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Pricing, Marketing Management, Strategic Marketing, Strategic Management.

The case can be used for a Pricing Course and Strategic Marketing, Marketing Management and Strategic Management courses delivered to post-graduate management programme (Master’s level) students and/or for Management Development Programme’s.

Alliance Intercontinental Sourcing Company LLP (ALLISCO) manufactured Steel Blanks for clutch plates used in two- and three-wheeler automobiles. Steel Blank plates further underwent a processing phase which included coating with leather cover to form the finished clutch plate. The primary raw material used by ALLISCO for its manufacturing process was sheet metal. The processing of the principal raw material resulted in the production of three joint products. The first joint product was “Steel Blank”, the main product; the second joint product was “Inner Circle”, which may be classified as a by-product; the third joint product was the left-over waste material and could be categorized as sheet scrap. The approximate increase in procurement cost of 8 per cent had considerably impacted the firm’s profit margins. The dilemma that Rishabh Singla, Managing Partner, ALLISCO, now faced was how the increased differential could be distributed systematically among the three joint products. The challenge for ALLISCO was to preserve the percentage of gross profit margins by altering its existing pricing strategy.

Understand the concept of multiple joint products; learn about choosing appropriate pricing strategies to price multiple joint products; comprehend how value-based pricing can extract untapped profits; and understand the importance of retaining gross profit margins (%).

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The last 200 years, roughly from the publication of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations in 1776 to the present, have witnessed a remarkable, systemic drive for the globalization of Western capitalism. The intellectual origin of this drive has been mainstream economics which has capitalised technology, labour, environment and other productive resources; in practice, these resources have been harnessed by aggressive capitalists [originally called adventurers, forerunnes of today's multinational corporations (MNCs)] in a worldwide search for profits. This drive has enriched the West but not the vast majority of humanity.

The paper provides a comprehensive overview of the biases in inventory decisions, under the umbrella of behavioural operations, considering research findings that used experimental methods. Research in this field has gained traction but, to the best of our knowledge, review articles that summarize these research findings are scarce. Hence, there is a need to synthesize the anomalies and biases reported in inventory decision-making literature to gain a more integrated understanding.

This study reviews themes relevant to inventory and behavioural operations management from the articles published in recognized top-tier journals during the period between 2000 and 2020 with an aim to build a classification framework. Further, using a systematic review procedure, the relevant research studies are divided into sub-sections and appropriate search strategies are adopted to pleat more information on inventory ordering biases.

This study presents a classification framework by highlighting the factors influencing the biases in inventory decisions and describes the effects of utility preferences on the decision-making behaviour. It highlights the inventory ordering pattern under unconventional settings and also for different supply chain settings. This systematic review helps in identifying the research gap and in giving directions for future researchers.

The study presents a systematic review and detailed analysis of the research in inventory decision making through a behavioural lens. The study shows a clear direction of progress over the years, and implies new directions for looking beyond placing orders and for moving towards a more integrated approach while making supply chain decisions. It will be useful for researchers and practitioners working on newsvendor decisions, supply chain contracts, behavioural economics, behavioural operations management, bounded rationality theory and experimental economics.

The last two centuries, roughly from the publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, have witnessed a remarkable process of globalization of Western capitalism. The principal institutions facilitating this process were originally the chartered companies and, in the more recent times, the multinational corporations headquartered in the West. Search for global profits has always been the driving force behind this globalization. But the deeper inner logic of this process is capitalization on a world‐scale.

Within developing countries, particularly in Africa, there is an emerging literature which highlights the unique obstacles faced by women entrepreneurs who start and develop their own businesses (De Vita, Mari, & Poggesi, 2014; Jamali, 2009; Minniti & Naude, 2010; Naude & Havenga, 2005; Nziku & Struthers, 2018). A key objective of this chapter is to critically appraise some of the conceptual approaches adopted in this literature. In so doing, the authors revisit a seminal paper first developed by Granovetter (1973) which suggested that female entrepreneurs, instead of being disadvantaged by the so-called ‘weak ties’ that bind their business networks, actually enjoy compensating benefits which Granovetter referred to as the strength of weak ties (SWT). Building on the conceptual work of Nziku and Struthers (2018) which developed an innovative taxonomy for analysing the SWT concept within a Principal-Agent (P-A) paradigm, the chapter will set out new insights which challenge some of the assumptions of the extant entrepreneurship literature. In particular, that women are inherently more risk averse in their business decision making than men. The theoretical context for this will be derived from a behavioural economics methodology first developed by Kahneman and Tversky (1979). They introduced the concept of loss aversion as a more realistic approach to attitudes towards risk on the part of entrepreneurs than risk aversion. The chapter contends that the loss aversion perspective may be more appropriate to the decision-making frame adopted by female entrepreneurs, especially in the context of Africa as well as in other developing regions of the world. The chapter will therefore suggest that such an approach can yield fresh insights on the topic of female entrepreneurship which the extant literature heretofore has not addressed, though this will have to be subsequently tested empirically.

