Industrial Pricing Strategies in Singapore and the U.S.: Same or Different?

It is generally believed that business-to-business marketing strategies are more uniform worldwide than those in consumer markets, because the buying firms focus more on issues such as product performance and profits. If this is so, a strategy model validated in one industrial market should apply reasonably well in another. This study compares pricing strategies of industrial firms in two market economies, the U.S. and Singapore. A pricing strategy model validated in the U.S. was tested in Singapore to determine whether internal and external conditions incorporated in the model could adequately explain differences in strategy choices between the markets.     

哈萨克斯坦新《转移价格法》对外国石油公司的影响

2009年1月1日，哈萨克斯坦共和国新《转移价格法》正式颁布实施。哈政府制定《转移价格法》的主要目的在于监控关联公司的交易活动。新《转移价格法》补充了有关监控以及与转移价格相关的其他交易的内容。另外，新《转移价格法》取消了“避税港”公司计算支出的权利，增加并细化了《转移价格法》的法内条款，补充了“利润比较法”，以及与哈萨克斯坦税务机关签署使用转移价格协议的条款等内容。包括中资石油公司在内的在哈外国石油公司所开展的投资、采购、勘探开发、原油销售等业务基本都属国际业务的范畴，新《转移价格法》实施后，哈萨克斯坦税务机关将会对这些公司的贷款合同、采购合同、服务合同及原油销售合同等可能涉及转移定价的行为进行监督和检查，因此这些公司面临一定的财税风险；同时也对今后签署涉及国际业务的合同提出了更多新的要求。     

A review of: “COST ENGINEERING FOR EFFECTIVE PROJECT CONTROL” by Sol A. Ward,John Wiley & Sons,New York,NY, 1992, viii + 227 pp., ISBN 0-471-52851-X. List $54.95.

Our survey of the investor-owned electric utility companies and utility commissions indicates that the use of asset pricing models for estimating the cost of equity is limited in this industry. The respondents cite unfamiliarity with the arbitrage-pricing model as a main reason for not using it. Use of the capital asset pricing model is also less than one would expect. However, deregulation of the industry could create a need for more-precise quantification of risk. In the new environment, utility companies may find asset-pricing models more useful.     

Capital investment practices: A survey of large corporations in Malaysia,Singapore and Hong Kong

This paper presents the results of a survey on the capital investment practices of large corporations in Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong. Our findings are fairly consistent with those from similar U.S. surveys. However, Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong companies seem to use multiple techniques, both simple and sophisticated, in evaluating investment projects, while U.S. companies appear to make great use of discounted cash-flow rate of return. Although Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong companies often make annual cash-flow forecasts over the life of a project, they do not undertake much analysis of risk involved in the project. Moreover, there is room for improving the practice of project implementation, the post-audit of implemented projects, and the use of post-audit data.Dr Wong Kie Ann is with the School of Management, National University of Singapore; Dr Edward J Farragner is with the Department of Finance, DePaul University, U.S.A.; and Mr Rupert K.C. Leung is with the Department of Business Management, Hong Kong Baptist College.     

Returns and Information Transmission Dynamics in Public and Private Real Estate Markets

This paper examines U.S. public and private commercial real estate returns at the aggregate level and by the four major property types over the 1994–2012 time period. Returns are carefully adjusted for differences between public and private markets in financial leverage, property type focus and management fees. Unconditionally, we find that passive portfolios of unlevered core real estate investment trusts (REITs) outperformed their private market benchmark by 49 basis points (annualized) over the 1994–2012 sample period. Our baseline vector autoregression results suggest that REIT returns do not embed additional commercial real‐estate‐specific information useful in predicting private market returns. These results strongly suggest that equity REIT returns react to fundamental (latent) asset pricing information more quickly than private market returns given their greater liquidity and price revelation. REITs therefore serve as a fundamental information transmission channel to private market returns when asset pricing variables are omitted.     

