Sale of monopoly information and behavior of rivaling clients: A theoretical perspective

This paper studies a three-stage Bayesian-Cournot game where rivaling firms sign contracts with an information monopoly to purchase proprietary information. The rivaling firms use the external information to create competitive advantage over one another. Knowing the rivalry among its clients, the information monopoly can exploit them by playing one client against another. The information-selling strategy depends on the clients' in-house information technology, the uncertainty of the economic environment, and the number of potential clients. The existence of an information market makes rivaling producers worse off and consumers better off. It is possible that the service of the information monopoly is a private good but a social bad.     

A stochastic cellular automata model of innovation diffusion

A stochastic cellular automata model of new product diffusion is proposed. It is found that the growth for a given market potential can be determined by a parameter that quantifies chance preferences of individuals for the product and can be estimated from field surveys. It is also found that the “takeover time” in a given seed region is almost independent of the number of innovators. The results suggest possible strategies for the successful introduction of a new product.     

Channel evolution: A framework for analysis

This article proposes a comprehensive model for analyzing the environmental forces that affect channel length. The marketing literature regards channel length as a succinct, key measure of channel structure. Transactional cost analysis offers an integrative explanation of the seemingly contradictory phenomena and varied interpretations found in the channels literature. The central thesis of this article is that the developmental process alters the balance between performing channel tasks externally and internally and thereby channel structure. The article also interprets from a transactional cost perspective how selected cultural, political, and urban market concentration factors account for enduring differences in channel structure among nations at similar levels of development.     

Gender and ethnic diversity on boards and corporate information environment

Prior studies argue that demographic diversity on a firm's board impacts its information environment, yet there is limited empirical evidence regarding the relation between board diversity and corporate opacity. We extend this line of research by examining whether gender and ethnic diversity of directors impacts corporate opacity. Using a Herfindahl Index based on directors' gender and ethnicities to measure board diversity, and an opacity index based on analyst following, analyst forecast error, bid–ask spread, and share turnover to measure corporate opacity, we find that board diversity is negatively associated with corporate opacity. Our results are robust to alternative measures of board diversity and the various tests we employ to address potential endogeneity concerns.     

A New Architecture for Personalization Engines: An Open Source Approach

There are many benefits in having personalized engines on a Web site. Several types of architecture have evolved to support this information system. Even though, a recent survey has shown that online shopping behavior is not altered by installing these systems on a Web site, enormous money is being spent on their use. These commercial personalization engines are very expensive to buy and are proprietary in nature. One alternative advocated in this article is to use a new architecture that follows an open source philosophy and uses a situation questions, problem questions, implication questions, need-payoff questions (SPIN) based question-answering strategy to interact with visitors. An implementation (called JESPER, a Jess-enabled personalization system) of such an architecture using JESS (Java-based expert system shell) is also presented. Our experience shows that personalization engines built this way for a Web site can be quite cheap and rigorous.     

A SUGGESTED SIMPLE PROCEDURE TO OBTAIN BLUE ESTIMATOR OF GLOBAL BETA

Common stocks are typically traded on numerous exchanges both domestically and internationally. The price behaviour of stocks traded in multimarket settings provides investors with additional information regarding the risk characteristics of those shares. In this paper we provide a simple procedure to obtain the best linear unbiased (BLUE) estimator of relevant systematic risk (beta) of a stock by incorporating as much information as is possibly available in the market place.     

Explaining the variation in short-term sales response to retail price promotions

This study focuses on the short-term sales response to price promotions in retail grocery stores and attempts to explain its variation using frequency of price promotions and the consecutive scheduling of price promotions. Retail managers’ expectations and tenets from behavioral theories provide the basis for the hypotheses that the frequency of price promotions and consecutive scheduling of price promotions affect short-term response to price promotions. The hypotheses are tested on three frequently purchased product categories, using store-level data from retail chains in three major markets. The analysis is validated with additional data on the same product categories and markets. A variety of managerial implications are drawn from the results and suggestions for future research are offered. He has been recognized with numerous teaching and research excellence awards. Dr. Kumar has published numerous articles in many scholarly journals in marketing and forecasting. He has coauthored a text titledMarketing Research and is currently working on two other textbooks. He is on the editorial review board of many journals. Dr. Kumar has lectured on marketing-related topics in various universities worldwide. His research interests include developing forecasting models, international marketing strategy and international marketing research issues, models for sales promotions, and new methodologies for product positioning and market segmentation. Dr. Kumar received his doctoral degree from the University of Texas at Austin. He has published articles about retailing and marketing strategy in scholarly journals such as theJournal of Retailing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, andJournal of Business Ethics. His current research interest focuses on models for sales promotions and marketing strategy. Dr. Pereira received his doctoral degree from the University of Houston.