Vol. 2(1) January 2009
The Role of Cause-Related Marketing in “Co-opetition
with Consumers” Approaches
1Guido Gianluigi *, 1Prete Irene M. and 2Santis Danila De
Companies can develop a special form of co-opetition,
(i.e. a simultaneous cooperation and competition with company’s partners) which
is “co-opetition with consumers”, by implementing cause-related marketing strategies,
a type of sharing consumers’ philosophies for the sake of the public welfare. It
is based on the assumption that consumers are not only the final receivers of corporate
marketing programs but also individuals believing in definite values and taking
care of social and environmental problems. A multiple case studies analysis shows
that four major conditions allowing companies to implement this new paradigm - designing
cause-related marketing programs, expressing corporate values and culture, creating
virtual place to increase interaction, and adopting an “inductional” marketing approach
– allow them to consider customers not only as buyers to win but also as consumers
to please in their inner values.
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Numerical Analysis of DOT Shield 45° crossing the
Masonry Structure Buildings
Wei Gang
Considering the intersection of building - soil – tunnel,
3D MIDAS / GTS software is used to simulate the conditions of DOT shield tunnel
45° crossing the raft foundation under masonry structure buildings. Additional subsidence
and force of the building caused by tunnel construction are studied and the impact
of the horizontal position change between tunnels and buildings is considered. The
analysis results show that as the DOT shield machine crosses the building, the building
would generate uneven horizontal subsidence, it would tilt more in the back-end
than the front-end, building subsidence would be stable and slightly rebound after
the shield entirely passed through the building; longitudinal differential subsidence
would first increase and then decrease, at last the buildings are permanently distorted.
With the increase of horizontal distance between the tunnel axis and buildings axis,
the building presents a trend dumping to one side of the tunnel, the local inclination
of the foundation first increased and then decreased, the maximum shear strain and
the first principal stress roughly showed the same changing trend which increased
first and then decreased linearly.
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Occupational Health and Safety in China
Hugo Jason, Sadler Drake, Mishra Ram and Mishra Jitendra*
Changing political and social values during the 1960’s
added considerable momentum to the OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health) and its
regulation to workplace safety. In 1969, the death of 79 coal-miners in a mine explosion
galvanized public opinion and led to the passage of the Coal Mine Health Act to
regulate mine and health safety. No single event is responsible for the passage
of OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health) of 1970. The job-related accidents kill
more than 14,000 workers and disable nearly 2.5 million workers annually. OSHA (Occupational
Safety and Health) 1970 addresses more than 300,000 cases related to workplace accidents
and workplace hazards. This paper covers numerous examples of workplace safety violations,
legislation and implementation in China. Through a comprehensive discussion involving
multiple expert opinions, case studies like SARS, recall of more than 60 million
cans of cat and dog food, recall of 50,000 boxes of toothpaste, recall of more 1.5
million imported toy trains containing lead paints, recall of more than 450,000
tires because of potential tread separation, recall of tainted ginger’s from China,
SARS(severe acute respiratory syndrome) 1807 cases in China and mostly in Guangdong
province, Nestles baby formula pulled off the shelves because it was found to contain
too much iodine etc. Recently, Chinese authorities found industrial chemicals in
baby formula. More than 6,200 babies were reported to have fallen sick, many with
kidney problems and Chinese news agency Xinhua reported four deaths due to fatal
/tainted formula19. Chinese government has been revising the estimates of the sick
children by tainted formula upwards to 50,000 infants. China’s top food-safety official,
Li Changjiang resigned under pressure and took blame for supervision default. We
have compiled some data that gives reflection of the current state of Chinese occupational
health and safety standards. The WSJ (Wall Street Journal) reported that a senior
Chinese safety director involved in product safety committed suicide (Wu Jianping).
Even the China’s cherished “white rabbit candy” is found to contain melamine and
got recalled around the world. Shanghai Guan Sheng Yuan Food company is planning
to relaunch “White Rabbit Creamy Candy” at the end of October 2008. With economic
globalization gaining momentum, the Chinese government has taken product and food
safety very seriously. Resident quality inspectors have been posted in major companies.
The authors feel that these are growing pains that the worlds third largest is facing
and will overcome these shortcomings, as they did during the recent Beijing Olympics.
Games were seen one of the best organized ever when many skeptics believed that
China was not ready for the games; but with factory closures, traffic restrictions,
led to blue skies for much of the 17-day event. Beijing pollution became a non-issue
and the China’s state-run sports system won most of the gold medals. According to
the Nielsen on line survey seven in ten felt Beijing appeared more modern and high
tech than they had expected and China’s reputation appeared to get a boost from
Beijing’s hosting the Olympic Games.
