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The objective of this paper is to propose a consumer-behavior-based intelligence (CBBI) model to identify market structure so as to monitor product competition. Competitive intelligence extracted from Chinese e-business clickstream data is exploited to examine the relevance of consumers' heterogeneous behavioral feedback, namely, click, tag-into-favorite, time-of-browsing, add-into-cart, and remove-from-cart, to visualize the competitive product market structure and to predict product-level sales.

Our proposed CBBI model consists of visualization and prediction, which explore e-business clickstream data. We conduct the visualization and segmentation of market structure in the form of a perceptual map by employing K-means clustering algorithm and multidimensional scaling technique. Concurrently, we developed an updated Bayesian linear regression (BLR) to predict product-level sales by considering consumers' heterogeneous feedback. Our updated BLR specifically integrated the estimated knowledge of the previous periods to verify whether product sales are period-dependent due to the consumer memory effect in e-commerce, improving the conventional BLR of diffuse prior distribution setup in terms of mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean squared error (RMSE).

Considering the performance of consumers' heterogeneous actions, the present research visualized three different segments of the competitive market structure in a perceptual map, and its horizontal axis is shown as a signal of the ascending trend of product sales. The previous five-day period was ascertained to be the best size of a time window for the consumer memory effect on product sales prediction. This hypothesis is supported by the concept that product sales are period-dependent. The results of the proposed updated BLR indicate that consumer tag-into-favorite, add-into-cart, and remove-from-cart feedback have positive impacts on product-level sales while click and time-of-browsing have the opposite effect.

While the identified competitive product market structure elaborates consumer heterogeneous feedback toward alternative product choices, this paper contributes by extending those homogeneous consumer preferences-related marketing studies. The perceptual map's configuration in respect to period-dependent product sales facilitates the effective inclusion of consumer behavior application in product sales prediction research in e-commerce. This paper helps sellers and retailers better comprehend the impacts of heterogeneous feedback and the consumer memory effect on the degree of competition in the form of product sales. The research results also offer a managerial implication about shaping the competitive edge by conducting different product management strategies in e-commerce platforms.

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.

One of the biggest challenges in markets where products have ambiguous values (like fine art, specialty coffee, and wine) is to determine the structure of the market. As products in these markets are unique and values are private, it is difficult to determine its market structure using traditional methods. In this chapter, we present a method to determine the market structure of ambiguously valued products using bidding data from auctions. We create a sociomatrix of artists based on bidders revealed bidding preferences and uncover the market structure with artists as the unit of analysis. We demonstrate our approach using bidding data from an online auction of Modern Indian Art. This approach resulted in the extraction of a two-dimensional art market structure with color and price being the two dimensions. This chapter concludes with a discussion on the implications and limitations of our approach, and directions for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the impact of earnings management on capital structure across firm diversification strategies.

The study focuses on firms operating in the manufacturing sector (diversified and focused). Panel data methodology compares diversification strategies and identifies the impact of diversification strategy with earnings management practices on capital structure decision.

International and product diversified firms have lower levels of leverage than focused firms in their capital structure. Asset-based earnings management is positive for diversified (market/product) firms. Earnings management using discretionary expenditure (project based) is found to be higher for market diversified but product-focused firms. Earning smoothing method is found to be significant for focused firms and shows a negative relationship with capital structure.

This study offers an insight into the relationship between corporate diversification, earnings management and capital structure decisions of manufacturing firms. The results provide an important contribution to accounting and strategy literature. A distinction is made between market- and product-diversified firms and influence of earnings management practices (asset-based, project-based and earnings smoothing (ESM)) on capital structure decisions. Diversified firms (market/product) tend to have lower levels of leverage than focused firms and earnings management practices within firm groups significantly influence the capital structure decisions.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the moderating role of competitive intensity between the existing relationship of capital structure and firm performance.

Using the balanced panel data of listed non-financial firms of Pakistan, the present study adopts both the panel and OLS estimation techniques to draw the inferences.

The results exhibit that high debt ratio is harmful for the accounting performance of the selected sample firms of Pakistan. In addition, product market competition negatively moderates the relationship between capital structure and firm performance which suggests that high product market competition can be used as a substitute of debt financing to align the interests of a firm’s managers and shareholders.

