Search results

The purpose of this paper is to examine how a graduate institute at National Chiayi University (NCYU), by using a model that integrates analytic hierarchy process, cluster analysis and correspondence analysis, can develop effective marketing strategies.

This is primarily a quantitative study aimed at developing a marketing mix for a graduate institute at NCYU in Taiwan. A survey using stratified random sampling was conducted, with 14 universities from four different areas in Taiwan randomly selected for the study. Two questionnaires were conducted: a Likert's five‐scale questionnaire regarding school images and an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) questionnaire regarding school selection factors were administered to 640 undergraduate students. Of the total number of questionnaires, 602 (94 percent) valid school image questionnaires and 570 (89 percent) valid school selection factors questionnaires were used.

The results of AHP revealed that the five most important factors for students' school selection were: employability, curriculum, academic reputation, faculty, and research environment. The results of clustering analysis identified five student groups for market segmentation, and they are the Prominence group, the Less aware group, the Pragmatic group, the Austerity group, and the Fastidious group. Finally, the results of correspondence analysis suggested that students of the Pragmatic Group are more likely to be attracted by NCYU, and also, students perceived NCYU to be strongly associated with lower tuition, fewer entrance‐exam subjects, lower entrance‐exam pass rates, and easier graduation requirements.

It would be better to conduct a factor analysis before using AHP.

Particularly, NCYU should establish new curricula relevant to internationalization, develop curricula in school finance and educational economics, and form study groups to enhance graduating student employment opportunities. Generally, higher educational institutions may adopt the research model developed in this study to develop their marketing mix for better results.

This paper documents research that was the first to integrate AHP, cluster analysis, and correspondence analysis in developing a marketing mix for higher educational institutions.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to explore mindfulness as a cognitive construct that affects the identification and processing of information during market analysis leading to opportunity evaluation.

This paper draws from theory on entrepreneurial cognition and introduces the concept of mindfulness in market analysis to better understand the entrepreneurial mindset at the opportunity evaluation stage of the value-creation process.

Based on a review of the literature on entrepreneurial cognition and mindfulness at the marketing/entrepreneurship interface, a detailed description of the concept of mindful market analysis is presented. In addition, propositions are developed regarding the moderating effects of mindful market analysis on the relationships between various personal and psychological factors and information processing outcomes related to opportunity evaluation.

Much research exists regarding idea creation, entrepreneurial action, opportunity discovery and recognition and entrepreneurial traits. Taking a different approach, this research focuses on opportunity evaluation and the role of market analysis at this stage of the entrepreneurial process. Overall, these contributions help to fulfill the call for more research on the intrapersonal cognitive processes of entrepreneurs and their role in opportunity evaluation.

This study involved analysis of the consumption behaviours of spectators in the K-League (South Korea). Its dual purpose was to cluster spectators into homogeneous groups on the basis of attitudes towards game attendance, and to define the segments obtained on the basis of the demographic and lifestyle profiles of the spectators. Multiple steps were taken to analyse the data from a survey of 967 spectators. This revealed four distinct groups - promotion-concerned, place-concerned, price-concerned and indifferent.

Entrepreneurial marketing (EM) is at the brink of becoming an established discipline. To advance the field further and to better guide research efforts in different sub categories, the purpose of this paper is to examine the field's intellectual structure with the help of citation and co‐citation analysis.

This paper is based on a two‐stage research design. First a citation analysis is carried out through which thematic clusters are identified. In a second step a co‐citation analysis is conducted to determine the intellectual structure of EM research.

This study exposes the most influential authors and publications and emphasizes conjunctions among scholars and their findings. Results show three streams that are the foundation of EM research: theoretical foundations of management, entrepreneurship, and marketing; the research interface of marketing and entrepreneurship; SME and new venture marketing.

The results of a bibliometric analysis are limited by the publications that have been selected as a starting point. However, through the selection criteria chosen to identify the database for analysis, the authors are confident that the results illustrate the intellectual structure of EM research in its entirety. The authors recommend that future research should be conducted in one of the three sub‐fields identified in this study.

By laying out different research streams within EM it is hoped that future research will be guided in different directions. “Fine‐tuning” of research efforts will benefit small, new, and entrepreneurial firms.

The analyses conducted in this paper draw a picture of the field that is based on a quantitative approach and therefore sets itself apart from other literature reviews that have a qualitative core.

This paper aims to relate early history of housing conceptualizations and market analysis in the Anglosphere (Britain, the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). Historians are ignorant of them but clear market analyses had early beginnings in every urban society for developing and accommodating growing populations.

Historiography.

Aspects of market analysis, especially appraisal and rudimentary approaches to the housing market in the Anglosphere, can be traced back to ancient Rome, housing market conceptualizations to Dr Nicholas Barbon and seventeenth-century London’s first population and housing boom and market analysis techniques in the USA at its founding, when Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand Perigor was the first to refine them and write them up in 1794-1796. The US next made major advances in the 1930s. The overall trend has been from inferred analyses to fundamental (derived) analyses, emphasizing “quantifiable data.”

