中式快餐的品牌塑造

现代快餐业在世界上许多国家都获得了成功，究其原因就是它能为消费者带来家庭以外的清洁就餐环境和价格相对低廉又能保证质量的食品。国人接触现代快餐始于肯德基和麦当劳，肯德基从1987年11月亮相京城后，在短短十余年的时间里就在全国近百个城市发展了500多家连锁店。相比之下，传统中式快餐在数量的发展上虽颇有万马奔腾之势，但名声响亮的知名快餐品牌却寥寥无几。最早的天津狗不理包子、上海荣华鸡，后来的东北李连贵薰肉大饼、西安德发长饺子、广州青萍鸡、上海木子鸡、四川麻婆豆腐、赖汤圆、担担面，都曾经有过各自的辉煌，但最终都未能成为有全国影响力的中式名牌快餐。按理说，中式快餐提供传统的中式食品和服务，符合大多数国人的生活习惯，理应占据上风，但事实上，以肯德基、麦当劳为代表的西式快餐却凭借其良好的品牌效应、全新的服务理念在中国市场上取得了主动，其中原因颇令人玩味。     

从“快餐文化”到物联网

随着生活节奏加快,以美国的麦当劳、肯德基为代表的现代快餐方式不仅成为了饮食习惯,而且也形成了文化。生活、生产、娱乐、体育、交通等所有社会活动当中都有它的身影。本文分析了快餐文化的由来和影响,指出物联网与快餐文化同源。本文分析了它的利弊之后,指出我国当前用"物联网"来囊括信息技术是移花接木、以偏概全。快餐文化的由来和影响快餐这个名词,是非常时尚的,在1995年之前的各大辞典中,我们根本找不到它的影子。这样的一个概念,最先是从美国传输过来的。美国人发明了快餐,快餐文化也最先兴起源于美国。历史上第一家快餐店是麦当劳兄弟的麦当劳,如今发展     

大娘水饺升级版：中餐西做

"快餐店顶多应该有熟练工。所有的操作环节都是熟练工,才能把连锁搞好……" 随着叫嚷着把麦当劳赶出中国的郑州红高梁一夜之间销声匿迹,天津"狗不理"包子断臂止血提前收回一些加盟店,越来越多的人们感到中式快餐连锁困难重重,其中核心问题就是标准的建立和执     

麦当劳不养牛

麦当劳品牌的创始人是雷·克罗克。他以非凡的经营才能把麦当劳兄弟的小餐馆变成了世界快餐第一品牌店，自己也成为美国最有影响的企业家之一。据说，当年从麦当劳兄弟手里买下特许经营权的除了克罗克之外，还有一个荷兰人。     

中西快餐企业营销管理差异比较研究及启示

随着我国经济的快速发展和生活方式的改变，快餐业在餐饮市场中的份额已越来越大中西快餐企业之间的竞争也日益激烈。本文通过对中西快餐企业在目标市场定位、管理模式、产品开发、市场开拓和服务理念等方面的差异，就如何发展中式快餐企业提出了建议。     

丰富品牌内涵 提升企业软实力——关于社会化媒体时代品牌塑造的思考

同样家喻户晓的品牌,一篇＂八瓶三株口服液喝死一条老汉＂的报道,便使＂三株＂这个曾经的保健品帝国轰然瓦解;而一直饱受诟病的肯德基、麦当劳快餐,却在＂苏丹红＂、＂致癌物＂等一次次危机中安然无恙。     

不断探索 闯出一条中式快餐特色之路

十年沧桑,十年巨变,快餐公司走过了十几年风风雨雨的历程。回顾其发展之路,给人留下颇多思考和感慨。十多年前,国内还没有大型现代化中式快餐可资借鉴,当时人们对快餐工业化生产的认识还是从所熟悉的钢铁生产概念比照而得到的。十几年来,武钢快餐几经曲折,赞誉与非议俱来,希望与困难共存,快餐人以"解放思想,与时共进"的精神,不断地进行探索,经历了三个发展阶段,满足了武钢职工的进餐需求。80年代后期,为了改善职工工作餐质量,武钢投资兴建了设计规模为10万份的快餐工厂,主体设备从日本调理机株式会社引进,达到当时国际先进水平。1988年10月27日,武钢     

乔赢还能赢吗?

