Search

The rapid rise of live-streaming selling and the increasing diversity of e-commerce channels have sparked ongoing debates regarding product pricing power. This price competition behaviour of online dual channels triggered by the supply-side pricing dilemma is a topic of significant research interest and forms the focal point of this paper. Therefore, we leverage the principles of game theory to construct a three-party evolutionary game model consisting of a brand, a steamer, and a traditional e-commerce platform. Within this framework, the brand holds the primary pricing authority. Our analysis examines the equilibrium strategies adopted by the various players under diverse scenarios and explores how the evolving behaviours of these parties impact the overall game system. Additionally, we employ the "people-goods-scene" perspective to deconstruct the intricate dynamics within this complex supply chain ecosystem. Our findings reveal two distinct evolutionary stable strategies: one in which brands maintain a stance against low-price negotiation, streamers avoid bargaining, and platforms avoid providing subsidies; the other in which brands are open to negotiating low prices, streamers engage in bargaining, and platforms provide subsidies. Notably, in most cases, brands tend to avoid explicitly stating their opposition to low-price negotiation. However, if a brand's strategy shifts towards rejecting such negotiation, the negative implications of price wars across channels become a critical consideration. Conversely, when a brand opts for a more concessive pricing strategy, we need to consider the potential positive impacts of low-price competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, retailers can obtain consumers' demand information from rich market data, such as their browsing history and sales data. This gives retailers access to more demand information about consumers than manufacturers. Furthermore, many retailers have begun to share demand information with their upstream manufacturers who provide goods of a certain quality. Because an increasing number of consumers are concerned about product prices and product quality levels and are even willing to pay a higher price for high‐quality products, manufacturers consider two production modes to adapt to the market: the Q‐before‐IS mode or the Q‐after‐IS mode. To capture substantial consumer markets, retailers have also begun to provide their goods to compete with the manufacturers. Motivated by these practices, this study analyzes the retailer's information‐sharing strategy and the manufacturer's production mode selection under price and quality competition. We find that under the Q‐before‐IS mode, the retailer has no incentive to voluntarily share information with the manufacturer. However, under the Q‐after‐IS mode, the retailer would share two products' information with the manufacturer when the quality investment cost factor is relatively low. Our findings confirm that the retailer is induced to share information because the retailer and manufacturer participate in the quality and price competition after observing the demand. Moreover, the manufacturer prefers the Q‐after‐IS (Q‐before‐IS) mode under the equilibrium information‐sharing strategy when the demand fluctuation is large (otherwise). This indicates that the retailer's information‐sharing strategy plays a key role in the manufacturer's preferred production mode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study a dynamic model of price competition with differentiated products in which new generations of consumers acquire information about available products from their friends of previous generations. The social network, which links consumers across generations, affects the evolution of consumers' awareness of products and firms' long‐term (steady‐state) market shares. Focusing on steady‐state equilibria, we examine how the structure of the social network—including connectivity and homophily—influences market shares, pricing, and welfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The normally low-risk and routinised nature of supermarket frontline work evolved drastically amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on a refined conceptual framework of extreme work, this article examines how the public health crisis coupled with maxinisation of organisational flexibility gives rise to extremity in mundane work settings. The findings based on 50 interviews with workers and managers who worked throughout the pandemic on the UK supermarket frontline offer empirical insights into the macro-micro dynamics of extreme-mundane work. These insights reveal a nuanced narrative of supermarket work as both alienating, owing to the frequent encounters of abuse and undervalued responsibilities, and fulfilling as a respite from social isolation induced by the pandemic. This narrative illustrates the complexities of individual motivations to engage with extreme work, while highlighting a need for structural support in coping with elevated exposure to risks and uncertainties. The article argues that the nature of work and workplaces in the face of extreme externalities remains contingent upon human resource management practices on the frontline of a crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Revista Jurídica (0103-3506) is the property of Revista Juridica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this article, the market risk associated with the financial markets of New York and Colombia is evaluated in three periods belonging to the 2019-2020-time window, characterized by shocking economic and social conditions such as the oil price war between Saudi Arabia and