Knowledge spillovers and new ventures’ export orientation

We draw on the knowledge spillover literature to suggest that a country’s proportion of export-oriented new ventures represents an outcome of knowledge spillovers that stem from foreign direct investment (FDI) and international trade (export spillovers) as well as a source of knowledge spillovers (entrepreneurship spillovers). To test the hypotheses, we use macrolevel data from 34 countries during the period 2002–2005. We find that the relationship between FDI and international trade on the one hand and a country’s proportion of export-oriented new ventures on the other differs for higher- and lower-income countries. In addition, a country’s proportion of export-oriented new ventures affects the subsequent emergence of new businesses.

Higher educational services exports: sources of growth of Asian students in US and UK

The paper reviews the recent trends and current developments in the global higher education market with a particular focus on growth of Asian students studying in US and UK. Using pool cross section-time series data over the 1985–2003 period, it is found that different factors affect students from different countries differently. This suggests that the marketing strategies of offshore higher education providers need to be tailored to the specific needs of different markets in order to be successful. The emergence of a number of new players in the higher education export market is also rapidly becoming a major threat to the traditional higher education service exporters.

Third-Degree Price Discrimination in the Presence of Asymmetric Consumption Externalities

In this paper, we consider third-degree price discrimination in two markets in the presence of asymmetric consumption externalities; we establish that under plausible conditions, a firm reduces its price in the market with low price elasticity of demand. The firm can increase its profits by reducing the price for these consumers and enlarging the demand for other consumers, provided that positive consumption externalities exist. Moreover, we show that third-degree price discrimination enhances not only the firm’s profit but also total consumer surplus.

Technological advances in digital cameras: Welfare analysis on easy-to-use characteristics

This paper examines the characteristics attributed to the success of digital cameras by studying both the demand and the supply sides of the digital-camera market. A discrete choice model is employed to investigate consumer preferences over digital camera characteristics during the period 1996–1998. The empirical findings reveal that Sony’s ‘Easy-to-Use’ storage system contributes significantly to Sony’s demand advantage and profitability. Also, the welfare analysis demonstrates that ‘Easy-to-Use’ attributes significantly contribute to social welfare improvement.

Development of a technological competition model in the presence of network effects from the modified law of Metcalfe

The objective of this paper is to propose a new model of competence in presence of network effects. We will introduce some modifications in the Lotka-Volterra model, in order to solve its deficiencies. The main improvement is to introduce a modification of Metcalfe’s Law, what allow us to reflect the effect of congestion externalities. The model’s validation, developed by numerical simulation, confirms that its behaviour is quite similar to that observed in real markets.

Grey Power: An Empirical Investigation of the Impact of Parallel Imports on Market Prices

The persistence of price discrimination across international markets with falling costs of unofficial importing is both paradox and policy concern. E-commerce facilitates a “grey” market in parallel imports, particularly for high-value goods such as electronics. This paper explores the impact of unofficial imports on price using a panel of product markets mediated via an Internet shopbot. It finds the presence of an import model lowers prices across the market. However, unlike the refurbished model it is not simply an inferior substitute. The import price discount increases over the model life cycle, suggesting that model-specific preferences fall as each model ages.

Industry Transformation – Conceptual Considerations from an Evolutionary Perspective

The explanandum ‘industry transformation’ is conceptualized against the background of market process theories. A system of indicators to measure industry transformation is set up and typical patterns of development and challenges for entrepreneurial action on business-to-business markets are derived. Analyzing industry transformation requires a co-evolutionary approach. Change is then detected using different indicators, exemplified using the German healthcare sector as an insight to business-to-business markets in transition. Entrepreneurial action is the key to an evolutionary understanding of business systems as drivers of change processes and the fact that – at the same time – they are driven by them. Typical features of industry transformation include historicity, path dependencies, and evolutionary interpretations of specificity leading to trajectories and multiple patterns like for example (dis-/re-)intermediation and cooperation.

Entrepreneurship in post-socialist economies: A typology and institutional contexts for market entrepreneurship

There is growing recognition among post-socialist (PS) economies that free-market entrepreneurship is essential for ultimately improving their economic future. The promotion of market entrepreneurship, however, has been a challenging experience for these economies. This paper examines various forms of entrepreneurship in PS economies. Drawing upon the institutional theory, we also highlight the clear contexts and attendant mechanisms associated with institutions–entrepreneurship nexus in PS economies’ contexts.

