Search results

Online retailing changes all retail systems significantly. The growing importance of online sales requires the creation of new fulfillment models. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how retailers develop from separate multi-channel (MC) to integrated omni-channel (OC) fulfillment. OC retailing has an integrated perspective, with seamless interactions between online and bricks-and-mortar channels.

More than 60 internationally active retailers and experts from Germany participated in an exploratory survey. With a response rate of 40 percent the authors achieved the goal to adequately depict the German MC and OC retail market. It is currently the largest empirical study of MC and OC fulfillment.

It is the first study to comprehensively analyze the logistical development options open to retailers for integrated fulfillment. The authors discuss the conceptual development options and formulate propositions for an advanced OC fulfillment approach. OC retailers aim to pool their organizational units for fulfillment via different channels. Retailers with multiple channels develop their warehouse systems toward channel-integrated inventory enabling flexible and demand-driven inventory allocation. Retailers with channel-integrated inventory also organize their picking procedures in one common zone. The higher the outlet density, the more it becomes beneficial for retailers to introduce pick-up services.

The research is based on insights from retailers and experts from companies based in Germany.

The findings provide an insight into designing OC fulfillment and distribution structures. The concepts themselves, archetypes, challenges and development paths are analyzed. Identified logistics levers can be adjusted to pinpoint the steps required to advance integration.

The authors contribute by deriving propositions and a framework for transitioning from basic MC to integrated, extended OC logistics. Because this research area is still comparatively young, the authors take a more comprehensive, exploratory view of OC fulfillment.

This paper aims at exploring the role of structural capital (SC) dimensions – customer, process and innovational – in the development of e‐business models (eBM). The Iranian carpet industry is tested regarding five types of eBMs: Direct to customer, Full Service Provider, Virtual Community, Shared Infrastructure and Value Net Integrator.

First, measures for SC dimensions and required core competencies for eBMs are extracted from the literature. Then, the correlation level between SC dimensions and different eBMs are hypothesized. Finally, after using a questionnaire in 30 Iranian carpet companies, the hypotheses are tested.

This study indicates that three dimensions of SC influence different eBMs in their own way. While one instant dimension is strongly effective for one eBM, it does not significantly affect the other one.

The role of human capital – the second part of intellectual capital – on the development of eBM as well as the dependency of some other eBMs such as intermediaries on intellectual capital should be investigated in further research.

Using the help of this study, firstly, companies will concentrate on the most effective dimensions of SC in developing a special eBM. Secondly, they will exclude those eBMs which are not applicable regarding their knowledge capabilities.

This study brings together two disciplines that have not been considered together before: the development of eBMs and the management of intellectual capital.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to provide a typology for classification of the digital goods business (DGB), analyzing its characteristics with selected cases, to suggest an evolution strategy appropriate for today's digital business economy, and to address the research implications.

Based on a focus group interview, the study identified and classified the DGB models into four types in terms of sales channels and service methods, and further proposed five evolution strategies for the DGM.

The paper proposes five evolution strategies for the DGB: from streaming direct to streaming intermediary; from download direct to download intermediary; from download intermediary to streaming intermediary; from download direct to streaming direct; and from download direct to streaming intermediary. These evaluation strategies will be suitably applicable to the type of digital goods for which a business strives.

As the study is exploratory in nature, further research will be required to empirically confirm the findings of the underlying study regarding various DGBs, such as software, games, and movies. In addition, as the proposed typology reflects only the current state of the DGB industry, a further elaboration of the typology may also prove necessary in the future as technologies and the DGB industry evolve.

Providing a useful theoretical foundation for future DGB studies and valuable insight into practical applications in the ever‐growing DGB field, the paper delivers transitional strategic insights based on digital goods taxonomy. This strategic implication can be applicable to analyzing and explaining current DGB cases.

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.

Preface The functions of business divide into several areas and the general focus of this book is on one of the most important although least understood of these—DISTRIBUTION. The particular focus is on reviewing current practice in distribution costing and on attempting to push the frontiers back a little by suggesting some new approaches to overcome previously defined shortcomings.