Russia and the global pandemic by COVID-19. Risk measurement is carried out using the value at risk (VaR) and Median Shortfall (MS), applying a statistical methodology that considers the use of parametric and non-parametric resampling techniques (Bootstrapping). Data from five indices (Standard and Poor's 500, Dow Jones, COLCAP, VIX and Brent) were taken in order to evaluate the effects caused by variables such as the price of oil and the conditions generated by the COVID-19 pandemic on the dates of study, as the main result it is obtained that in general there is a very high volatility in the periods affected by the two aforementioned phenomena when they occurred simultaneously, and that in addition to large falls in the reference indices, there is also evidence of large recoveries that contribute positively to the trend in prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relationship between oil production and oil price determination among OPEC and non-OPEC countries during the period of 1965–2021. The study period chosen captures perfectly the various historical geopolitical crises, oil shock supply, GFCS and recent global health pandemic that have stirred up the global issue of oil price war among leading oil producing countries. After carrying out the preliminary tests, we adopt both the static and dynamic Bayesian Graphical Network causality along with the traditional Granger causality test for robustness analysis. Our results show Saudi Arabia as the world leading producer of oil and Russia as the main determinants of the global oil prices, while USA acts as a stabilizer in the global oil market. The reliability of our results lies in the very low in-sample forecast error. The implication of our results is that Saudi Arabia, Russia and USA as leading oil producing countries matter for oil price and oil supply determination in the global market. Therefore, the three countries should cooperate with other OPEC and non-OPEC member countries than compete to ensure stability in oil price and the global economy. The outcome of this study can serve as a guide to oil producing cartels in coordinating the global oil price for global economic stability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to provide a unique competitive advantage to businesses in providing a wide range of products to prospective customers. To the best of the author's knowledge, there is no study to discuss the impact of customer-centric retailing on total supply chain profit under price competition between organized and unorganized retailers. Design/methodology/approach: This paper considers a supply chain comprising of organized and unorganized retailers and a single manufacturer. This paper proposes three mathematical models considering a customer-centric approach in a competitive environment. Stackelberg game is used to examine how members of the chain interact, and Nash equilibrium was used to find optimal strategies for players under different customer-centric approaches. Findings: The results show that the total supply chain profit is higher when both organized and unorganized retailers use a customer-centric approach independently instead of collaborating process. The result, in addition, establishes that when the dissatisfying cost exceeds a certain threshold (1.5), the total profit is higher for the organized customer-centric effort model compared to the other two models. Originality/value: The main contribution of the study is to examine the effect of customer-centric retailing, considering dissatisfying costs on supply chains profit and individual decision-making under price competition between organized retailers and unorganized retailers. The authors developed different mathematical models in the different customer-centric approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider an e‐tailer's upstream supplier who wants to encroach into retailing to earn additional revenue. The supplier needs to decide whether or not to enter the retail market by either selling to consumers on the e‐tailer's platform by paying commission fees (agency encroachment) or opening an independent online/offline retail store (direct encroachment). The e‐tailer has private demand information and decides whether or not to share it with the supplier. Two leadership scenarios—the supplier‐leads (i.e., the supplier selects the channel before the e‐tailer decides whether to share information) and the e‐tailer‐leads (i.e., the supplier selects the channel after the e‐tailer decides whether to share information)—are examined. Our main findings are as follows. First, we show that the e‐tailer has no incentive to share information under no encroachment and direct encroachment. Interestingly, this result holds in both leadership scenarios. Second, a medium commission rate gives rise to an equilibrium of agency encroachment with information sharing by the e‐tailer. This equilibrium is more likely to sustain in the supplier‐leads scenario than in the e‐tailer‐leads scenario. Third, agency encroachment brings the supplier the highest sales volume (at retail in the encroaching channel plus on wholesale to the e‐tailer) when the two parties compete in quantity while direct encroachment does so for a price competition. Fourth, supplier encroachment always improves consumer surplus, but it is not necessarily welfare‐improving. Last, we find that the e‐tailer is more willing to share information to induce the supplier to encroach through his agency channel if he has a significant selling cost advantage over the supplier or can endogenously determine the commission rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large‐scale platforms (LSPs) with valuation