Exploring the impact of a supplier portal on the buyer-supplier relationship. The case of Ferrari Auto

This article concentrates on the relationship between companies and their suppliers with a specific focus on the impact that information and communication technologies (ICTs) have on industrial (business to business) purchasing processes. After reviewing the extant literature, we classify the potential impact of ICTs on the buyer-supplier interactions into three main categories, i.e. impact on buyer-supplier relationship, impact on purchase process efficiency and impact on logistics process performance. Whilst scholars generally agree on the impact ICTs may have on buyer-supplier exchanges, they have not investigated concurrently all of these three impacts to understand their comparative relevance and the context in which this comparative relevance may change. In order to redress this gap in the literature our research study focuses on a particular form of ICT solution - supplier portals - and takes a supplier (rather than buyer) perspective. We explore empirical evidence from a single customer-multiple supplier case study, that of the Ferrari Auto supplier portal. Our study leads us to contend that suppliers view such portals as offering far more significant benefits to their relationship with customers than to the improvements in purchase process efficiency or to the performance of buyer-supplier logistics processes. We conclude with a short discussion of the main managerial implications and suggestions for future research.     

Firm Complexity and Capital Structure: Evidence from Italian Diversified Firms

This paper examines the links between product diversification, international diversification and capital structure for a panel of medium and large Italian firms. The results indicate that the interaction between these two dimensions of diversification strategy has a negative and significant impact on leverage. Furthermore, debt maturity analysis reveals that firms pursuing a simultaneous dual diversification strategy have, in particular, lower long‐term debt ratios. Our findings support the hypothesis that the complexity that comes from diversification reduces debt levels. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Segmenting Cruise Passengers Visiting Uruguay: a Factor–Cluster Analysis

The study aims to provide a better understanding of cruise travel from passengers' characteristics and experience in two ports of call in Uruguay. A multivariate market segmentation analysis was used, on the basis of 5151 survey data collected during the 2008–2009 and 2009–2010 seasons. A correspondence analysis revealed the underlying latent factors in the set of variables. A hierarchical clustering from correspondence analysis segmented the sample into homogeneous groups. Finally, a decision tree highlighted the most predictive variables for each cluster. The study identifies distinct segments by country of residence, occupation, locations visited in Uruguay, satisfaction and previous visits to the country. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

STORABLE GOOD MARKET WITH INTERTEMPORAL COST VARIATIONS

We investigate a firm's dynamic pricing policy in a storable good market where the cost of production varies over time. In anticipation of a cost increase, the firm selects its prices to affect consumer storage. Price dynamics hinge upon the curvature of demand and the magnitude of the consumer storage cost. When demand is not too convex, the consumers' reluctance to store leads the firm to reduce prices to stimulate consumer storage. This shapes the firm's cost pass-through and the price commitment effects. Our analysis provides a novel explanation for the well-documented puzzling patterns of incomplete and negative cost pass-through.     

Discretion vs. timeless perspective under model-consistent stabilization objectives

Recent literature has reported situations in which discretion dominates timeless perspective in the presence of elements that reduce the slope of the New Keynesian Phillips curve. Considering a model-consistent welfare metric inhibits this mechanism in the standard New Keynesian framework.     

Multicollinearity in regression: an efficiency comparison between L<Subscript>p</Subscript>-norm and least squares estimators

Multicollinearity is one of the most important issues in regression analysis, as it produces unstable coefficients’ estimates and makes the standard errors severely inflated. The regression theory is based on specific assumptions concerning the set of error random variables. In particular, when errors are uncorrelated and have a constant variance, the ordinary least squares estimator produces the best estimates among all linear estimators. If, as often happens in reality, these assumptions are not met, other methods might give more efficient estimates and their use is therefore recommendable. In this paper, after reviewing and briefly describing the salient features of the methods, proposed in the literature, to determine and address the multicollinearity problem, we introduce the L_pmin method, based on L_p-norm estimation, an adaptive robust procedure that is used when the residual distribution has deviated from normality. The major advantage of this approach is that it produces more efficient estimates of the model parameters, for different degrees of multicollinearity, than those generated by the ordinary least squares method. A simulation study and a real-data application are also presented, in order to show the better results provided by the L_pmin method in the presence of multicollinearity.     

Product market competition and access to credit

In this paper, we unveil a disregarded benefit of product market competition for firms. We introduce the probability of bankruptcy in a simple model where firms compete à la Cournot and apply for collateralized bank loans to undertake productive investments. We show that the number of competitors and the existence of outsiders willing to acquire the productive assets of distressed incumbents affect the equilibrium share of investment financed by bank credit. Using a sample of Italian manufacturing firms, mostly small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), we found evidence showing that the degree of product market competition is positively correlated with the share of investment financed by bank credit only when outsiders are absent.     

Ownership concentration and firm risk: The moderating role of mid-sized blockholders

This study analyzes the relationship between mid-sized blockholders and firm risk. We show that ownership structure matters for firm risk beyond the first largest blockholder. Firms with multiple blockholders take more risk than firms with just one blockholder, even when controlling for the stake of the largest blockholder. Consistent with the diversification argument, we find that firm risk increases by 22% when the number of blockholders increases from one to two. Our results are robust to controlling for blockholder type and firm characteristics. We carry out various robustness checks to tackle endogeneity issues. More generally, we provide evidence that firms’ decisions are affected by mid-sized blockholders and not merely the largest blockholder. This is in line with theoretical predictions.     

Food for Kids: How Children Influence their Parents Purchasing Decisions

During the last decades, sociological changes have modified the role of children within families: participatory models have become more widespread, to the detriment of more authoritative ones: this change has had consequences also in reference to families’ purchases. In scientific literature some scholars have shown that this influence is real, and marketers try to take advantage of this through a communication style that attempts to “teach” children how to pester their parents: this is the so-called nag factor. To understand which are the parental attitudes toward kids’ food products, a questionnaire has been administered in schools (nursery and primary) to a random sample of parents, representative of a larger sample of kids (200 in all). Findings showed that pestering is a real attitude, in particular among the littlest children. Moreover, these findings reflect in part the reality described by marketing literature: children influence the purchasing decisions of their parents, but this influence decreases when mothers and fathers are more aware of the importance of a quality-based diet.