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Recently, the new application of DVD technology in multimedia reference sources provides opportunities to integrate a large amount of various media, as well as many kinds of reference sources, on a single disc. This paper provides an overview of the recent trends towards publishing DVD multimedia reference sources and discusses the advantages of DVD‐ROMs and the gigabyte storage potential of the technology for publishing multimeia reference sources.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the strategy for latecomers in large developing countries under globalization. The relationship between innovation and learning is deeply studied.

The paper formulates an in‐depth case study on the digital video player industry through consideration of government documents, reports, and research papers; intensive interviews; and questionnaire study.

The firms in developing countries might be able to innovate before they can match the firms in advanced countries in technological capabilities, and innovation is the most effective way of learning. The firms can achieve competitive advantage owing to the effect of the national value network, the nature of architectural technology, and the relationships between them in product development. The national market should be deliberately taken as a strategic asset for the technological learning and latecomers should learn how to exploit the advantage of globalization.

The paper tries to understand how firms in developing countries conduct learning by innovating to build their competitive advantages.

The purpose of this study is to compare learner experiences of recorded instructional videos (DVDs) with Machinima.

In this exploratory study, sets of learning sequences in management skills training were delivered to 32 learners using both methods, and learner reactions were gathered using post-event interviews.

Analysis of learner responses showed that participants prefer Machinima as a learning delivery mechanism. Participants also reported being better able to concentrate on the message of the Machinima learning sequences.

The sample was not representative, being a convenience sample derived by open invitation from cohorts of two master’s degree programmes conducted at the School of Business, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Co. Kildare. The age range of the participants was significantly skewed toward a younger age grouping. No learning test was given to assess the teaching efficacy of the methods. Implications for practice include using Machinima to model desirable behaviours to trainees. Future research should extend the research to other settings.

Research should be considered into the potential for Machinima to be considered as a replacement for DVD in management training. Sufficient encouragement arises from this study to suggest that Machinima contains none of the distractions of DVD that are recorded in this study. In addition, many organisations seek to utilise training materials with diverse audiences.

Originality of the study stems from the potential replacement of DVD with Machinima in learning.

This research aims to address how a firm can mobilise resources through interfirm relationships to bridge technological discontinuities.

This research adopts a processual single case study to undertake an empirical investigation from the perspective of a technology-bundled net as the research boundary.

This research produces three key findings. First, mobilising resources across firm boundaries to create an adequate bundling of product, process and marketing technologies is the cornerstone of bridging technological discontinuities. Second, resource mobilisation between firms in the transition to a new technological trajectory is affected by the sediments accrued in the existing (old) trajectory. Third, technological discontinuities may be competence-enhancing, and their radical effects may originate from non-technical causes.

This paper contributes to the research of radical innovation from an interaction and networks perspective and also by focusing on resource mobilisation taking place in the transition from an existing technological trajectory to a new one. In particular, this paper takes into account the relatedness of resources and the influences of past interaction underpinning an old trajectory in the bridging of technological discontinuities.

This research outlines the Hong Kong film industry with examination of key actors, directors, films, and production companies within the martial arts genre of Hong Kong Action Cinema. Hong Kong Film Award winners and nominees, core films within genres, and core reference works both general and theoretical from experts in the field of Hong Kong martial arts film research have been highlighted. Web sites are suggested that provide reviews of Hong Kong martial arts films, biographical information on a variety of actors and actresses as well as comprehensive bibliographic information on select films. Also included are commercial Web sites that provide Hong Kong martial arts films.

Quasi‐static boundary value problems are formulated for the isothermal linear theory of swelling porous elastic soils in the case that the fluid is incompressible. First, some general theorems (uniqueness, reciprocal and continuous dependence) are established in the general case. Then, in the case that solid matrix is saturated with fluid and occupies a semi‐infinite cylinder of smooth cross section, a time‐weighted cross‐sectional area measure is used in order to establish spatial decay estimates for the quasi‐static solutions.