哈萨克斯坦新《转移价格法》对石油公司国际原油销售的影响及对策研究

为了更好地规范哈萨克斯坦国际业务中涉及的贷款、采购服务和原油销售等进出口业务,2010年6月30日,哈萨克斯坦政府修订了《转移价格法》。新《转移价格法》将被监管的主体扩大至＂哈萨克斯坦境内发生的与国际交易相关的交易＂公司;要求公司定期提供交易监督报表,签订《转移价格协议》;取消了修订前允许商品销售价格与市场价格偏离10的规定。新《转移价格法》与旧法相比,包含很多积极的改变和修订,但也存在一些问题。例如,新《转移价格法》对转移价格和关联关系的认定有待商榷,将管理范围拓展到哈境内的交易有失公平,市场价格的确定过于简单等。新《转移价格法》对石油公司的国际原油销售带来很大的财税风险。因此,石油公司应规范销售业务流程,严格要求买方提供销售费用证明文件;及时准确报送原油销售报表和相关销售费用证明文件,接受政府监督;加强公司内部审计和外部咨询,确保销售证明文件合法合规。     

Internal vs. external learning in new product development: effects on speed, costs and competitive advantage

The purpose of this study was to investigate how different technology sourcing strategies throughout the new product development process influenced innovation speed, development costs, and competitive advantage. We studied 75 new product development projects from ten large, U.S.-based companies in several industries. Results indicated that: (1) more external sourcing during the early (i.e., idea generation) stage was related with lower competitive success; (2) more external sourcing during the later (i.e., technological development stage was related with slower innovation speed; and (3) development costs tended to rise with greater reliance on external sources of technology, but this result was not statistically significant.     

Customer-Driven Product Development Through Quality Function Deployment in the U.S. and Japan

Quality Function Deployment is a tool for bringing the voice of the customer into the product development process from conceptual design through to manufacturing. It begins with a matrix that links customer desires to product engineering requirements, along with competitive benchmarking information, and further matrices can be used to ultimately link this to design of the manufacturing system. Unlike other methods originally developed in the U.S. and transferred to Japan, the QFD methodology was born out of Total Quality Control (TQC) activities in Japan during the 1960s and has been transferred to companies in the U.S. This article reports on the results of a 1995 survey of more than 400 companies in the U.S. and Japan using QFD. The research questions investigated in this study were developed both inductively from QFD case studies in the U.S. and Japan and deductively from the literature. The reported results are in part counterintuitive. The U.S. companies reported a higher degree of usage, management support, cross‐functional involvement, use of QFD driven data sources, and perceived benefits from using QFD. For the most part, the main uses of QFD in the U.S. were restricted to the first matrix (“House of Quality”) that links customer requirements to product engineering requirements and rarely was this carried forward to later matrices. U.S. companies were more apt to use newly collected customer data sources (e.g., focus groups) and methods for analyzing customer requirements. Japanese companies reported using existing product data (e.g., warranty) and a broader set of matrices to a greater extent. The use of analytical techniques in conjunction with QFD (e.g., simulation, design of experiments, regression, mathematical target setting, and analytic hierarchy process) was not wide spread in either country. U.S. companies were more likely to report benefits of QFD in improving cross‐functional integration and better decision‐making processes compared to Japanese companies. Possible reasons for these cross‐national differences as well as their implications are discussed.     

Best Practices for New Product Pricing: Impact on Market Performance and Price Level under Different Conditions