and awareness advantages have enabled competing small‐scale platforms (SSPs) to be embedded in their platforms. This compatibility strategy creates a new channel, that is, the compatible channel, through which customers can purchase services from SSPs via the LSPs. Additionally, numerous platforms have been introducing add‐on services to enhance their profitability. In this study, we develop stylized game models to characterize the interaction between an LSP and an SSP and explore their strategic and operational decisions on platform compatibility under add‐on services. Our major research findings are as follows: First, compatibility has opposite impacts on service pricing. That is, at a low proportion of demand through the compatible channel, the two platforms engage in a price war; otherwise, they both raise prices. Second, we identify the conditions for platform compatibility: Compatibility becomes an equilibrium strategy if the proportion of demand through the compatible channel falls within an intermediate range. Third, we find that homogeneous add‐on services stimulate rather than inhibit compatibility due to the different profit foci of two platforms. Finally, we conduct extensions to further verify the robustness of the conclusions. Our results provide important implications to the burgeoning debate on when platforms should implement compatibility to achieve a win–win scenario under a variety of settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Russian-Ukrainian armed conflict significantly affected wheat production and its export from Ukraine, mainly during the war outbreak. Since both countries rank among the major global wheat producers, the warfare disrupted wheat supplies, hastily pushing the prices. Based on the analysed data, we carried out research using multilayer perceptron networks. The findings suggest the biggest price increase between February and March 2022, witnessing wheat prices at about 1 400 USD per t. We predict a decline to the pre-war values until the end of 2025, estimating its rates between 600 USD and 800 USD per t. This price slump may involve signing an agreement on unblocking Ukrainian seaports, which would restore wheat exports. Yet, our survey is confined to historical data, which do not suggest any dramatic event that would alarmingly sway wheat prices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2017, a new coalition of oil producers led by OPEC and Russia (known as OPEC+) implemented production cuts to limit downward pressure on crude prices. The Covid-19 shock led to a temporary collapse of this coalition and to a price war among OPEC+ members, which contributed to the oil price slump that had originally been caused by widespread containment measures. As the oil market balance seems to crucially hinge on the stability of this coalition, we draw on the 2017--2020 experience to assess the effectiveness of OPEC+ in sustaining oil prices. Using a counterfactual analysis based on two complementary structural vector autoregression (SVAR) models, we find that the impact of OPEC+ on the price of oil was small, owing to significant deviations of oil producers from their assigned quotas. On average, without the OPEC+ cuts, the oil price would have been 6 percent (4 USD) lower than observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conflict between Ukraine and Russia raises several questions and uncertainty about the cereal supply chain and market trends. This international crisis and other factors influencing the market, such as the environmental and climate ones, have placed greater attention on Italy's dependence on foreign countries for some important products for our agri-food industry, including cereals and feed for the livestock sector. The Italian pasta industry, as well as bakery products, need a constant and large supply of wheat, which often comes from foreign markets. This also applies to the livestock sector, with relevant imports of raw materials from abroad for the feed sector. International events also affected Italian cereal imports, although Italy does not strongly depend on the Black Sea for these products. This article provides an analysis of the Italian import of cereals in the recent period when market instability linked to the conflict and other factors emerged. The study also focuses on the forecast for the future and on the role of price dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When live streamers sell products to consumers on live streaming platforms, their abilities and service efforts are private, and thus, the issues of identifying their true abilities, motivating them to use appropriate service efforts, and providing a mechanism to allocate profits remain to be resolved for live streaming platforms. Adopting a principal–agent model, we investigate the optimal contract design between a live streaming platform and live streamers. In addition, we study the impacts of the price and service competition between live streamers and the platform's corporate social responsibility on the optimal contract design. The results show that high commission rates and low signing bonuses are not always beneficial to platforms, and the optimal contract design to identify the types of live streamers can make it more profitable. In addition, the utility‐maximizing platform always sets lower commission rates and signing bonuses compared with the profit‐maximizing platform. Regardless of the platform's goal, total profits and commission rates are higher under competition compared with no competition. For the government, policies and subsidies should be provided, such as regulating commission rates by setting a limited range and increasing subsidies