Customer orientation and buyer satisfaction: The malaysian housing market

This study examines the marketing of a high-involvement product, namely, houses in Malaysia, by focusing on the relationship between customer orientation, an important component of the marketing concept, and buyers' satisfaction. Using multi-item scales to measure these two constructs and employing factor analysis and stepwise regression for data analyses, the results and marketing implications drawn suggest the usefulness of these scales for developing well-defined, comprehensive and strategic marketing plans as well as providing a useful framework for formulating effective marketing strategies to enhance customer satisfaction.The first author is attached to the Faculty of Economics and Administration, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, while the second author is the marketing manager of a local private firm.     

The relationship between buyer and a B2B e-marketplace: Cooperation determinants in an electronic market context

“Stop thinking like a supplier and start thinking as a customer.”

The authors argue that cooperation may be achieved by augmenting the core product with technology-based services. Given the growing importance of real time information exchange and interactivity, a better understanding of the use of technology to the establishment and development of the buyer-supplier cooperative relationships is essential for knowledge advancement. This paper argues that firms should aim to put themselves into their customers' shoes and use the “voice of the customer” to take their major relationship management decisions. To do so, the authors use a sample of nearly 400 SMEs' purchasing managers, to better understand cooperation determinants from the buyers' perspective. The study reveals that in an electronic marketplace, cooperation is positively affected by termination costs, supplier relationship policies and practices, communication and information exchange, and negatively affected by product prices and opportunistic behavior. Moreover, both relationship commitment and trust play a major role in mediating the relationships between these five determinants and cooperation. Surprisingly, resources relationship benefits do not show a significant impact on either commitment or cooperation. Theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.     

Stock market surveillance and market performance: The case of Taiwan

In this paper we investigate the effect of warning announcements on the price behaviour of stocks. We also study the effects of various corrective treatments (trading halts, call trading and 100% payment/delivery with order) on the performance of stocks in the Taiwan stock market. It is found that warning announcements serve to improve the performance of stocks, except in the case of consecutive warnings. Generally speaking, the corrective measures taken after the consecutive warnings are able to reduce the volatility, the abnormal returns and the excess liquidity of the stocks.The authors are Professors from the National Sun Yat-sen University, and the Securities and Exchange Commission respectively.     

Relationship-specific investments,social capital,and performance: The case of Korean exporter/foreign buyer relations

Relationship-specific investments are addressed as crucial factors for the successful management of the exporter–foreign buyer relationships. It is hypothesized that relationship-specific investments have a positive impact on social capital components such as trust and commitment, which in turn contribute to the relationship and business performance satisfaction between partners. On the basis of our analysis of the relationships between Korean exporters and their foreign buyers, the validity of the roles of relationship-specific investments and social capital are clearly demonstrated. The results provide us with a meaningful implication to the successful management of inter-firm relationships.     

Optimal mobile termination rate: The Brazilian mobile market case

This paper presents a study of the impacts of changes in the mobile termination rate in Brazil using 2008 as the base year. For this we use an extension of the monopolistic competition model used by Wright, Thompson, and Renard (2007) allowing for the charge of interconnection fee also from calls originating on mobile networks and differentiated prices for on-net and off-net calls. After calibration of the model parameters and estimation of the price elasticity of demand for mobile services, we conduct a comparative static analysis varying the mobile termination rate in order to find the optimal value for that parameter. Finally, we provide some discussions on policy regulation in that sector depending on the objective of the regulator agency.     

Modelling the effect of buyer and seller power on the margins of commodity plastics

In the last decade, large sectors of the chemical and plastics industries in the U.S.A. and West Europe have suffered drastic declines in price and gross margin during periods of low use of industry capacity. This paper shows that the major changes in gross margin observed for some commodity plastics can be modelled successfully in terms of the balance between buyer power and seller power. These industries have visibility of prices and industry occupacity and comparable concentrations of sellers and important buyers. The modelling follows Burgess (1982) in expressing buyer and seller power as simple functions of buyer and seller concentrations, industry occupacity and ‘cohesion’ between sellers. This work provides a first practical test of this new approach. It is shown that the model fits the observed data best if the ‘cohesion’ declines as occupacity declines. It is suggested that the approach would be useful in understanding the behaviour of other ‘near-commodity’, capital-intensive businesses, and in helping to distinguish between those businesses where margins are likely to remain relatively stable and those which might face drastically declining margins if the industry occupacity declines or new entrants change the balance between sellers and buyers.     

