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To achieve a full understanding of the role of marketing from plan to profit requires a knowledge of the basic building blocks. This textbook introduces the key concepts in the art or science of marketing to practising managers. Understanding your customers and consumers, the 4 Ps (Product, Place, Price and Promotion) provides the basic tools for effective marketing. Deploying your resources and informing your managerial decision making is dealt with in Unit VII introducing marketing intelligence, competition, budgeting and organisational issues. The logical conclusion of this effort is achieving sales and the particular techniques involved are explored in the final section.

This study aims to empirically analyze the effect of firm financial strengths (liquidity, leverage, and cost of goods sold) and firm characteristics (utilization, tangibility and company size) towards firm financial performance and study the differences of these effects before and after firms going public.

The analysis is based on 159 firms listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) during the transition periods of interest from one year before each firm became a listed firm and up to five years after becoming a listed firm (data collection from 2002 to 2019). Fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) is applied for the analysis.

The empirical evidence shows that the firms have to maintain different levels of determinants during different years of operation. Before becoming listed firms, the firms' size plays a significant role in determining the firms' financial performance. Different characteristics are required, according to the size of the firms. One year after becoming listed firms, a low level of production and operating expenses in relation to sales and low leverage are the two important factors for superior financial performance. Then, 2–5 years after becoming listed firms and after a steady state is reached, two more factors, good liquidity and high tangibility, are shown to be significant for good financial performance of the firms.

Unlike prior studies, this study explains the causal relationships or combinations of determinants of financial strengths and firm characteristics, before and after going public toward good financial performance of firms, which cannot be identified by analyzing the calendar-year performance.

Key components of the logistics mix are described in an effort to create an understanding of the total logistics concept. Chapters include an introduction to logistics; the strategic role of logistics, customer service levels, channel relationships, facilities location, transport, inventory management, materials handling, interface with production, purchasing and materials management, estimating demand, order processing, systems performance, leadership and team building, business resource management.

The conceptual problem associated with marketing productivity analysis is examined followed by an examination of currrent practice in marketing productivity in the following areas — on the product line, in advertising and promotional mix, in the salesforce, in distribution and in customer activity tracking. It provides UK companies with some guidance on how they can improve their performance measurement using marketing information systems and reorganising existing information for more effective marketing action. The research concentrates on 50 well‐known British companies in oil, chemicals, various engineering disciplines, food, pharmaceuticals, insurance, construction and chain‐store retailing. The findings are based on 28 viable responses, and a further 21 (different) responses from companies which were personally visited. Although the research techniques need to be refined they conclude that the management of resources invested in marketing activities can never be refined to the point where an incremental investment in any specific marketing application can be measured with great accuracy. Yet a great deal of measurement is possible and marketing managers can be well enough informed about the behaviour of marketing inputs so that allocation decisions in future periods will benefit.?

This paper compares the ways in which different livestock and agricultural products are exchanged in post-socialist Mongolia. It tries to explain why some goods are more commoditised than others. The hypothesis is that when marketing or barter exchange with professional merchants entail high opportunity costs, the chosen modus will rather be gift giving or personal barter within local networks. High opportunity costs, in turn, may arise because of the importance goods have for domestic consumption, because of the transaction costs connected with their exchange, or because of a high prestige value, which is not reflected in high market prices.

Contemporary literature reveals that, to date, the poultry livestock sector has not received sufficient research attention. This particular industry suffers from unstructured supply chain practices, lack of awareness of the implications of the sustainability concept and failure to recycle poultry wastes. The current research thus attempts to develop an integrated supply chain model in the context of poultry industry in Bangladesh. The study considers both sustainability and supply chain issues in order to incorporate them in the poultry supply chain. By placing the forward and reverse supply chains in a single framework, existing problems can be resolved to gain economic, social and environmental benefits, which will be more sustainable than the present practices.

The theoretical underpinning of this research is ‘sustainability’ and the ‘supply chain processes’ in order to examine possible improvements in the poultry production process along with waste management. The research adopts the positivist paradigm and ‘design science’ methods with the support of system dynamics (SD) and the case study methods. Initially, a mental model is developed followed by the causal loop diagram based on in-depth interviews, focus group discussions and observation techniques. The causal model helps to understand the linkages between the associated variables for each issue. Finally, the causal loop diagram is transformed into a stock and flow (quantitative) model, which is a prerequisite for SD-based simulation modelling. A decision support system (DSS) is then developed to analyse the complex decision-making process along the supply chains.

