Manufacturing for overseas private labels: A win–win strategy for retailers and producers

Abstract

The study discusses the use of private labels, both for retailers and manufacturers, within the context of international markets. It is proposed that agreements between manufacturers and retailers from different markets may solve or mitigate some abiding frictions and serve the interest of both parties. Using data collected through 101 in-depth interviews among marketing managers, qualitative and quantitative procedures were used to explore producers' attitudes and behaviour in regard to agreements to manufacturing for overseas retailers' private labels. The study revealed that lower transaction costs, quicker penetration into new markets and retailers' reputations among customers are the dominant motivators while short-term strategy, appropriate mainly for grocery items, increases dependency on retailers and deters manufactures from contracting with overseas retailers' private labels. The study also found that gaps exist between manufacturers' perceptions and actual behaviour, mediated particularly by firm size and product categories. The findings, which reflect observed practice, are interpreted through theoretical propositions related to earlier studies. Managerial implications are provided.     

Market Games in Large Economies with a Finite Number of Types

We study market games derived from an exchange economy with a continuum of agents, each having one of finitely many possible types. The type of agent determines his initial endowment and utility function. It is shown that, unlike the well-known Shapley–Shubik theorem on market games (Shapley and Shubik in J Econ Theory 1:9–25, 1969), there might be a (fuzzy) game in which each of its sub-games has a non-empty core and, nevertheless, it is not a market game. It turns out that, in order to be a market game, a game needs also to be homogeneous. We also study investment games – which are fuzzy games obtained from an economy with a finite number of agents cooperating in one or more joint projects. It is argued that the usual definition of the core is inappropriate for such a model. We therefore introduce and analyze the new notion of comprehensive core. This solution concept seems to be more suitable for such a scenario. We finally refer to the notion of feasibility of an allocation in games with a large number of players. Some of the results in this paper appear in a previous draft distributed by the name “Cooperative investment games or Population games”. An anonymous referee of Economic Theory is acknowledged for his/her comments     

Signaling Quality in an Oligopoly When Some Consumers Are Informed

This paper considers a signaling game between two competing firms and consumers. The firms have common private information concerning their qualities, and some of the consumers are informed about the firms' qualities. Firms use prices and uninformative advertising as signals of quality. The model reveals that in the separating equilibrium, prices are first climbing and then declining with the proportion of informed consumers, while the expenditure on uninformative advertising is declining. Firms' profits are highest when the proportion of informed consumers is at an intermediate level. Pooling equilibria exist if the proportion of informed consumers is below a certain threshold.     

Uncertainty and Auction Outcomes: Evidence from Used Car Actions

I study the sequence of bidding in an open-outcry English auction to examine how uncertainty affects auction outcomes. I do this by analyzing a data set that was collected from a series of public auctions of used cars in New Jersey. I conjecture that the uncertainty is related to the auction’s progress and demonstrate that, empirically, an increase in the uncertainty is associated with an increase in the number of rounds that is required to sell an object and with a reduction in the ratio of the selling price to the presale estimate.     

Assessing creative thinking in design-based learning

Infusing creative thinking competence through the design process of authentic projects requires not only changing the teaching methods and learning environment, but also adopting new assessment methods, such as portfolio assessment. The participants in this study were 128 high school pupils who have studied MECHATRONICS from 10th to 12th grades (16–18 years old). By the end of 12th grade, the pupils had created 57 authentic projects. The intervention program had two parts: first, the pupils documented their project according to a creative design process that had been introduced to them. Second, the projects were assessed according to a creative thinking scale. This scale was designed to assist pupils in documenting the design process. It could be used as a guideline for teachers and pupils during the course of the project. The research examined pupils’ performance during project-based learning. The research tools included: observations of class activities, portfolio assessment, and external matriculation assessment. The findings show first that pupils learned to document their design process. Second, pupils’ projects demonstrated various levels of creative thinking skill. Evidences for high-level documentation of the projects were found in pupils’ portfolios. On the other hand, there is much to be learned about documenting teamwork and pupils’ reflection. This research could assist researchers and teachers who are interested in assessing engineering education outcomes.     

A bicriteria approach to maximize the weighted number of just-in-time jobs and to minimize the total resource consumption cost in a two-machine flow-shop scheduling system

We analyze a two-machine flow-shop scheduling problem in which the job processing times are controllable by the allocation of resources to the job operations and the resources can be used in discrete quantities. We provide a bicriteria analysis of the problem where the first criterion is to maximize the weighted number of just-in-time jobs and the second criterion is to minimize the total resource consumption cost. We prove that although the problem is known to be NP-hard even for constant processing times, a pseudo-polynomial time algorithm for its solution exists. In addition, we show how the pseudo-polynomial time algorithm can be converted into a two-dimensional fully polynomial approximation scheme for finding an approximate Pareto solution.