Demand for coffee in Sweden: The role of prices, preferences and market power

There is a widespread belief that consumer coffee prices are high relative to bean prices and that lower consumer prices would lead to substantial increases in bean exports from Third-World countries. This issue is evaluated by analysing how retail prices, preferences and market power influence coffee demand in Sweden. A demand function is estimated for the period 1968–2002 and used, together with information on import prices of coffee beans, to simulate an oligopoly model. This approach gives estimates of the maximum average degree of market power and shows how coffee demand would react to reductions in marginal cost to its minimum level. The maximum level of market power is found to be low, but it generates large spreads between consumer and bean prices because the price elasticity has low absolute values. Moreover, the impact of a price decrease would be small because long-run coffee demand is dominated by changes in the population structure in combination with different preferences across age groups. Hence, a change to perfect competition would only have a negligible effect on bean imports.     

Product innovation and adoption in market equilibrium: The case of digital cameras

This paper studies the effect of competition on product innovation in the market for digital cameras during the years 1998 to 2001. The analysis is based on a structural dynamic model that is estimated and used to simulate the innovation behavior of firms in counterfactual environments. The model features heterogeneous consumers, who time optimally purchase goods, depending on the expected evolution of the prices and the characteristics of available cameras. On the supply side, firms introduce new camera models and choose their characteristics, accounting for the dynamic value of new products and the optimal dynamic behavior of consumers. The counterfactual simulations imply that an increase in competition in the industry would not have generated better products on average and, depending on the type of competition, would have generated products with lower average quality.     

The effects of technology-mediated communication on industrial buyer behavior

Sellers are embracing technology-mediated sales communication tools such as videoconferencing systems, cellular phones, web sites, and electronic data interchange (EDI) systems in an attempt to control selling costs while maintaining the personal touch. What is unclear at this point, however, is if investment in communication technology actually pays dividends for industrial suppliers. This research explores the topic by examining the effects of buyer satisfaction with the adoption of technology-mediated communication (STMC) on channel partner relationships. STMC is found to have significant, positive, direct effects on future intentions (FI). Furthermore, these effects are found to be partially mediated by trust and commitment.     

市场环境下发电企业的运营风险控制

本文介绍了发电侧电力市场环境下,发电企业赖以规避市场风险的几种重要金融合约,并从规避市场风险的角度,提出了在发电侧电力市场的设计中,网、厂两家要考虑的一些重要问题.     

电力市场条件下的电源建设投融资问题研究

以研究电力市场化过渡阶段电源建设项目业主招标制度为核心内容,详细分析论证了我国电源建设投融资特点,项目全过程以及各阶段风险分担和规避等相关问题,并重点分析讨论了电源建设业主招投标方案的综合评价方法及软件系统的功能设计等问题。     

Entry and Exit in a Transition Economy: The Case of Poland

The purpose of this paper is to examine the industrialentry and exit in a transitioneconomy, over the interval of change from a predominatelystate-owned productivesystem. The data set employed offers a near-exhaustivecoverage of manufacturingfirms in Poland. The paper estimates entry and exit equationsacross 152 3-digitindustries, using an adaptation of an Orr–Shapiro/Khemani-typemodel to allow for thespecial circumstances of a transition economy. Theresults suggest that, despite theturbulence of the immediate post-transition period,the patterns of entry and exitbehaviour in Poland correspond closely to thoseobserved in more mature marketeconomies.     

The impact of supplier development on buyer competitive advantage: A path analytic model

As manufacturing firms increasingly realize that supplier performance is crucial to their establishing and maintaining competitive advantage, supplier development has been a subject of considerable research in supply chain management. We develop and test a path model to explore how supplier development practices affect buyer-supplier performance from the buying firm's perspective in the context of Hong Kong's electronics industry. The results show that top management, supplier evaluation, and supplier strategic objectives are significant determinants of transaction-specific supplier development, and that buyers that have closer collaborative relationships with suppliers may strengthen their competitive advantage.     