for the marginal costs of live streaming platforms, which can effectively motivate live streaming platforms to enhance corporate social responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2018, the world witnessed a full‐fledged trade war between United States and China with both countries levying successive tariffs on each other. Though the impact of trade war could be visibly assessed from declining export volume and rising bankruptcy filing from farmers, what went unnoticed was a far‐reaching negative impact at a granular market microstructure level. In this study, the effect of trade war on the leading role of US soybean futures in price discovery has been evaluated. The results corroborate the negative impact of trade war on the information leadership share of US soybean futures market. Moreover, the results shows that the negative impact gets manifested through various sentiment indicators such as Google search trends, hedger's sentiment, and so on. Hence, trade war may have given some temporary economic and strategic benefit to the United States, but it is no less than the proverbial double‐edged sword as it nearly killed the soybean market of the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how crude oil price volatility affected the stock returns of major global oil and gas corporations during three major oil‐price wars that took place between October 1991 and June 2020. Episodes considered include the 1998 Saudi Arabia – Venezuela war, the 2014–2016 conflict and the 2020 Saudi Arabia – Russia war in a time of unprecedented crisis caused by the COVID‐19 pandemic. The persistence of volatility in oil prices during times of specific oil‐price wars is captured through generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (GARCH) model while the leverage effect is tested using the threshold generalized autoregressive conditional heteroscedasticity (T‐GARCH) model. Moreover, a vector autoregressive (VAR) model is employed to consider the relationship between oil price shocks and stock returns of oil and gas corporations. Our findings reveal a significant evidence for volatility persistence and leverage effects in oil price during the three oil‐price wars. These findings are consistent for WTI as well as Brent crude oil specifications. Though the persistence of volatility is similar to that of the previous two oil‐price wars, the 2020 Saudi Arabia – Russia oil‐price war has higher volatility spikes than the previous two wars. Besides, oil price shocks have a significant and positive effect on the returns of oil and gas companies. These findings provide investors information on how volatility in global oil prices is also sensitive to irregular events such as price wars between oil producers. This information can be important for economic agents contemplating shorter hedges by managing risks during times of high volatility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the highly competitive global marketplace, companies are working day in and day out to chart out strategies to get ahead of competition. Rather than contesting in the same markets or engaging in price war, firms generally try to move to uncontested markets by creating a “blue ocean strategy”. Nowadays, it is quite evident that a formulation of the blue ocean strategy is not good enough. It must be backed up by competitive advantages which must be sustainable in the long run. Many firms which once enjoyed monopoly power in the market, have perished or have become sick firms. Competitive strategies are not sustainable without the support of internal resource that firms have or firms acquire. For example, firms pursue aggressive growth strategies, but do not have enough resources to support the growth. This paper takes the case of a latecomer firm Netflix to illustrate how a firm can develop an uncontested market or blue ocean strategy. The study concludes that the blue ocean strategy should culminate in superior financial performance than average industry performance. Netflix has converted its early days film DVD renting business model into online video streaming services and content creation, which presently caters to 137.5 million (statista.com) subscribers (part of television viewers) in approximately 160 countries. Now, Netflix has become a media giant in less than two decades and its market capitalization grew at least 7-8 times in the last seven years. This study is an attempt to identify and evaluate the strategies of Netflix from Resource-Based View (RBV) to recognize how it created catch-up strategies by creating Valuable, Rare, Inimitable and Non-Substitutable (VRIN) resources or maybe simply adapting copy-paste method. The study also argues that the blue ocean strategy is more dependent on building internal capabilities rather than attractiveness of an industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of present bias on trigger pricing strategies that are used to support a cartel in a market where firms can only observe a noisy price signal. The present bias of firm management is modelled by using quasi-hyperbolic discounting that the discount factor between the present and next period is β δ , and between any two adjacent periods later it is δ. We demonstrate that there is a threshold value β ̲ (δ) , which is decreasing in δ. For β ≥ β ̲ (δ) , we show that there exists a Nash reversion trigger strategy for the cartel, featuring lower prices, higher outputs and longer periodic price wars. As a consequence, the trigger price, which is shown to be proportional to the cartel price, is always lower than that in the Green-Porter model. • We consider the impact of present bias on cartel strategy under a noisy price