This paper aims to investigate associations between firm resources and reliance on entrepreneurial marketing (EM) channels among agrofood ventures. It accounts for agropreneur gender and racial/ethnic status in the context of marketing channel portfolio composition. The authors examine the established assumption that resource limitations drive EM and whether socially disadvantaged status of agropreneurs is associated with marketing strategy beyond standard resourcing measures.

Using 2015 Local Foods Marketing Practices Survey data, the authors apply linear regression to investigate differences in the use of EM channels, accounting for resources, social status and other factors.

Limited-resource ventures rely more on consumer-oriented channels that require EM practices. Socially disadvantaged entrepreneurs favor these channels, even when accounting for resources. Notably, ventures headed by men of color rely more on the most customer-centric local foods marketing channel.

Future research should investigate how social and human capital influences the use of EM.

Entrepreneurial support policy and practice for agropreneurs should be cautious about the “double-burden” folk theorem of intersectional disadvantage and review how to best direct resources on EM to groups most likely to benefit.

This paper uses a unique, restricted, nation-wide, federal data set to examine relationships between resource endowments, social status and the composition of agrofood enterprises’ marketing channel portfolios. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is the first to include racial- and ethnic-minority status of agropreneurs and to account for intersectionality with gender.

The main objective of this marketing strategy case is to understand why and how a firm should evaluate and rework its own business to stay competitive and aligned with external market forces.

Technical Solutions Group (TSG), was the India-based technical support division of Quatrro Global Services and focused on providing support to customers of large Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) and software developers around the globe. Because of the increased competition and structural changes at the customer end, the business was facing flattened revenue growth and a drop in margins. TSG had to make strategic decisions on how to continue the business, either within the current paradigm of being a business to business business or transforming into a business to consumer business leveraging digital technology.

This case can be used in an undergraduate (upper level) or graduate-level course on marketing strategy, digital strategy or strategic management.

Teaching Notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy.

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.

Celebrex became the first of a new class of drugs known as COX‐2 selective non‐steroidal anti‐inflammatory drugs. It improves treatment for arthritis sufferers without compromising the protective lining of the stomach. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how direct‐to‐consumer advertising (DTCA) of prescription medicines can be used to rebuild faith in the cyclooxygenase‐2 (COX‐2) product category.

The case is developed using published sources and no input is required from company representatives. The presentation style follows the classic comprehensive case format used in postgraduate teaching programmes.

Business executives and strategic marketing students would benefit from a discussion on how external environmental factors can suddenly impose a review of marketing strategy. The reader learns how management addresses the business dilemma using DTCA.

A blockbuster rival drug Vioxx is withdrawn due to cardiovascular (CV) health safety concerns. A resulting dominant market situation soon becomes a business dilemma. The Federal Drug Administration calls for a “black box” warning label on Celebrex, the most serious type of warning.

The implications are that having a product in a class of its own is not enough. It highlights the need to communicate to different audiences, to both the medical profession and the end‐user. Getting doctors to recommend the medicine and pulling the product through the channel by stimulating patient demand after a health scare are paramount.

This is the first pharmaceutical business case where the withdrawal of a rival product leaves the dominant competitor in a monopoly situation. Contrary to expectation, market share plummets despite the absence of competition.

This chapter examines representations of gender in online modafinil markets. While gender has often been absent from scholarship on online drug markets, our analysis demonstrates the ubiquity of gender in representations of modafinil users and sellers. The analysis draws on visual images, blogs, and marketing emails relating to three websites selling modafinil, discussed pseudonymously. We describe the range of ways that notions of gender are represented in advertising. Although women represent around 40% of that buying modafinil online, websites and communications tended not to feature women. Although sexist stereotypes of women were rarely present (in contrast to direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising), the ways that modafinil was imagined tended to focus narrowly on corporate spheres of work and productivity. We contrast this narrow imaginary with female journalists’ own accounts of using modafinil to manage illness and enhance creativity. Thus, we conclude that the ways that modafinil has been imagined reflects working assumptions as to who is considered the ‘normal’ participant in online modafinil markets.