To date, research on new product pricing has predominantly been approached as a choice between market skimming and penetration pricing. Despite calls for research that addresses other complexities in new product pricing, empirical research responding to these calls remains scarce. This paper examines three managerial price‐setting practices for new products, i.e., value‐informed, competition‐informed, and cost‐informed pricing. By engaging in these practices, managers can develop and compare quantifications in order to attain an introduction price for the product. The authors draw on consumer price perception literature, Monroe's pricing discretion model, and numerical cognition literature to develop hypotheses about the impact of price‐setting practices on new product market performance and price level. By studying the effects on market performance and price level, the paper provides insights that may help explain the growth of new products and address the problems of underpricing. The hypotheses are tested in a management survey of 144 production and service companies. The results indicate which pricing practices are superior for the achievement of either higher market performance or higher prices in specific product and market conditions. Whereas value‐informed pricing has an unambiguous positive impact on relative price level and market performance, the results also suggest that in many cases engaging in value‐informed pricing is not enough. The effects of cost‐informed and competition‐informed pricing may differ depending upon the objective (market performance or higher prices), product conditions (product advantage and relative product costs), and market condition (competitive intensity). Engaging in inappropriate pricing practices leads to a decline in new product performance. Moreover, bad pricing practices make the positive effect of product advantage on the outcome variables disappear. The latter finding suggests that companies can jeopardize their efforts and investments in the new product development process if they engage in the wrong price‐setting practices. The findings imply that managers should consider different factors in new product pricing. First, when launching a new product, they should determine their explicit pricing objective, either stressing market performance or a higher price level. To determine the most appropriate pricing practices, however, they should next assess their situation in terms of product advantage, relative product costs, and competitive intensity. Together with the pricing objective, these conditions determine the best pricing practice. On a higher level, the findings imply that companies should invest in knowledge development in order to engage in the appropriate pricing practices for each product launch.     

An Exploratory Study of Company Turnaround in Australia and Singapore Following the Asia Crisis

There has been little research into company turnaround practices in Asia. This paper investigates the role of retrenchment, replacement of chairman or chief executive and ownership change in the turnaround process, using a sample of 60 listed companies in Australia and Singapore. Conclusions are drawn that overall, transparency of the regulatory environment and other governance issues are a stronger influence on turnaround practices than are cultural issues. This may make Singapore, which has transparency and governance risk indicators at similar low levels to Australia, a unique business environment in Asia.     

A comparative evaluation of the government's role in national airlines

This paper contrasts the role of the government owners of the British and Singaporean national airline companies. Although both companies were outstanding performers, it is contended here that the Singapore state-owned enterprise was operating out of a more favourable political economic environment. British Airways resembled the classic case depicted in the literature — inhibited by government interference, politicisation, confusion of long-term plans, etc. Singapore Airlines' history manifests these classic afflictions much less, and the government's proactive role even seemed to provide a competitive advantage.     

Equity diversification among the four Asian NICs

Recent studies have indicated the potential gains to U.S. investors from international portfolio diversification. Due to the rapid growth of the four Asian newly industrialised countries (NICs), namely, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, it is believed that U.S. investors will become increasingly interested in these equity markets. The purpose of the present study is to investigate from the U.S. perspective, the prospects of diversifying across the countries. The results indicate that a diversified portfolio among these markets yields a higher return-to-risk ratio than investing in the U.S. market alone.The authors are with the School of Management, National University of Singapore.     

The influence of digital divide frames on legislative passage and partisan sponsorship: A content analysis of digital equity legislation in the U.S. from 1990 to 2020

Government funding is essential for digital equity. Scholarship on policies to improve internet access often examines the funding mechanisms behind subsidies, or the quality and reach of services provided. However, a better understanding of the issues and constituencies to receive government support to date may help digital equity activists more strategically lobby for new digital divide policies in the future. To do this, we take a macro-level approach to Van Dijk's resources and appropriation theory and examine how the framing of all digital divide–related U.S. Congressional legislation introduced between 1990 and 2020 may be associated with a bill's passage or the political party of its sponsor. Content analysis revealed that bills highlighting privacy literacy programs, educational outcomes, and corporate transparency were more likely to be passed into legislation. Bills sponsored by Republicans were 422% more likely of being passed into legislation. Certain frames were also associated with partisan sponsorship: Republican-sponsored bills were more often framed around deregulation, privacy programs, corporate transparency, and rural access, whereas Democrat-sponsored bills were more often framed around digital skills such as digital literacy and educational outcomes. Findings serve as a historical record of digital equity priorities in the U.S. and highlight possible strategies for future policy design.     