signal. • The present bias of firm management is modelled by using quasi-hyperbolic discounting. • The negative relationship between the optimal output and the discount factor δ is restored. • The cartel strategy shows lower prices, higher outputs and longer price wars under present bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Contemporary Accounting Research is the property of Canadian Academic Accounting Association and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In the context of e-commerce trade between enterprises, there are problems such as price wars, false advertising, and unreasonable operations aimed at seizing market share. However, traditional estimation methods cannot provide a reasonable evaluation of the marketing competitiveness of e-commerce enterprises from an overall perspective. To help enterprises better clarify their own position and quantify their marketing competitiveness, a competitiveness evaluation model based on optimized deep learning networks is proposed. By combining subjective and objective evaluation methods, the indicators that affect the marketing competitiveness of enterprises are assigned to obtain the final competitiveness value. The research outcomes expressed that the max absolute error of the model constructed by the research institute was 0.0006, the max relative error was 0.0045, and the model accuracy was 99.85%. In the secondary indicator experiment of marketing competition, the model determined that the turnover rate of fixed assets had the greatest impact, with a weight value of 0.1263. Nine companies were randomly selected for market value estimation, and the average relative error of the model was 14.90%, which was lower than the mean relative error of the relative valuation, cash flow and absolute valuation methods, with numerical differences of 8.03%, 2.94%, and 0.12%, respectively. The research findings illustrated that the model constructed by the research institute had good performance and certain reference values for evaluating the marketing competitiveness of e-commerce enterprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global stock markets experienced a dual shock in 2020 due to the impact of the global health crisis, parallel to a simultaneous shock derived from the Saudi Arabia and Russia oil price war. The dual shock fueled oil market volatility with lasting effects as the global economy is immersed in an energy crisis combined with high inflationary pressures exacerbated by heightened energy costs. This research paper implemented GARCH and FIGARCH models on daily returns from 31 December 2015, to 9 December 2021, to examine volatility persistence and long memory processes. The world's most prominent economies are represented by the G7, E7 and the GCC stock markets. Particular attention was devoted to the case of Kuwait as an example of a small oil-dependent economy. The research findings suggest evidence of volatility persistence across the markets, as reported by the GARCH (1,1) model. The FIGARCH (1,1) did not offer significant evidence of long memory processes except for the cases of FTSE 100, BIST 100, IDEX, BSE 100 and Bahrain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Firms often engage in price promotion wars to gain market share from their competitors. However, poor customer satisfaction as a result of limited service capacity may significantly impact such a pricing strategy. In this paper, we consider a two-firm price competition model in which customers' purchase decisions are affected by their anticipation of a poor service encounter. Our equilibrium analysis reveals that firms would be less aggressive in engaging in price cutting when customers care more about service quality and when service capacity is relatively low. Interestingly, when service capacity is close (but not exact) to covering one half of the total market demand, firms would adopt a mixed strategy with randomized pricing, driven by unilateral motives to either capture more market share (by lowering prices) or increase profit margin (by raising prices). We further show that having a superior service capacity presents a competitive advantage for a firm and such advantage can be preemptive. In an extended two-period model that allows for customer switching after a poor service encounter, we find that when service capacity is relatively low, firms may offer deeper price discounts in the first period if customers are forward looking than if they are myopic. Our numerical study confirms that the main qualitative insights obtained in our base model continue to hold when the customer switching behavior is considered. This paper was accepted by Jay Swaminathan, operations management. Supplemental Material: Data and the online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4325. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of transportation service providers (TSPs) engaging in both competition and cooperation, commonly referred to as coopetition, has become increasingly prevalent in the transportation market. This is driven by the rapid advancements in information technology and sharing economy. In practice, competitive TSPs can engage in a resource exchange scheme to share their resources to improve their service quality. However, such a resource exchange scheme may not be sustained since the service prices and profits will be further changed due to the competition in the end market. This study proposes a two-stage sequential-move game to characterize the coopetition problem between TSPs, wherein the first-stage resource exchange problem is modeled with a Nash bargaining game, and the second-stage pricing problem is modeled with a non-cooperative