Innovations in Retail Business Models

A retail business model articulates how a retailer creates value for its customers and appropriates value from the markets. Innovations in business models are increasingly critical for building sustainable advantage in a marketplace defined by unrelenting change, escalating customer expectations, and intense competition. Drawing from extant strategy and retailing research, we propose that innovations in retail business models are best viewed as changes in three design components: (1) the way in which the activities are organized, (2) the type of activities that are executed, and (3) the level of participation of the actors engaged in performing those activities. We propose six major ways in which retailers could innovate their business models to enhance value creation and appropriation beyond the levels afforded by traditional approaches to retailing. We also describe the drivers of business model innovations, the potential consequences of such innovations, and numerous examples from retail practice that highlight our concepts and arguments. In doing so, we provide a starting point for academic research in a domain that is deficient in theoretical and empirical research, and offer retailing managers a framework to guide retail business model innovations for sustainable competitive advantage.     

Determinants of intellectual capital disclosure in prospectuses of initial public offerings

Intellectual capital is recognised as the new economic era’s pivotal factor underlying value creation. Deficient and inconsistent intellectual capital reporting is escalating information asymmetry between informed and uninformed investors. This provides fertile ground for informed investors to extract higher abnormal returns and higher wealth transfers from uninformed investors, particularly during a firm’s initial public offering (IPO). This study investigates the association between intellectual capital disclosure levels in prospectuses of 444 IPOs listing on the Singapore Stock Exchange between 1997 and 2006, and three potential explanatory determinants: (1) ownership retention; (2) proprietary costs; and (3) corporate governance structure. Statistical analysis supports our conjecture of a positive association between intellectual capital disclosure and ownership retention. We also find, consistent with expectations, a negative influence of proprietary costs on the positive intellectual capital disclosure – ownership retention association. However, contrary to predictions, we do not find an IPO’s corporate governance structure significantly influences the negative interaction of proprietary costs on the ownership retention – proprietary cost association. Our findings have implications for various parties such as regulators who may impose unnecessary costs on issuers if they introduce mandatory disclosures whilst lacking an understanding of the factors influencing intellectual capital disclosures.     

Implementation, communication and benefits of corporate codes of ethics: an international and longitudinal approach for Australia, Canada and Sweden

This paper examines the implementation, communication and benefits of corporate codes of ethics by the top companies operating in Australia, Canada and Sweden. It provides an international comparison across three continents. It is also based on a longitudinal approach where three national surveys were performed in 2001–2002 and replications of the same surveys were performed in 2005–2006. The empirical findings of this research show in all three countries that large organisations indicate a substantial interest in corporate codes of ethics. There are, however, differences in the ways that the companies in each country implement and communicate their corporate codes of ethics and the benefits that they see being derived from them. The longitudinal comparison between 2001–2002 and 2005–2006 indicates changes in the implementation, communication and benefits of corporate codes of ethics in the three countries.     

Understanding strategic alignment for destination marketing and the 2004 Athens Olympic Games: Implications from extracted tacit knowledge

Major international hallmark events, especially the Olympic Games, represent a significant opportunity for marketing tourism to the host country. Due to the scale and importance of the event, the coordination between the Olympic organizing committee and the destination marketing organization of the host country becomes a knowledge-intensive and exceptionally complicated task. Analyzing on-site interview data collected from top executives of the two major organizations involved in the 2004 Summer Olympic Games (ATHOC and GNTO), this research achieved two objectives: (1) extracted and organized the tacit knowledge from both organizations to discover major issues concerning the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, and (2) identified the strategic alignment issues between the domains of Olympics planning and destination marketing and proposed a conceptual framework for the future Olympic host countries.     

Equilibrium vengeance

The efficiency-enhancing role of the vengeance motive is illustrated in a simple social dilemma game in extensive form. Incorporating behavioral noise and observational noise in random interactions in large groups leads to seven continuous families of (short run) Perfect Bayesian equilibria (PBE) that involve both vengeful and non-vengeful types. A new long run evolutionary equilibrium concept, Evolutionary Perfect Bayesian Equilibrium (EPBE), shrinks the equilibrium set to two points. In one EPBE, only the non-vengeful type survives and there are no mutual gains. In the other EPBE, both types survive and reap mutual gains.     

Wages,Prices and Agriculture: How Can Indian Agriculture Cope with Rising Wages?

Rapid economic growth in India has resulted in rapidly rising rural wages. Using the framework of variable profit functions and household level data, we study econometrically the wage impacts on crop agriculture. Rising wages are associated with decreasing crop output, other things being equal. Crop prices would need to increase by 80% in the short run to offset the effect of an agricultural wage increase, or by 140% in the short run to offset rural non‐farm wage increases as well. However, because non‐land farm assets respond positively to the non‐farm wage, in the medium term this increase is reduced to 74%. During the period of 1999/00‐2007/08, growth in non‐land farm assets, the labour force, education and technology has easily compensated for the wage increase, and probably also for the accelerating wage growth. Focusing on growing these shifter variables is a much better policy option than raising prices that would come at the expense of consumers or taxpayers.     

Estimating loss of ecosystem services due to paddy straw burning in North-west India

Crop residue burning is severe in rice–wheat cropping system of North-western states (Punjab, Haryana, Uttarakhand, and western Uttar Pradesh) of India, where mechanized harvesting of rice using combine harvesters is a common practice, and management of leftover residue in the short window of 10–15 days for timely sowing of wheat is a formidable task. Moreover, there is a lack of user-friendly, cost-effective, and economically viable options and, around 23 million tonnes of rice residue is burnt annually in the region. Burning biomass not only pollutes environment but also results in loss of appreciable amount of plant’s essential nutrients. Straw burning releases soot particles, nitrogen oxides, sulphur dioxide, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, thus causing serious deterioration in atmospheric quality and human health hazards. We attempted to identify and quantify the environmental cost of paddy straw burning in North-west India. Using extant coefficients, it is estimated that cost of paddy residue burning is INR (Indian National Rupee) 8953?per?ha, and the social cost of burning is INR 3199 crores per annum in the region.     

Alliance portfolio reconfiguration following a technological discontinuity

Research summary : We study how technological discontinuities generate first‐ and second‐order effects on alliance formation and termination, leading to reconfiguration of firms' alliance portfolios. Following technological shocks, we argue that firms often seek alliances that provide new resources while also having incentives to form alliances for reinforced and challenged resources that complement the new resources. In parallel, alliance terminations, even involving resources otherwise unaffected by the discontinuity, increase due to limits in firms' alliance carrying capacity. We study biopharmaceutical firms between 1990 and 2000, which faced a technological discontinuity in 1995 in the form of combinatorial chemistry and high‐throughput screening. We improve understanding of how technological discontinuities affect the value of resources and how firms reconfigure alliance portfolios in response. Managerial summary : When firms form alliances to gain new resources during technological discontinuities that disrupt their industry, they cannot consider only the focal new partnerships. Instead, new alliances create complementarity and substitution pressures that lead to broader reconfiguration of the firms' alliance portfolios: (1) complementarity creates incentives to also form alliances for resources that the technological discontinuity reinforces or challenges in order to improve the collective value of co‐specialized assets; (2) substitution creates incentives to terminate existing alliances, even if their value is otherwise unaffected by the discontinuity, in order to create carrying capacity for new alliances. Thus, one new alliance can generate a cascade of reconfiguration that challenges the balance between the benefits of stability and the need for change in an alliance portfolio. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.