for alternative demographic and economic explanations. This paper concludes that national standards may reduce state-by-state variations in program participation rates.     

隐蔽课程对高校体育课程体系影响的统计学分析

采用整群抽样的方法从河北科技大学在校本科生中随机抽取3个大班共594人,通过问卷的方式对学生进行调查,并对问卷结果进行统计分析。结果表明体育隐蔽课程在体育场地设施及布局、体育教师的教学行为与方式、体育教学过程中的心理氛围、教师个人素养等方面对体育教学的影响很大,学校应重视体育文化活动与规章制度的建立健全;通过聚类分析把体育隐蔽课程从各方面对体育教学的影响分为3类,由这3类分析结果说明体育隐蔽课程的各方面对体育教学的影响是很大的,但认识程度不同,应加大体育隐蔽课程建设的力度,从而更好地实现体育课程的基本目标和发展目标。     

Technology changes market boundaries

In the future, the microelectronics driven coalescence of product features and the blurring of market boundaries will lead to growing competition from products and technologies outside the firm's traditional realm of competitors. Further, this “Blindside Competition” can be expected to grow both in scope and impact during the 1980s. Nonetheless, firms which are able to identify the nature of blindside threats can reposition themselves to exploit the ever growing array of market opportunities created by technology. In this article, we identify the forces of microelectronics which are driving blindside competition, and suggest that as a result, adjustments in market orientation will be required.