Nash game. Different from prior studies, our model incorporates the supply–demand congestion effects and the asymmetric bargaining power of TSPs. The subsequent impacts on social welfare, TSPs, and end users are investigated. Analytical results show that only when the unit price of the exchanged resources decreases in the exchanged resource quantity will the resource-exchange scheme succeed. Furthermore, we find that TSPs prefer to leave some "buffer zone" in between to avoid fierce competition with price wars. • Integrate non- and cooperative game-theoretic methods to characterize the strategic coopetition among TSPs. • Quantify the system-wide impact of congestion effects and asymmetric bargaining power. • The end market is partially covered. • The resource price decreases in the transaction volume to sustain the resource exchange scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that queue rationing under price controls is one driver of high-frequency trading. Uniform tick sizes constrain price competition and create rents for liquidity provision, particularly for securities with lower prices. The time priority rule allocates rents to highfrequency traders (HFTs) because of their speed advantage. An increase in relative tick size, defined as uniform tick sizes divided by security prices, increases the fraction of liquidity provided by HFTs but harms liquidity. We find that the message-to-trade ratio is a poor cross-sectional proxy for HFTs' liquidity provision: stocks with more liquidity provided by HFTs have lower message-to-trade ratios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Feministische Studien is the property of De Gruyter and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines the profitability of interfirm bundling among independent single‐good producers in a two‐dimensional Hotelling framework. We show that interfirm bundling tends to relax price competition by preventing consumers from mixing and matching (i.e., making it difficult to switch brands) and therefore is more profitable than separate sales, provided that firms are sufficiently symmetric. Hence, firms have mutual incentives to offer their products as a bundle or to make exclusive dealing arrangements. This result sheds new light on the competitive effect of bundling in oligopolies that have been neglected in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the gasoline retailing industry, firms are divided into two classes: major integrated international firms and independent local ones. This paper seeks to define the optimal pricing strategy to adopt in a price war situation with the majors in one side and the locals in the other. A sequential infinite horizon game model assuming an initial state of tacit collusion with linear demand and total cost functions is developed. It turns out that the optimal strategy is discontinuous. The duopoly's profit maximisation is achieved with a collusion price higher than the competitive Nash price. Finally, statics comparatives show how the variations in the parameters of the model impact the pricing strategy of each firm, whether it is an international major firm or an independent local firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the people are becoming conscious about protection of the environment from pollutant caused by human beings, businesses are adopting green technology to procure green products to save the environment from pollution. Consequently, it is a challenging task at the firm manager to capture the market providing best green quality at fair price in a given economy. The paper plans to discuss two situations in two models. In model 1, the optimal green quality and sales prices of the manufacturer and the retailer in both decentralize and centralize systems of a two-echelon supply chain system are investigated. The profit functions of the manufacturer and the retailer include procurement costs, selling prices and cost for green level development and then it is analyzed by calculus method to obtain the optimal values of the decision variables. The model 2 focuses on price competition of two substitute products where demand of the end customers depends on price and quality of green product. Both the firms of green and regular products manufacturer are corporate social responsible. In this model, profit functions of the firms 1 & 2 are formulated separately considering revenues from sales items, cost of green quality and contribution for activities of social responsibility. The main objective is to find out optimal prices and green quality in order to maximize the profit functions of individual and integrated systems. The proposed models are analyzed mathematically and numerical examples are illustrated to justify the feasibility of the model in reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies on horizontal outsourcing between competing duopolists emphasize cost factors, such as economies of scale and/or variable cost advantages in Cournot markets, as potential explanations. Our paper studies horizontal outsourcing when two competing firms engage in Bertrand competition, and highlights the important role of sole sourcing commitment. We adopt the framework of a multistage duopoly game that comprises of an incumbent and an entrant. The incumbent has the capability to make a key component in‐house, and the entrant, who is a rival of the incumbent in the downstream market, can source the component from either the incumbent or a supplier not participating in the end‐product market. We find that if the entrant commits to sole sourcing, horizontal outsourcing can occur when the incumbent has a component cost advantage or even a small cost disadvantage over