Marking high-technology market evolution through the foci of market stories: the case of local area networks

Previous research suggests that changing consumer and producer knowledge structures play a role in market evolution and that the sociocognitive processes of product markets are revealed in the sensemaking stories of market actors that are rebroadcasted in commercial publications. In this article, the authors lend further support to the story-based nature of market sensemaking and the use of the sociocognitive approach in explaining the evolution of high-technology markets. They examine the content (i.e., subject matter or topic) and volume (i.e., the number) of market stories and the extent to which content and volume of market stories evolve as a technology emerges. Data were obtained from a content analysis of 10,412 article abstracts, published in key trade journals, pertaining to Local Area Network (LAN) technologies and spanning the period 1981 to 2000. Hypotheses concerning the evolving nature (content and volume) of market stories in technology evolution are tested. The analysis identified four categories of market stories—technical, product availability, product adoption, and product discontinuation. The findings show that the emerging technology passes initially through a 'technical-intensive' phase whereby technology related stories dominate, through a 'supply-push' phase, in which stories presenting products embracing the technology tend to exceed technical stories while there is a rise in the number of product adoption reference stories, to a 'product-focus' phase, with stories predominantly focusing on product availability. Overall story volume declines when a technology matures as the need for sensemaking reduces. When stories about product discontinuation surface, these signal the decline of current technology. New technologies that fail to maintain the 'product-focus' stage also reflect limited market acceptance. The article also discusses the theoretical and managerial implications of the study's findings.     

The benefits of being small: Duopolistic competition with market segmentation

Consider a duopolistic market in which consumers are not necessarily aware of the firms' existence. The market is characterized by the existence of four segments: a duopolistic segment which consists of consumers who are aware of both firms, a segment of consumers who are unaware of either firm and two captive market segments. We assume that by advertising, firms control the proportion of consumers who are aware of their existence. The relative sizes of the four segments affect the equilibrium of the duopolistic pricing game. We show that being large may be disadvantageous, and that even if gaining awareness is costless firms may wish to remain small.We would like to thank Paul Klemperer and an anonymous referee for valuable comments.     

2000年全国电力市场分析

本文对2000年全国经济形势和电力供需出现的新情况及一些热点问题进行了分析,对2001年经济及电力增长速度进行了预测。2001年我国GDP增长将达到8％左右。全社会需电量为14270亿kWh,同比增长6.5％。     

电力市场供求关系动态分析

本文运用微观经济学中的供求原理、利润最大化等理论对电力市场中的供求关系进行了详细的分析,并在此基础上对如何计算输电价格进行了探讨。     

Divestiture requirements as a tool for competition policy: A case from the Swedish beer market

We investigate the effect of divestitures on prices and welfare following the Carlsberg–Pripps merger in the Swedish beer market. Both difference-in-difference estimation and simulations using a random coefficients logit model suggest that divestitures are important for dampening price increases. Prices of divested brands fall by around 3% and the predicted price increase for Carlsberg falls from 3 to 1.6% as a result of the divestitures. To guide practice on divestitures, we investigate the role of the recipient and the number and characteristics of the divested products by simulating post-merger outcomes for all relevant cases. We find that in this setting with large multiproduct firms, the competition authority's most effective means to dampen adverse post-merger outcomes are to aim for a small recipient firm and attain a large number of divested products. Enforcing larger divestitures in terms of market share and raising the average cross-price elasticity between the merging parties' divested and retained products strengthen the dampening effect further.     

Academic brands and their impact on scientific endeavour: The case of business market research and researchers

This paper examines the significance of the rapid development of so-called “academic brands” in Marketing for the process of academic research and for the work and the careers of researchers: It focuses on the specific case of business market research and researchers. The paper starts by exploring the ideas behind the development of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) and its impact on the academic community: CCT appears as an emblematic case of branding of an academic community. The paper then discusses the rapid emergence of the Service-Dominant Logic (SDL) as a case of branding which has a direct impact on business market research. The paper then relates the emergence of these two “brands” to developments in business market research and more specifically to the development of IMP as a brand. Finally, the paper draws some conclusions about the role of academic branding and its impact on scientific endeavour with emphasis on the future of business marketing research and researchers.