The findings reveal that integration of the supply chain can bring economic, social and environmental sustainability along with a structured production process. It is also observed that the poultry industry can apply the model outcomes in the real-life practices with minor adjustments. This present research has both theoretical and practical implications. The proposed model’s unique characteristics in mitigating the existing problems are supported by the sustainability and supply chain theories. As for practical implications, the poultry industry in Bangladesh can follow the proposed supply chain structure (as par the research model) and test various policies via simulation prior to its application. Positive outcomes of the simulation study may provide enough confidence to implement the desired changes within the industry and their supply chain networks.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of ISO 9000 certification on three dimensions of firm performance that are theoretically derived to have a relationship with the adoption of ISO 9000 standards, namely, sales revenue, cost of goods sold/sales revenue, and the asset turnover ratio (sales/total assets).

Employing a panel data approach covering all publicly traded companies in Brazil that had adopted the ISO 9000 standards from 1995 to 2006, the authors investigate the impact of the certification on firm performance using three categories of economic regression models: the pooling of cutting data with ordinary least squares, the fixed effects and the random effects.

ISO 9000 certification is found to be associated with an increase in sales revenues, decrease in cost of goods sold/sales revenue and increase in the asset turnover ratios of the certified firms.

The research findings suggest that companies large or small, irrespective of their capital structure (i.e. debt/equity) and cutting across industries will benefit from the adoption of ISO 9000 standards. However, the extent to which firms benefit from such adoption is likely to vary. Moreover, the generalizability of the research findings is limited by the size of the sample.

The paper's chief contribution lies in the validation of the signaling theory in the context of business organizations and extending the domain of research on this topic to emerging markets generally.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the relationship between organizational capital and the subsets of organizational capital (intellectual capital (IC)) cost and cost stickiness.

This study is causal correlational research. The data related to the company’s financial statements were collected using the Rahavard Novin Software and www.rdis.ir. In this study, panel data were run with the use of Eviews 8, in order to test the hypotheses. The ordinary least-squares method is used in this study to estimate the parameters of the model.

The results obtained from the study show that there is a significant relationship between organizational capital and cost stickiness. However, there is no significant difference between high and low rank in terms of organizational capital and cost stickiness. In addition, there is a significant difference between IC and cost stickiness. Moreover, there is no significant difference between the components of IC and cost stickiness. Also, IC has an effect on the intensity of the relationship between organizational capital and cost stickiness.

This study explores the relationship between organizational capital and the subsets of IC and cost stickiness. Independent variables used in this study include organizational capital, IC and its components in the Pulic model, i.e. the efficiency of capital employed, the efficiency of human capital and the efficiency of structural capital.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance implications associated with production outsourcing. Specifically, the paper analyzes the cost of goods sold for firms who outsource core manufacturing processes, using empirical data from a variety of industries. The paper seeks to better understand the influence of outsourcing on factory cost by looking at these in the context of related strategies, such as supplier integration, information technology (IT) implementation, and manufacturing process decisions.

The paper draws on transaction cost economics, manufacturing strategy, and supply chain management literature to aid in predicting the performance to be expected when outsourcing production activities. Furthermore, the paper investigates the moderating effects of manufacturing strategies, supplier integration, and IT expenditures on outsourcing. The primary model is a two-way panel model for the cross-sectional and longitudinal data drawn from the MPI Census of Manufacturers Survey of US manufacturing plants.

The analysis indicates that production outsourcing tends to shift costs among cost of goods sold (COGS) categories, but does not consistently reduce them as measured by overall COGS. The effects of production outsourcing on both the cost of labor and the cost of materials are strong, tending to decrease labor, and increase materials. Additionally, this study shows that a high level of supplier integration has a notable moderating influence on overall COGS, but that process strategies do not. Finally, this analysis indicates that IT expenditures were not influential as a moderator variable when outsourcing, but did have a marked influence on overall COGS, as well as on labor and materials costs.

This research investigates the effects of outsourcing on the components of COGS, a level of analysis that is typically not looked at relative to outsourcing. This research also provides methodological contributions with the development of a nested random effects structural model for use with a secondary data source.

Secondary markets provide a place for unwanted items to be bought and sold, which diverts them from landfills, reducing the products' ecological impact and creating economic value. The purpose of this paper is study the secondary markets to understand the size of this important portion of the US economy.

The data were collected from financial reports, news articles, and interviews with subject experts. From all of these sources, the scope and size of secondary markets can be estimated.

Secondary markets are effective in diverting a large number of products from landfills, creating numerous jobs, resulting in substantial economic value in the process. Although not reflected in current government metrics, a conservative estimate is that the secondary market represents 2.28 percent of the 2008 US gross domestic product.

Several of the secondary markets have many small players, with no strong trade associations or other authorities to estimate their size. The paper's estimates based on known sources are very conservative, perhaps underestimating the size of these sectors.

As society increasingly pays attention to the ecological impact of its products, secondary markets will play an important role in supply chains. Understanding the magnitude, structure and reach of these markets can help firms develop better product stewardship and lifecycle management.

Individuals will not directly change their behavior from this research, but the findings should help companies behave differently, which in the end will offer products with lower ecological impact.

Secondary markets are an integral part of the US economy, and have not been adequately studied.