the alternative supplier. Specifically, if the component cost gap is small, horizontal outsourcing may soften downstream market competition and benefit both firms at the expense of inducing higher prices for the consumers. If the incumbent has a significant cost advantage, horizontal outsourcing may lead to an increased downstream price war by expanding the total supply of end products. Without sole sourcing commitment, horizontal outsourcing occurs only when the incumbent has a cost advantage, and it always strengthens downstream price competition. By contrast, if the firms engage in downstream Cournot competition, sole sourcing commitment has no impact on the adoption of horizontal outsourcing, and the entrant sources from her rival only when the incumbent enjoys a significant cost advantage. Finally, we also study various extensions to check and confirm the robustness of our main results to key model assumptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, executives and their employees have faced a wide range of threats to, and within, their organization. We put forward a framework that organizational scholars can use to position their ideas within the literature on threats and responses. We delineate different types of threats that firms often face. We also develop a set of constructs that, taken together, can be useful for describing how managers assess threats and how they might react to them. In addition, we identify several theories that explain organizational threats and responses, including two (protection motivation theory and integrated threat theory) that have proven useful in other disciplines but have yet to take hold in management studies. Lastly, we offer examples of how to expand extant theories to the domain of organizational threats and conclude with a call for research on threats and responses in organizational research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study considers the (r ∣ p) hub–centroid problem under the price war, which was recently proposed in the literature. The objective is profit maximization by choosing the best hub and spoke topology, with the corresponding price structure, in a leader–follower setting. Because this bi–level optimization problem is NP–hard, the use of metaheuristics is a natural choice for solving real–size instances. A variable neighborhood search algorithm is designed as a solution approach for the leader. The characterization of optimal routes under the price equilibrium is given in order to simplify and improve the algorithm. When it comes to the follower, we have shown how to reformulate in a linear fashion the initial non–linear model. The computational experiments are conducted on the CAB instances. The results of these experiments are thoroughly discussed, highlighting the effects of different parameters and providing some interesting managerial insights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The collective memory inscribed in Korean history books recalls when the Japanese colonial state requisitioned brassware from Korean households during World War II. This study explores the complex mechanism behind these campaigns. Copper was a scarce commodity in the Japanese empire. The colonial brassware industry expanded but struggled due to fluctuating copper prices before the war. To overcome the reluctance of Koreans to part with their brassware, the colonial state had to coordinate various actors across multiple organisations, provide ceramic replacements, and establish a system of financial payments. The Japanese also ultimately created a 'brass bureaucracy' capable of carrying out the sensitive task of removing copper from Korean households. The Korean case reminds us that institutional frameworks are necessary for wartime salvage. Finally, brassware collections also resulted in fundamental changes in Korean society and everyday material culture that require careful analysis. (141 words) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We study anticompetitive horizontal mergers in a dynamic model with noisy collusion. At each instant, firms either privately choose output levels or merge to form a monopoly, trading off the benefits of avoiding price wars against the costs of merging. The potential to merge decreases pre-merger collusion, as punishments effected by price wars are weakened. We thus extend the result of Davidson and Deneckere [Davidson C, Deneckere R (1984) Horizontal mergers and collusive behavior. Internat. J. Indust. Organ. 2(2):117–132.], who analyzed the weakening of punishments post-merger, demonstrating that pre-merger collusion is weakened, in a fully stochastic model. Thus, although anticompetitive mergers harm competition ex post, the implication is that barriers and costs of merging due to regulation should be reduced to promote competition exante. This paper was accepted by Tomasz Piskorski, finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minimum Differentiation is the equilibrium in spatial models with fixed prices, while firms move apart to reduce the intensity of competition when firms set prices. Nevertheless, firms collocate in many industries where marketing‐active firms compete on price. This puzzle is called the Hotelling paradox. We offer a resolution of this puzzle by noting that imperfect information about the availability of all products can soften competition, allowing firms to produce similar products without engaging in intense price competition. Specifically, we construct a model that predicts minimum differentiation when consumers have low awareness about products and maximum differentiation when they are well informed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]