The findings of the research provide evidence for the policy makers/regulators that the sample firms should discourage the high debt financing in the presence of competitive intensity in the product marketplace.

The core contribution of the current research is to examine the moderating role of product market competition on the leverage–performance relationship because, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no single study has previously explored this relationship in the context of Pakistan.

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 purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of product market competition and corporate governance on firm’s management performance in the Tehran Stock Exchange market. According to the research literature, the governance mechanisms used in this study consist of ownership structure, structure of the board of directors and capital structure. In addition, Herfindahl–Hirschman Index and market size were used to measure the product market competition.

This study used one selected sample among the firms in the capital market of Iran from 2004 to 2012.

The results of this study indicated that there is a significant relation among the major governance mechanisms (including ownership concentration, independence of the board of directors and debt ratio) and product market competition and management performance. The findings of this study also showed that product market competition is effective on the relation between corporate governance and the performance, and this is what has been ignored in most of the conducted studies.

In general, the results of this study supported the idea that product market competition is effective on implementation and efficiency of governance mechanisms.

Nowadays, supply chain integration (SCI) is considered as an enabler of competitive firm performance. It has three important dimensions: internal, supplier and customer integration. Understanding the interaction between these dimensions and organisational strategy would pave the way for effective implementation of SCI. The famous Miles et al. (1978) strategy typology classifies firms into four strategy types: defenders, prospectors, analysers and reactors. The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the core company’s product-market innovation strategy on the dimensions of SCI, and to investigate the comparative strength of each dimension of SCI in defenders and prospectors.

Primary data were collected through an online survey of 112 firms in 24 countries across Africa, Asia, Europe and North America. Direct and mediated relationships were assessed by conducting structural equation modelling on the dimensions of SCI and product-market innovation strategy variables. Cluster analysis was conducted on organisational strategy variables to group the firms into different strategy types. Next, a one-way analysis of variance was applied to assess the impact of organisational strategy on each dimension of the SCI. Finally, a post hoc analysis was conducted to compare the strength of each dimension of the SCI against the different strategy types.

The results indicate that internal integration (II) mediates the positive effects of the core company’s product-market innovation strategy on supplier and customer integration. Furthermore, the results indicate that prospectors have stronger internal, supplier and customer integration as compared to defenders.

This study had two main limitations. One limitation is the lack of consideration of possible differences in the strengths of the investigated relationships across different geographical locations and cultures. The second limitation is the inability of the cross-sectional research design to capture the dynamics in the process of adopting SCI and organisational strategy.

The present study highlights to executives the need for understanding the implications of specific strategies on the SC linkages and relationships that are required to implement those strategies. Thus, it could serve as a preliminary clue in decision-making for establishing integrated SC that is compatible with the organisational strategy. Furthermore, it could serve as a guidance to managers in steering their firms in the organisational adaptive cycle, by indicating that the implementation of product-market innovation strategy requires adopting strong SCI, and by highlighting the importance of adopting II prior to external integration.

This paper tests relationships that explain how the core company’s strategy influences each dimension of SCI.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the market structure and level of competition in health and wellness food products by type, category, prime positioning and distribution networks in India.

The study is conducted using secondary data from Euromonitor International. Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) has been calculated for analyzing the market trends in terms of type, category and prime positioning and market competition has been analyzed using Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI). Analysis of variance has been used for analyzing the statistical difference in market competition.

Consumer purchase behavior for food is significantly changing across the world and consumers are becoming increasingly conscious of the health enhancing properties of food. With growing incidences of problems like obesity, diabetes, coronary heart diseases and foodborne diseases, consumers are becoming aware of the role of food in ensuring health and well-being. There have been significant structural changes in the health and wellness food market compositions and India has huge market potential for health and wellness food products with a market size of Rs. 435 billion in 2013 and growing at a significantly high annual growth rate of about 13.8 percent during 2002-2013. HHI results clearly indicate that there is significant competition in the health and wellness food market with average HHI of 0.19. However, the structure of market competition shows a varied trend across the types, categories, prime-positioning and distribution channels of health and wellness food products.

Results of the study provide a better understanding of temporal as well as intra-category changes in market size of health and wellness food products and the competitiveness of the health and wellness food market, providing valuable insights to the companies involved in producing and marketing of health and wellness food products in India.

Health and wellness food market is an emerging area for the marketer and there are limited analysis on market structure and competition.