The Value of Chinese Online game industry

The online games didn＇t enter China for a long time, but its development speed surprised a lot of people. The data in the IDC＇s report shows that the market size of online game will reach 8.34 million RMB in 2006. Alone with the increase of market competition and the growth of original creation, the Chinese online game industry will suffer an intensive shock. At present, the online game operation is facing the problem of product life circle＇s reduction and revenue＇s drop. To solve these problems, online game companies has to find out the new game＇s increasing point of profit.     

Measuring international competitiveness: experience from East Asia

This paper uses a new measure of real exchange rates as an indicator of international competitiveness. This new measure involves defining all prices and exchange rates on an appropriately weighted basket of currencies rather than a single currency. The measure is applied to the data for Japan, Korea, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore. For comparison purposes, we calculate real exchange rates based on purchasing power parity (PPP) for these countries. To check for the relative performance of the two measures, cointegration tests are employed. The results indicate that the new measure tends to be closely related with the export growth for the sample countries, while the PPP-based measure is not. Moreover, the PPP-based real exchange rates tend to understate the measures of competitiveness for these countries. This result has important implications in terms of the levels of these countries' exchange rates as well as the well-known Balassa hypothesis.     

Diet Firms Score Where Coke,Walmart Fumbled

After trying numerous self-concocted diets, 54-year-old Elena Farley has finally lost 47 lbs. and 40 inches--amove she credits not to self-discipline or an intense weight loss regimen, but with joining and sticking with an online community.     

Why FedEx Chose Orange Bowl Over Super Bowl

While FedEx is sitting out the Super Bowl again this year, it＇s going heavy on sponsorship of such events as Monday＇s Orange Bowl, a college football game held at the Land Shark Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla.     

The Padded Posse

Imagine walking into the office one day and finding out that （good news!） nearly everybody on the focus group you assembled was familiar with your brand. Now for the bad news： They also all thought it was best not to use it.     

On a Morgenstern-type bivariate gamma distribution

Summary In this paper a Morgenstern-type bivariate gamma distribution has been studied. Its moment generating function has been derived. The distribution of the product and quotient are derived in terms of the modified Bessel function. The results for the independent case follow as special cases. Further the regression function has been analysed, in terms of its deviation from linear regression function.This research was initiated while the first author was a U.N. Consultant under the Statistical Training Program for Africa, visiting the University of Ghana.     

Investigating the different approaches to importance–performance analysis

Importance–performance analysis (IPA) is an analytic technique that generates a two-dimensional importance–performance grid, where the values of importance and performance across attributes are plotted against each other. This technique is used to assist service and other firms in prioritizing areas for service improvement when resources are limited. This study contributes to service theory by first performing a comprehensive literature review of four different and commonly used approaches to IPA. Survey data from the ports sector are then used to elucidate the value and the distinctiveness of these four different approaches, and it is also shown how the underlying theoretical assumptions led to somewhat varying, and contradictory interpretations. Subsequently, novel guidelines for integrating results from these four different approaches are proposed. The study advances service theory by detailing the integration of the different approaches to make sense of the importance and performance of diverse service attributes. The integrative approach developed in this paper also provides practitioners with clearer guidance for the application of IPA.