The success of any organization in a knowledge-based economy depends on effective knowledge transferring and then proper use of the transferred knowledge. As is known, optimizing the knowledge transferring costs in a product portfolio plays an important role in improving productivity, competitive advantage and profitability of any organization. Therefore, this paper aims to determine an optimal product portfolio by minimizing the konlwedge transferring costs.

Here, a fuzzy binary linear programming model is used to select an optimal product portfolio. The model is capable of considering the knowledge transferring costs while taking into account the human-hours constraints for each product by a fuzzy approach. Using fuzzy ranking functions, a reasonable solution of the model can be achieved by classical or metaheuristic algorithms.

Numerical experiments indicate that the proposed fuzzy model is practically effective.

The contributions of this work essentially consist of considering knowledge transferring costs in selecting an optimal product portfolio and using the fuzzy data which make the model more realistic.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

This study aims to improve understanding of companies’ motives and concerns in relation to cooperation through a joint commercial product portfolio.

The qualitative research method was used to study 17 companies based on two case projects.

The joint commercial product portfolio is introduced as a new type of co-marketing. The possible business drivers, targeted benefits and perceived challenges of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in relation to cooperation through a joint commercial product portfolio are identified. The companies seem to be motivated by and concerned about similar issues that also apply to other forms of co-marketing.

The study consisted of two case projects in the same country and, thus, share fairly similar business environments and cultures. Therefore, the same results may not be obtained for a study that is conducted in a different location.

Managers of SMEs can benefit from the results of this study by improving their understanding of co-marketing opportunities through the creation of a joint commercial product portfolio with suitable companies. In addition, the results provide managers with insights into the challenges that should be considered when planning marketing cooperation.

The study provides new perspectives on the existing co-marketing literature by discussing the creation of a joint commercial product portfolio as a vehicle to support companies’ business objectives. The study contributes to the increasing business-to-business co-marketing literature by presenting the business drivers, targeted benefits and perceived challenges related to SMEs cooperation through a joint commercial product portfolio.

The purpose of this paper is to further understand the joint effect of project‐level exploratory and exploitative learning in new product development. It aims to examine the complicated relationships among exploratory learning, exploitative learning and new product performance at a single project level. In addition, it seeks to shed light on the contextual effects of a firm's market orientation on the relationship between joint occurrence of both learning activities and new product development performance.

The paper is based on a questionnaire survey/analysis of a sample of 298 projects from high‐tech firms in Taiwan.

The findings suggest that the joint occurrence of both learning activities has a positive effect on new product performance and depends upon a high level of one learning activity coupled with a small dose of the other. Drawing on cultural and behavioral perspectives of market orientation, the results also indicate that market orientation may enhance the joint effect of both learning activities on new product performance.

This paper offers insight to project managers with regard to the importance of rationally mixing with exploratory and exploitative learning during new product development. Furthermore, the study argues that market orientation is an alternative of organizational design that fosters the positive joint effect of both learning behaviors.

The results empirically support the theoretical argument that a high‐low matching of exploratory and exploitative learning can enhance performance at the level of a single project. The study provides a multiple‐level framework to understand how the firm‐level MO strengthens the positive effects of joint occurrence of project‐level exploratory and exploitative learning activities during new product development.

As the start of a new product development (NPD) process, the front fuzzy end (FFE) is believed to determine new product performance to a large extent. However, its effects on new product performance, particularly in terms of quality and cost, lack empirical evidence in the extant literature. Moreover, the joint performance effects of the FFE and cross-functional interfaces in later NPD stages (i.e. product development and product launch) are largely overlooked and deserve further investigation. Therefore, this study aims to explore the direct effects of the FFE and later stages’ joint moderating effects on new product performance (i.e. quality and cost) from a holistic process view.

A conceptual model is proposed to hypothesize the FFE–new product performance relationships and the joint performance effects of cross-functional interface management. A sample of 196 firms from an international survey is used and hierarchical linear regression is employed to test the proposed hypotheses.

This study finds that FFE implementation contributes to both new product quality and cost performance. Moreover, interface management in multiple NPD stages has synergistic performance effects. Specifically, the FFE, customer involvement in product development and manufacturing flexibility in product launch jointly improve new product quality performance, while the FFE, supplier involvement in product development and manufacturing flexibility in product launch jointly improve new product cost performance.

This study extends the NPD literature by deepening the understanding of the key roles of the FFE on new product performance and evidencing the synergistic effects of cross-functional interfaces in multiple NPD stages. Further, this study also highlights the differential joint moderating effects of interface management in later NPD stages on new product quality and cost performance. This study also offers insightful implications to NPD managers.