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Firm Size and Capital Strength as Determinants of
Firm Performance: Sector wise Analysis of Karachi Stock Exchange
1Abbas Zaheer*, 1Khan Amanullah and 2Shah S.M Amir
A hot debate is raging on among academicians, practitioners
and business community on what drives firm performance? What is missing in that
debate is to investigate the factors affecting performance. This paper is an attempt
towards this goal. Unbalanced panel data of twenty different sectors of Karachi
Stock Exchange has been empirically analyzed and contribution of various variables
towards firm performance has been estimated using fixed effects model. This analysis
ranges over a period of four years starting from year 2003 to year 2006. This study
contributes in existing literature as it results in producing a model, which determines
the drivers of firm performance. Various literatures have used various determinants
of performance but main focus of researchers is on firm size and capital strength.
To avoid wrong attribution of performance with only size and capital strength, dividend
as a measure of financial constraints, net profit margin as a measure of cost control
ability and ratio of financial charges to sales as a measure of financial burden
have also been used as explanatory variables. Empirical analysis of twenty industries
reveals that firm size and capital strength significantly affect the firm performance,
thus, supports the theories of firm size based on economies of scale that hold that
higher size leads to market power and firms enjoy the economic rents.
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Nature of Industry, frequency of trading and price
volatility: Evidence from Doha Securities Market
Abdelgadir M.A. Abdalla
The objective of this paper is to find out whether the
number of transactions or trade size explains significantly the price volatility
in Doha Securities Market. The paper also examines how the market- wide information
and the firm-specific information can affect the activities of trading. Daily data
is used to conduct the empirical tests. The paper classifies the firm according
to industrial type: banking, industry, service and insurance. Five regressions are
run to test whether the number of transactions or trade size has a significant impact
on price volatility and also to find out the relative importance of market and firm-specific
information on the number of transactions. The empirical results show that the number
of transactions carry more information than trade size and the relationship is positive,
meaning that the larger the number of transactions, the higher the price volatility.
Moreover, the findings show that the market-wide information and the firm– specific
information affect the number of transactions when the market is up. In conditions
where the market is down, the firm-specific information is most important factor
that influences the number of transactions meaning that when the market is down,
the amount of firm– specific information increases and the number of transactions
also increases. These findings clearly show the investors that the number of transactions
carry more information.
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An Analytical Study of Customer relationship Management
in the Private Hospitals of Orissa
Mall Sunita
In the modern organization, customer relationship management
CRM has developed both as a concept and a strategy. The importance of human resource
and the necessity of its development make out a strong case for the evaluation of
the CRM in the organizations. Health, an important factor for the prosperity of
a country, is an indicator for socio- economic development. Effective and efficient
management of hospitals improve the quality of treatment. This paper focuses on
understanding the relationship marketing of health care services with specific reference
to private hospitals in Cuttack district and Bhubaneswar, Orissa. This paper also
gives emphasis on how the corporate hospitals are maintaining the relationship with
their customers and also to elicit the opinions of patients on the services provided
by those hospitals. The present study is based on some major private hospitals of
Orissa.
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Measurement of Technical Efficiency: A Case Study
of Durgapur Steel Plant
1Dutta Anirban, 1 Bhattacharya Amit Kumar, 2Sengupta P.P. and 3Chaudhuri Ranjan*
Durgapur Steel Plant (DSP) in West Bengal is one of the
integrated steel plants of Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL). With an annual
production of 1.6 million tonnes of saleable steel (Source: http:/-www.sail.co.in),
the plant is a major producer of Railway track materials, Billets, Structurals and
Merchant products. The modernized Durgapur Steel Plant now has state-of –the-art
technology for quality steel making. In this paper we have analyzed the performance
of DSP with the help of the data from FY 1996–97 to FY 2005–06 by using the Data
Envelopment Analysis (DEA). It has been established that not only the favorable
international situation but also the overall gain of Technical Efficiency (TE) led
to turnaround (from loss making to profit making unit) of DSP.
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The Paradigm Shift of Retailing in India (A specific
study of Two Consumer categories-Apparels and Footwear)
Sharma Nirmal
With a contribution of 10 per cent to GDP and employing
8 per cent of the total workforce (only agriculture employs more) in the country,
the retail industry is definitely one of the pillars of the economy. Not only it
is the largest component of the services sector, but is also double the size of
the next largest broad economic activity in the services sector. The retail industry
in India is often considered as one of the emerging sectors and is recognized as
the “second most attractive retail destination” amongst other emergent markets.
It has made India the cause of a good deal of excitement and the attraction of many
other countries. As consumer’s perceptions keep on changing, Retailing in India
has seen a Paradigm shift with a focus on providing better, efficient, faster and
economical service to customer. The need of the hour for Indian retailers is to
develop systems and processes keeping the unique nature of the country in mind.
In the retail trade, change is the only constant, survival in retail will depend
on the ability to adapt changes.
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