快餐业不是挣快钱的行业,市场炒作固然重要,关键的还是实实在在的运营。老师,做企业能不能避免失败?”乔赢站在讲台上正滔滔不绝的时候, 听众中有人举手提问。他意味深长地一笑,回答说:“说实话,不失败就成功的企业,到现在我还没找到。”对于乔赢而言,这样的问题无异于反讽。因为几年前,乔赢经历了一场轰轰烈烈的失败。作为当年挑战麦当劳的中式连锁快餐“红高梁”的创始人,乔赢曾经因为快速扩张导致资金链断裂,最后以非法集资罪被判入狱。     

中式快餐“蒸”模式

鲜明的营养蒸品定位,标准化生产技术上的突破,让真功夫找到了打造中式快餐连锁品牌的路径与方法。     

NTT与麦当劳合推手机支付

日前,日本最大的移动电话运营商NTT移动通信公司(NTT DoCoMo)与世界最大汉堡快餐连锁店麦当劳宣布进行战略结盟,NTT将     

Commodity price inflation, retail pass-through and market power

When commodity prices rise, wholesalers and retailers of products derived from basic commodities respond by passing along at least a portion of the price increase to consumers. In this paper we examine whether firms respond differently to positive commodity price shocks than to negative commodity price shocks; that is, whether commodity price volatility alters market power. We exploit recent volatility in food commodity prices over the period 2007-2010 to investigate how commodity price shocks translate into market power in two different vertically-structured food product industries: potatoes and fluid milk. For potatoes, we find both wholesale and retail market power decreases (increases) during periods of rising (falling) commodity prices. Moreover, price-cost margins widen a substantially greater degree in response to negative shocks than margins narrow in response to positive shocks, indicating that commodity price volatility increases market power. For fluid milk, we find that market power likewise declines during periods of rising commodity prices; however, market power does not significantly change during periods of falling commodity prices, suggesting that commodity price volatility decreases market power.     

Stakeholder value appropriation: The case of labor in the worldwide mining industry

Research Summary : We evaluate how the value appropriated by employees varies in response to an exogenous shock to the price of the firm's product and how this variation depends on institutional and ownership structures. Institutional and ownership structures that favor employees can influence firms’ location decisions and shareholders’ incentives to invest. Using data from the main copper mines in the world, we show that the value appropriated by employees rises in response to an exogenous increase in the price of minerals. Our results indicate that the magnitude of the increment in the value captured by employees is larger in stated‐owned companies, when labor regulations promote productivity‐based payments, when wages are determined through a centralized bargaining process, and when regulations associated with hiring and firing are more flexible. Managerial Summary : We show how labor regulations and state ownership affect the value appropriated by employees when there are exogenous changes in the price of the firm's products. Since the value generated by a firm is distributed among different stakeholders, a higher appropriation of value by employees results in lower appropriation by another party. Therefore, by changing the distribution of value, managerial decisions about location and entry could be affected. For instance, shareholders of firms with positive future expectations about the prices of their products might prefer to enter markets in which salary negotiations are not centralized or where partnership with the local government is not mandatory. Overall, our analysis calls for the consideration of the external environment when evaluating value appropriation by different types of stakeholders.     

Price authority and information sharing with competing supply chains

We characterize the degree of price discretion that two competing manufacturers grant their retailers in a framework where demand is uncertain and privately observed by the retailers, while manufacturers only learn it probabilistically. In contrast with the consolidated vertical contracting literature, we assume that manufacturers cannot use monetary incentives to align the retailers’ incentives to pass on their unverifiable distribution costs to consumers. Our objective is to study how, in this context, an information-sharing agreement according to which manufacturers share their demand information affects prices, profits and consumer surplus. While equilibria with full price delegation never exist, regardless of whether manufacturers share information, partial delegation equilibria may exist with and without the exchange of information. These equilibria feature binding price caps (list prices) that prevent retailers from passing on their distribution costs to consumers, and are more likely to occur when manufacturers exchange demand information than when they do not share this information. Manufacturers profit from exchanging demand information when products are sufficiently differentiated, and retailers’ distribution costs are high enough. Yet, expected prices are unambiguously lower when manufacturers exchange demand information than when they don’t, making the information exchange beneficial to consumers.     