Science parks: seedbeds of innovation? A duration analysis of firms’ patenting activity

This article investigates the role of Science Parks (SPs) as seedbeds of innovation. It aims to verify if and to what extent firms’ innovative performance is affected by relocating inside a SP. The analysis is structured in the form of a duration model that holds patenting as a repeated and event-dependent phenomenon and accounts for the persistence of innovative activities and the cumulativeness of knowledge. Estimates are based on a conditional risk-set model. The study relies on an original database regarding Finnish SPs: 252 firms that in the year 2002 were located in the Parks and the firms’ lifetime patenting activity, over a 33-year-period. We find support for the existence of spillovers and for the positive role of incubators over those firms joining SPs when very young.

Location strategies of multiunit service businesses: spatial differentiation and agglomeration among hamburger restaurants in Paris, 1984–2004

In this article, we study how multiunit service businesses locate their units, choosing between two opposite spatial strategies. Whereas, locating one’s units close to competitors’ brings positive agglomeration externalities, locating one’s units far away from others’ allows local monopolies through spatial differentiation. We examine location strategies of the two biggest hamburger restaurant chains—namely McDonald’s and Quick—in Paris between 1984 and 2004. Results show that competitive standings impact locational strategy choices. The market leader favors spatial differentiation, thus preempting premium locations. Conversely, the challenger favors locations close to the leader, thus aiming at agglomeration externalities.

A “New Approach” to Standards and Consumer Protection

As consumer use of information and communication technology (ICT) products grows, the importance of ICT standards in consumer markets also grows. While standards for manufactured products were once developed at the national level in formal standards bodies, standards for ICT products today are more likely to be developed by informal standards bodies that target global markets, creating new challenges for national consumer protection laws. As part of the process of creating a single market, the EU developed an innovative and successful form of “coregulation” known as the “New Approach” that coordinated the work of legislators and standards developers to reduce technical barriers to trade in the internal market. In order to protect consumer interests in markets for ICT products effectively, another “New Approach” is needed to coordinate the work of global ICT standard-developing organizations with the goals of national and regional consumer protection laws, but the institutional challenges facing such a strategy are daunting. The French DADVSI legislation represents progress in this direction; further progress may be possible by adopting “better regulation” strategies.

Innovation, R&D cooperation and labor recruitment: evidence from Finland

This article investigates the role played by one type of firm interaction, namely R&D cooperation, and also the acquisition of labor, in the promotion of industrial innovations. We employ a unique innovation dataset from Finland which combines firm specific information about the innovation performance of the firms along with their individual characteristics, as well as firm specific information regarding the origins of their recent labor acquisitions. Analyzing this data allows us to identify the different roles which the knowledge spillovers and labor markets play in the innovation process. Our results suggest that small firms are generally more innovative than large firms; R&D cooperation is an essential feature of innovation, but the variety of cooperation is of little importance; and labor acquisition appears to be only of limited importance for innovation.

Business-to-Business Markets – Status Quo and Future Trends

As a phenomenon of modified value-chain structures the economic importance of business-to-business markets has been growing immensely during the past decades. This paper delivers a quantified overview of the market dimensions in terms of transactional volume. In addition, it explains the causes for this market development such as an increased service orientation in business transactions, higher degrees of customization, and influential factors on a macro level. In this context, future trends in this sector will be outlined as well.

The effects of entrepreneurial orientation, market orientation, and marketing subunit influence on firm performance

The study investigates how an organization’s entrepreneurial orientation moderates the interplay between market orientation and marketing subunit influence on firm performance. The hypothesized model predicts that the positive interaction between market orientation and marketing subunit influence has a weaker effect on firm performance under conditions of high entrepreneurial orientation. The regression and supplementary analyses provide support for most predictions and, most importantly, for a negative three-way interaction effect: At higher levels of entrepreneurial orientation, the positive moderating effect of marketing subunit influence on the market orientation–business performance relationship is reduced. The authors discuss the managerial and theoretical implications of their findings and provide a number of directions for further research.