This paper elicits researcher’s professional awareness that each nation has an implicit history of its early development practices and techniques.

The time frame of most housing market analysts is the recent past, the present and the future. But how enduring are their concerns? Do operational values in a housing market reflect historical epochs, or are there some universalities? Furthermore, most urban historians are ignorant of urban market dynamics. It does not occur to them that some of the dynamics that analysts attempt to capture today might always have been inherent in the urban built environment, regardless of era or urbanized part of the globe under consideration.

The purpose of this paper is to propose the use of a user-centric service map to facilitate the visual exploration and monitoring of user context information for proactive market analysis.

The paper supports a context-based market analysis by developing a user-centric service map which comprehensively visualizes a variety of contexts, users, and services. Empirical data were gathered from service descriptions and reviews of 100 mobile application services in the Apple App Store’s lifestyle and healthcare and fitness categories.

The user-centric service map supports the analysis of the context information from using various mobile app services, and can therefore be effectively applied for market-segment analysis and user-value analysis.

The user-centric service map involves implications in terms of multi-disciplinary proactive market orientation and data-driven strategy development, allowing firms to respond to changing market conditions in the mobile business promptly and even preemptively.

The initiative uncovering of latent needs through examining context of use have been an important focus of prior work, but little attempt has been presented in the way of frameworks for converting abundant context data into strategic information. The paper provides new methods and procedures to establish and interpret service maps using flexible visual features.

Plus Factors have long played an important role in inferring a price agreement from the totality of the evidence. In response to changes in the case law, economists have proposed two alternative paths for the future of price fixing analysis. This paper evaluates the suggested approaches and recommends retaining the enhanced Plus Factor methodology.

By carefully defining the Plus Factor concept, three key components of the analysis emerge: (1) information on communications associated with the alleged agreement, (2) economic considerations affecting market competition, and (3) characteristics that serve to differentiate explicit from tacit collusion.

Developments rationalizing the Plus Factor concept show promise, as the methodology is not more closely related to economic theory. On the other hand, replacement of the Plus Factor methodology with one focused on market performance seems problematic. By abandoning the Plus Factor concept, the economist loses a key institutional constraint on over-aggressive enforcement.

Until advocates can address the difficulties associated with using performance evidence to identify price fixing, the standard Plus Factor concept appears more appropriate. Thus, antitrust analysts should continue to use the Plus Factor methodology to infer agreements in price fixing investigations, as long as the economic rationalization of the specific Plus Factor is clearly presented.

The paper synthesizes a number of recent contributions to the price fixing literature and addresses key issues of interest to the enforcement community. By providing a critique of the proposed policy shift to use performance evidence to infer price fixing liability, the study serves to justify continued application of the Plus Factor methodology.

The study here examines how business actors adapt to changes in networks by analyzing their perceptions or their network pictures. The study is exploratory or iterative in the sense that revisions occur to the research question, method, theory, and context as an integral part of the research process.

Changes within networks receive less research attention, although considerable research exists on explaining business network structures in different research traditions. This study analyzes changes in networks in terms of the industrial network approach. This approach sees networks as connected relationships between actors, where interdependent companies interact based on their sensemaking of their relevant network environment. The study develops a concept of network change as well as an operationalization for comparing perceptions of change, where the study introduces a template model of dottograms to systematically analyze differences in perceptions. The study then applies the model to analyze findings from a case study of Norwegian/Japanese seafood distribution, and the chapter provides a rich description of a complex system facing considerable pressure to change. In-depth personal interviews and cognitive mapping techniques are the main research tools applied, in addition to tracer studies and personal observation.

The dottogram method represents a valuable contribution to case study research as it enables systematic within-case and across-case analyses. A further theoretical contribution of the study is the suggestion that network change is about actors seeking to change their network position to gain access to resources. Thereby, the study also implies a close relationship between the concepts network position and the network change that has not been discussed within the network approach in great detail.

Another major contribution of the study is the analysis of the role that network pictures play in actors' efforts to change their network position. The study develops seven propositions in an attempt to describe the role of network pictures in network change. So far, the relevant literature discusses network pictures mainly as a theoretical concept. Finally, the chapter concludes with important implications for management practice.

Many jurisdictions fine illegal cartels using penalty guidelines that presume an arbitrary 10% overcharge. This article surveys more than 700 published economic studies and judicial decisions that contain 2,041 quantitative estimates of overcharges of hard-core cartels. The primary findings are: (1) the median average long-run overcharge for all types of cartels over all time periods is 23.0%; (2) the mean average is at least 49%; (3) overcharges reached their zenith in 1891–1945 and have trended downward ever since; (4) 6% of the cartel episodes are zero; (5) median overcharges of international-membership cartels are 38% higher than those of domestic cartels; (6) convicted cartels are on average 19% more effective at raising prices as unpunished cartels; (7) bid-rigging conduct displays 25% lower markups than price-fixing cartels; (8) contemporary cartels targeted by class actions have higher overcharges; and (9) when cartels operate at peak effectiveness, price changes are 60–80% higher than the whole episode. Historical penalty guidelines aimed at optimally deterring cartels are likely to be too low.