WHEN DO CONSUMERS SEARCH?*

This paper provides empirical evidence relating search to price movements. We measure consumer search directly from traffic statistics for web sites that report gasoline prices. We show empirically that consumers search more as prices rise than they do when prices fall. Asymmetric search patterns have consequences for price behavior. Our findings indicate that retail margins are squeezed by increased search. In addition, we show that there is more price dispersion when prices are falling than when prices are either stable or rising. Our results provide a search‐based explanation for the ‘rockets and feathers’ phenomenon of asymmetric price adjustment.     

Change at the Checkout: Tracing the Impact of a Process Innovation

Barcode scanners, introduced in the early 1970's, were a foundational process innovation in the grocery supply chain. By 1984 scanners had been installed in 10% of food stores in the U.S. Fixed‐effect analysis of city‐level price data shows that scanners reduced prices of groceries by at least 1.4% in their first decade. The results are consistent with prior estimates of labor saving by scanners. Early adopters and adopters in states that imposed fewer restrictions on complementary process innovations contributed disproportionately to the price decreases.     

Gendered impacts of the 2007–2008 food price crisis: Evidence using panel data from rural Ethiopia

This paper provides empirical evidence on the gendered impact of the 2007–2008 food price crisis using panel data on 1400 households from rural Ethiopia that were initially surveyed before the onset of the crisis, in 1994–1995, 1997, and 2004, and after food prices spiked, in 2009. It investigates whether female-headed households are more likely to report experiencing a food price shock, and whether female-headed households experiencing a shock are more (or less) likely to adopt certain coping strategies, controlling for individual, household, and community characteristics. Our findings suggest that female-headed households are more vulnerable to food price changes and are more likely to have experienced a food price shock in 2007–2008. Because female-headed households are also resource poor and have a larger food gap compared with male-headed households, they cope by cutting back on the number of meals they provide their households during good months and eating less preferred foods in general. A combination of short-term measures to protect diet diversity and micronutrient consumption of vulnerable groups and longer-term measures to promote investment in sustainable agriculture, such as strengthening women’s property rights, may increase the ability of poor and vulnerable households to cope better with food price increases.     

Strategic and deterrent pricing responses to antitrust investigations

This paper examines the issue of the effects of antitrust on pricing through two empirical studies. The first analyzes time series of prices in five industries involved in antitrust cases to determine whether the various stages of the antitrust process influenced pricing behavior. Some evidence of a ‘deterrent’ effect is found, with real prices lower than their pre-investigation level following the conclusion of the case; a major part of the pricing reaction occurs prior to the filing of formal charges. The second study provides additional evidence of the existence of such a ‘strategic’ reaction to the onset of investigation through an examination of prices in 23 industries investigated but not charged with price fixing.     

INFORMATION REVELATION AND BUYER PROFITS IN REPEATED PROCUREMENT COMPETITION*

I investigate how procurement costs are affected by the information that buyers reveal about sellers' behavior, in a setting with two sequentially offered contracts for which a seller's privately known costs are identical. Expected prices are lowest when sellers learn nothing until all contracts are allocated, are higher when they learn all sellers' price offers as contracts are allocated, and typically are even higher when they learn only the winner's identity, or the winner's identity and price offer. The results suggest that buyers engaged in repeated procurement may pay less by revealing minimal or extensive information, rather than an intermediate amount.     

Fertiliser and food policy in LDCs

At a time of fertiliser scarcity and high prices it is important to know more about the poorly understood relationships between fertiliser and food production. Fertiliser price increases are reflected in increased prices for food which poses a dilemma for governments attempting to increase food production and minimise rising prices. Through the use of a simple macro-model these relationships are discussed and the policy insights they offer. Impact of price receives special attention because of its frequent use as a policy instrument.     

Export restrictions – Do consumers really benefit? The wheat-to-bread supply chain in Serbia

Our approach combines price transmission and gross margin analysis at different stages of the wheat-to-bread supply chain. Results suggest that the effects of export restrictions on the end consumer prices for bread, and thus food price inflation, heavily depend on the price behavior of the intermediates. In contrast to theory, consumers in Serbia experienced welfare losses despite comprehensive governmental market interventions. In particular, consumers were confronted with increasing flour and bread prices, which cannot be fully explained by increasing production costs, whereas mills, bakeries and retailers increased their profits. Thus, export controls in combination with high price volatility in the supply chain have to be considered as a further factor driving food price inflation.