Retail Strategies on the Web: Price and Non–price Competition in the Online Book Industry

Two conflicting predictions have emerged regarding the effect of low–cost information on price. The first states that all Internet retailers will charge the same low price for mass produced goods. The second states that Internet retailers will differentiate to avoid intense price competition. Using data collected in April 1999 on the prices of 107 books in thirteen online and two physical bookstores, we find similar average prices online and in physical stores and substantial price dispersion online. Analysis of product differentiation yields no clear results. The substantial premium charged by Amazon provides indirect evidence of product differentiation.     

Product development cycle time for business-to-business products

For a number of years, firms have been implementing changes in the way they develop new products, changes that are targeted at reducing overall product development cycle times. And over the years, a number of academics have conducted research trying to understand the factors that are related to reducing new product development (NPD) times. But the question remains — just how long does product development generally take in absolute numbers? Information on how long product development takes is helpful to firms for planning and controlling the flow of products into the marketplace and in determining resource needs for NPD. Other than anecdotal data pertaining to particular projects that have been commercialized by particular firms, very little hard data have been reported on this topic. This article analyzes data to quantify average cycle times for physical goods commercialized by business-to-business (B2B) firms. The data are a subset of a much larger data set from the Product Development & Management Association's (PDMA) Best Practices research. The analysis presents average product development cycle times for four different types of projects (new-to-the-world, new-to-the-firm, next generation improvements and incremental improvements), presents evidence of the lack of a relationship between cycle time and success and looks at factors that are associated with differences in the length of product development cycle times.     

trends in Internet-based business-to-business marketing

The Internet is changing the transactional paradigms under which businesses-to-business marketers operate. Business-to-business marketers that take advantage of the operational efficiencies and effectiveness that emerge from utilizing the Internet in transactions are outperforming firms that utilize traditional transactional processes. As an example, Dell computers, by utilizing business-to-business processes that take advantage of the Internet, has gained the largest market share in the PC business when compared to traditional manufacturers such as Compaq. This paper first examines the genesis of the Internet movement in business-to-business markets. The long-term impact of the increase of business-to-business utilization of the Internet on the marketing theory and marketing process is then discussed. Finally, managerial implications and directions for future research are highlighted.     

Hospital RNs' and CNOs' perceptions of the impact of the nursing shortage on the quality of care

The results of analyses of the 2002 and 2004 National Sample Surveys of RNs and the 2004 National Sample of CNOs document the widespread perception that the shortage of nurses is a major problem for the overall quality of patient care in hospitals. In the eyes of the majority of hospital RNs and CNOs surveyed, care processes involving communication, timely response to pages and telephone calls, delays in patient discharges, and the time patients had to wait for tests and procedures were all affected negatively by the nursing shortage. These results are not encouraging.     

Bargaining Credibility and the Limits to Within‐firm Pensions

Abstract ** ** Résumé en fin d’article; Zusammenfassung am Ende des Artikels; resúmen al fin del artículo. : A simple bargaining model highlights the role of commitment to a low‐risk investment policy for firms which offer within‐house pension and health insurance schemes. The roles of this commitment level plus bargaining power, and the ability of a failing firm to misappropriate pensions funds, are studied and their influence on the equilibrium pension determined.     

What causes violent crime?

This study uses panel data of intentional homicide and robbery rates for a sample of developed and developing countries for the period 1970-1994, based on information from the United Nations World Crime Surveys, to analyze the determinants of national crime rates both across countries and over time. A simple model of the incentives to commit crimes is proposed, which explicitly considers possible causes of the persistence of crime over time (criminal inertia). A panel-data based GMM methodology is used to estimate a dynamic model of national crime rates. This estimator controls for unobserved country-specific effects, the joint endogeneity of some of the explanatory variables, and the existence of some types of measurement errors afflicting the crime data. The results show that increases in income inequality raise crime rates, crime tends to be counter-cyclical, and criminal inertia is significant.     

Analysis of barriers in the transition toward sustainable mobility in the Netherlands

The transition toward a sustainable transportation system in the Netherlands takes place in the context of the Dutch “Transition management policy framework”. We study four technological routes that the “Platform Sustainable Mobility” has selected for this goal: (1) hybridization of vehicles, (2) liquid biofuels, (3) natural gas as a transportation fuel and (4) hydrogen as a transportation fuel. These technological routes all envision large-scale changes in vehicle propulsion technology and fuel infrastructure. Furthermore, they compete for the scarce resources available to invest in new (fuel) infrastructures, which implicates that these ‘transition paths’ are also interdependent at the level of the mobility system. The main outcome of the analysis is the identification of barriers that are currently blocking the transition toward sustainable mobility. Barriers are classified as being related to (1) technology and vehicle development, (2) the availability of (fuel) infrastructures, and (3) elements of the institutional infrastructure. The transition management framework currently misses guidelines for coping with (competing) technologies that each require large infrastructural investments. We further argue that avoiding undesired lock-ins and creating a beneficial institutional context for sustainable mobility cannot be pursued at the transition path level. Therefore, we recommend that a more systemic approach should be taken to the transition to sustainable mobility, in which the interdependencies between the transition paths are critically assessed and in which the possibilities to legitimize sustainable mobility as a whole should be used.     

Strategic foresight and organizational learning: A survey and critical analysis

Learning phenomena are a growing concern for strategic foresight, especially with respect to the question of integration of reflection and action. Although an agreement seems to emerge between practitioners and theorists about strong ties linking strategic foresight and learning (in particular organizational learning), the true nature of this link remains ambiguous. This article seeks to shed light on this link and to analyze the cognitive dimensions of foresight through a critical survey. The investigation follows the original ambivalence between foresight attitude and activity thus underscoring not only the virtues of foresight in learning phenomena, but also the limits of the usual literature.