Born-global: The case of four Vietnamese SMEs

Despite the fact that many firms in a wide range of industries in various countries internationalize at or near inception, research on factors leading to the formation of born-globals has been limited to firms from advanced, open economies. In order to give a voice to the phenomenon of Vietnamese founding born-globals, we conducted an exploratory, multiple-case study. Three findings of this study are: (1) the major driver to the formation of Vietnamese born-globals is the entrepreneurs’ leadership desire together with the need for short-term profits; (2) their choice of internationalization mode is influenced by market conditions as well as the internationalization degree of the industries in which they find their business opportunities; and (3) the reason why other motivators found in earlier studies do not apply lies in the peculiarity of the Vietnam context.

Competitive product lines with quality constraints

Competing firms often use product lines to screen different types of customers. Examples include, in general markets, product lines that screen the purchasing ability or preference for quality; in credit markets, product lines that screen the risk of the projects with different collateral; in insurance markets, product lines that screen the risk of accident with different coverage; and in labor markets, wage schedules that screen the employees’ abilities with different education levels. In some of these markets there can be some natural quality constraints: a maximum available quality in general markets, no negative collateral in credit markets; coverage not above 100% in insurance markets; minimum education level in labor markets. We present sufficient conditions for the existence of a pure strategies equilibrium (in such markets) under differentiation and a continuous distribution of customer types. We show that the equilibrium exists if there is a sufficiently high degree of differentiation among firms. Furthermore, we show that this equilibrium involves, under certain general conditions, pooling of customer types at the top and at the bottom of the distribution of customer types. The middle types may still be screened by the firms.

Accommodating the Needs of iConsumers: Making Sure They Get Their Money’s Worth of Digital Entertainment

The current methods of distributing music and film on the mass-market, either off-line or on-line, raise two types of consumer protection issues. First, consumers are not always in a position to know what they can and cannot do with their digital hardware and content. A lack of proper information and the ensuing failure of the products to meet the consumer’s expectations inevitably leads to discontent. In addition, as weaker party in the transaction, consumers have often no other choice but to accept or refuse the restrictive terms of use, even if these could be regarded as unfair. This paper examines whether European law is amenable to accommodate the iConsumer’s needs, and if so, in what form.

Incentives for sales agents after the advent of the internet

E-commerce has siphoned sales away from bricks-and-mortar channels in many industries. Taking a principal-agent perspective, this article analyzes how the increasing volume of e-sales influences offline incentive schemes and firm profitability. According to the proposed model, moderate channel cannibalization can be a blessing in disguise if it decreases incentive intensity and lowers expected wage payments. Whether a larger volume of e-sales is blessing or curse depends (among other things) on the relative magnitude of cannibalization versus market enlargement and the degree to which the increase changes the composition of offline customers’ types with respect to service costs.

Reviewing the reviewers: The impact of individual film critics on box office performance

Critics and their opinions or critical reviews play a major role in many markets. Marketing research on how critics impact product performance has so far examined an aggregate critic effect. An obstacle in studies examining the relationship of aggregate critical opinion and product sales is the close association between the intrinsic quality of a product and the aggregate opinion regarding the product. Our analysis parses out these two effects, allowing us to distinguish individual critics who are simply good at identifying products with popular appeal from those who act as opinion leaders and engender early product sales. The role of critics is especially prominent in the film business, in which one finds multiple expert opinions about each movie and where critics’ endorsements are used in advertising. In the context of the motion picture industry, our research investigates the impact of individual film critics on the market performance of movies, where specific key critics and reviewers may serve as market gatekeepers, and where various critics may have different types of impacts on product performance.

Google: The World’s First Information Utility?

In only ten years, Google has achieved remarkable success from online search-based advertising. Its search engine is dominant, and its IT infrastructure is the most powerful computing system in the world running on over one million computers and serving more than one billion users globally. Google makes money by using its search engine to deliver online advertising alongside responses to user searches for information, goods, maps, directions, and a host of other services. Its capabilities make it likely to become the world’s first information utility – a concept similar to electric utilities that provide services to many corporations and individuals alike. Constant innovation is the key to Google’s success and offers lessons for other companies: hire talented people, have them work in small teams, and give them freedom to excel, but use a rigorous data-based approach to evaluating results and making course adjustments.