An Approach to Assess the Importance of Brand Equity in Acquisition Decisions

Many firms acquire other firms with well-known and proven brands to hedge against the high costs and risks of new product development. A critical question in these acquisition decisions involves the assessment of the importance of brand equity to the acquiring firm. Since the brand equity benefits can vary by firm (and also by the decision maker within a firm) a critical question is how can one systematically decipher the effect of brand equity in acquisition decisions. Using the balance model [8,15], Vijay Mahajan, Vithala Rao, and Rajendra Srivastava present a methodology to determine the importance of brand equity in acquisition decisions. By capturing the idiosyncratic perceived importance of brand equity of every decision maker involved in acquisition decisions, the methodology enables members of a committee within a firm to understand and reconcile their differences in evaluating potential acquisitions. This methodology is applied in a pilot study for the all-suites segment of the hotel industry with data collected from senior executives of five major hotel chains. The authors also discuss benefits, limitations, and further extensions of the suggested approach.     

高科技企业战略联盟间信任关系的建立

信任关系作为企业间的社会资本有利于战略联盟的维持和运转。建立高科技企业联盟间信任关系提升信任水平,需建立成员企业间学习的正式与非正式机制,组建广泛的商业关系网络,设计联盟内部信任的评审规范,培育共同的价值观。     

Investigation of damage and repair of a 1000 MTD horizontal ammonia converter

An operational upset caused by a diapharagm failure in the high pressure casting of the synthesis gas compressor resulted in major pressure/flow surges in the synthesis loop.     

试论企业如何有效履行企业社会责任

近年来企业社会责任成为企业管理中的热门话题，很多企业不仅将企业社会责任作为维护企业声誉与品牌关誉及规避政府诉讼的有效手段，更将其作为可以有效推动企业可持续发展的重要管理措施。换句话说企业已不再将企业社会责任作为一种公关策略，而是已经作为企业有效管理的重要的一个组成部分。如何有效履行企业社会责任成为企业所思考的关键问题。     

西部地区资源优势向经济优势转化战略探讨——以六盘水市为例

西部地区要缩小乃至消除与东部地区的发展差距,唯一的选择只能是不断加快自身发展步伐,走追赶型、跨越式发展的道路.当前的关键是要走好第一步,即实现资源优势向经济优势的顺利转化.六盘水市在区域经济发展中有得天独厚的矿产等资源的比较优势,只有确立正确的资源开发战略原则,才能实现资源优势向经济优势的顺利转化.     

Price competitiveness of tourism packages to Australia: Beyond the “Big Mac” index

One issue facing any country or region concerns its price competitiveness as a package tour destination. One method of measuring this is to use what in other contexts has been referred to as the Big Mac approach. The “Big Mac” is a simple product with ingredients in fixed proportions, whereas the tourism product is a very complex one comprising different components depending on tourist expenditure patterns. There is no equivalent tourism product offered across countries, as the nature of the product is tailored to the origin market, expenditure levels and the length of the trip involved. The key issue is that of how to standardize the products being compared, so as to determine their relative price competitiveness. A method of constructing price competitiveness indexes, developed by the authors, can be applied to develop measures of the price competitiveness of different tour packages. This paper has three aims: To set down the essence of the preferred approach to measuring price competitiveness, noting its advantages and limitations; to employ this approach to construct price competitiveness indexes for package tours to Australia from Japan and the USA; and to indicate areas for farther research into the price competitiveness of package tourism worldwide.     

May’s theorem in an infinite setting

We generalize May’s theorem to an infinite setting, preserving the elementary character of the original theorem. We define voting scenarios and generalized voting scenarios, and prove appropriate versions of May’s theorem. The case of generalized voting scenarios specialized to a countably infinite set of voters and the collections of all coalitions that have asymptotic density, shows that majority rule is the only aggregation rule that satisfies neutrality, irrelevance of null coalitions, anonymity, and positive responsiveness.     

Health and economic growth in high-income countries revisited: evidence from an augmented production function for the period 1980–2009

This paper uses time series data for seven industrialized countries from 1980–2009 to explore the causality between health care expenditure (HCE) and economic growth. We have set up a classical Cobb–Douglas production function including HCE, labor, capital, and an augmented function additionally including the number of patent applications (as a proxy for technology and research) and the total number of tertiary education students (as a proxy for education). Our results show that there is a long-run relationship between growth and HCE. As regards causality, in the classical production function, evidence for mutual causality between GDP and HCE is noted only in France, Germany and England, causality from HCE to GDP is noted in Italy and Japan, while no causality whatsoever is evidenced in Canada and USA. However, a completely different situation is unveiled when the augmented production function is used with mutual causality being noted in all perused variables. The novelty of our study lies first in that it contributes to the health-growth nexus literature for high-income countries which has been quite controversial and second it sets off new variables whose omission might be one of the reasons of the result dichotomy. Results of this study will be very useful for high-income countries currently afflicted by the economic crisis and embark on HCE curtailments or revisions.     

Tariffs versus anti-dumping duties

Tariffs and anti-dumping duties are two important tools used to protect industries from foreign competition and to generate revenue. While the two tools have been studied extensively in separate contexts, little is known about their comparative effects. This paper compares their effects on prices, profits, government revenue, industry protection, and welfare in a two-country framework where a dominant firm in one country exports to the other inhabited by an oligopoly. Conditions under which one tool dominates the other for a given criterion are provided.