Jim Keyes, CEO of Dallas-based Blockbuster Inc., was facing the biggest challenge of his career. In March 2010 Keyes was meeting with Hollywood studios in an effort to negotiate better terms for the $1 billion worth of merchandise Blockbuster had purchased the year before. In recent years, Blockbuster's share of the video rental market had been sharply decreasing in the face of competitors such as the low-cost, convenient Redbox vending machines and mail-order and video-on-demand service Netflix. While Blockbuster's market capitalization had dropped 47 percent to $62 million in 2009, Netflix's had shot up 55 percent to $3.9 billion that year. The only hope for Blockbuster, as Keyes saw it, was to shift its business model from primarily brick-and-mortar physical DVD rentals to increased digital and mail-order video delivery. In Keyes's favor, the studios were more than willing to provide him with that help. Hollywood wanted to see Blockbuster win the video-rental wars. Consumers still made frequent purchases of DVDs at its store—purchases which were much more profitable for studios than the rentals that remained Blockbuster's primary business. Blockbuster had made efforts at making its business model more nimble, but the results had been disappointing, and its debt continued to skyrocket. By the end of 2009, the company's debt had climbed to $856 million, its share of the $6.5 billion video rental business had fallen to 27 percent, and its revenues had tumbled 23 percent to $4.1 billion.

The objective of this case is to discuss how different business models and supply chain structures impact the financials of the firms in the DVD rental business. In particular, the goal is to convey that the characteristics of the movie (recent/big hit or old/eclectic) affect whether it is best rented from a centralized or decentralized model. In addition, as streaming gains market share, the impact will be different for movie types and business models.

Given the high uncertainty in the quality perception of experiential products, manufacturers use signals to influence consumers’ decisions. In the movie industry, literature shows that performance of the main channel (e.g. cinema) strongly influences the performance of auxiliary channels (e.g. DVDs). The success of a movie in the home country is also to be resonated by its good performance in host countries. However, the cultural contingency of these success-breeds-success (SBS) effects has not been examined. This paper aims to test the influence of cultural values on the SBS effects across channels and countries.

Borrowing concepts from the signaling literature and analyzing DVD sales data from six international markets using a multilevel mixed-effects model, the study finds that culture plays a significant role to influence both SBS effects.

In countries with low power distance, short-term orientation and high indulgence, consumers who purchase from auxiliary channels are more likely to be influenced by the box office performance of movies. Meanwhile, cultural distance between the home and host nations significantly decreases the cross-national SBS effect.

The findings are likely to be generalized to online auxiliary channels of movies, but empirical testing is required to ensure that no major adaptation is required in the process. Future research can also extend the framework of this paper to include more countries into the analysis and investigate cultural variables beyond Hofstede’s dimensions.

This paper suggests that the SBS effects may vary across nations. When managers plan for the sequential distributions of experiential products, the cultural values of target markets should be considered to decrease the uncertainty in sales prediction.

This paper contributes to the existing literature by investigating the international auxiliary channels of movies and incorporating cultural values into the framework of sequential distributions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to test the links between the main and auxiliary channels from an international marketing perspective.

This study aims to examine perceived price fairness, actual pricing and price decay in a short‐life cycle market; namely DVD films.

The prices of six UK retailers for a range of films released over the last 18 months were examined and compared with the perceived perception of fair price of a questionnaire sample of over 500 UK adults.

Consumers perceive a DVD to lose value of more than 50 per cent in the first year, but this price decay is not reflected in the actual pricing of the DVDs. Prices for newer DVDs are relatively consistent between retailers of the same channel type, but there are large price differentials for older and/or more specialised items.

This study is exploratory in nature, and a larger scale study of the phenomenon of price decay of digital short‐life cycle products such as DVDs is desirable.

The findings suggest that there is a considerable gap between actual prices and perceived fair prices of DVDs, especially for older items. DVD producers and retailers may need to consider adjusting their prices to bring them more in line with customer expectations. The large gap between actual prices and perceived fair prices also has important implications for brand management.

So far, no research has been undertaken which investigates perceived fair price and actual pricing of DVDs. Furthermore, the issue of consumer‐perceived price decay has largely been ignored in previous research. Both perceptions of price fairness and perceived price decay are important considerations for pricing policies. This study attempts to address this gap.

The purpose of this paper is to propose what can be learned from the study of specific promotional materials.

The in-depth analysis of the text and layout of websites – adapted from Niels Brugger, and in contrast to the study of promotional materials as ancillary or interrelated texts.

That websites can tell the author much about the intentions of distributors, and their target market, even when these resources are no longer active or social media is used.

Specific promotional materials should be increasingly studied as individual texts. Websites have their own conventions and structures that can be studied, as well as other digital and physical artefacts.

The findings are potentially widespread, as they are evident within a defunct distributor’s webpages, as well as one that remains to be active in the UK market.