Research notes and communications factors in the instability of international joint ventures: An event history analysis

This study uses Event History methodology to examine factors that may contribute to the instability of joint ventures between U.S. multinationals and foreign companies. Using joint venture contract renegotiation as a proxy for instability, it finds statistically significant support for hypotheses that joint ventures are more unstable when partners start out with uneven shares of equity and when the contracts have been renegotiated before. Contract renegotiation is also more likely in relatively open economies than in countries that impose restrictions on direct investment.     

An option pricing approach to the valuation of rubber and palm oil producers

Advances in the option pricing literature have important implications for more basic valuation problems. An option pricing approach to the valuation of risky firms can accommodate uncertainty about product market conditions and managerial decisions more readily than a discounted cash flow approach. This paper adapts the stock option pricing approach of Black and Scholes (1973) to the valuation of shares of rubber and palm oil producers. A case study assesses the power of an option-based model to predict market share prices of a rubber and palm oil producer listed on the Stock Exchange of Singapore.     

Malaysian Reverse Investments: Trends and Strategies

Available data indicate that Malaysian investments abroad (MIA) rose significantly in the 1990s. Singapore, Hong Kong and the U.S. are the major recipients of MIA. In order to understand why Malaysian companies invest abroad, as well as their business strategies, seven companies were interviewed. Finding new markets was cited as the main reason for locating overseas. Unlike most mature multinational corporations from developed countries, most MIA takes the form of standalone affiliates. Moreover, most respondents decentralize their decision making regarding the management of these subsidiaries. While Malaysian companies do plan to expand their overseas investments, they advise new entrants to form strategic alliances with other companies, be cautious, patient, and sensitive to the hosts' cultures in executing their ventures.     

American and Japanese management practices in their Singapore subsidiaries

Multinational corporations have made significant contributions to the economic growth of Singapore; American and Japanese companies are among those in the forefront. This study is aimed at finding the extent to which US and Japanese companies have transferred and implemented the management practices in their subsidiaries operating in Singapore. Extensive and intensive interviews of a small sample of companies in the electronic/electrical industry reveal that the Japanese are not practising what they do in Japan while the Americans have demonstrated that the transferability of their management practices is feasible and they are workable in Singapore.Joseph M. Putti is an Associate Professor at the School of Management, National University of Singapore. Thomas Chong F.H. is a Production Manager in Union Carbide, Singapore.     

State equity and outward FDI under the theme of belt and road initiative

State capitalism is attracting burgeoning attention but comes with inconsistent findings toward internationalization. Given its prevalent appearances, the study has investigated the effect of state equity on outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which may constitute a challenge to the international business theory and new hope for companies in emerging economies. Anchoring on the agentic perspective of institutional theory and a sample of Chinese public listed firms, we have unveiled that higher state equity pushes greater proactiveness in investing in those BRI destinations. However, state equity generates stronger pushing effects when the equity source is not from the central government whereas the organizational top managers’ foreign exposures attenuate such pressures. At the institutional level, furthermore, the coastal locale attenuates the effects of such pressures whereas firms are more likely to invest in countries with bilateral investment treaties (BITs) under the BRI theme. Overall, the study should extend our understandings toward the BRI phenomenon and enrich the theoretical knowledge of state capitalism from a political perspective.

     

Monopoly Rents and Price Fixing in Betting Markets

Betting markets provide an ideal environment in which to examinemonopoly power due to the availability of detailed information on product pricing. In this paper we argue that the pricing strategies of companies in the U.K. betting industry are likely to be an important source of monopoly rents, particularly in the market for forecast bets. Pricing in these markets are shown to be explicitly coordinated. Further, price information is asymmetrically biased in favor of producers. We find evidence, based on U.K. data, that pricing of CSF bets is characterized by a significantly higher markup than pricing of single bets. Although this differential can in part be explained by the preferences of bettors, it is reasonable to attribute a significant part of the differential as being due to monopoly power.