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Leading Firm (leading + firm)
Selected AbstractsMeasuring Market Power in the Ready-to-Eat Cereal IndustryECONOMETRICA, Issue 2 2001Aviv Nevo The ready-to-eat cereal industry is characterized by high concentration, high price-cost margins, large advertising-to-sales ratios, and numerous introductions of new products. Previous researchers have concluded that the ready-to-eat cereal industry is a classic example of an industry with nearly collusive pricing behavior and intense nonprice competition. This paper empirically examines this conclusion. In particular, I estimate price-cost margins, but more importantly I am able empirically to separate these margins into three sources: (i) that which is due to product differentiation; (ii) that which is due to multi-product firm pricing; and (iii) that due to potential price collusion. The results suggest that given the demand for different brands of cereal, the first two effects explain most of the observed price-cost margins. I conclude that prices in the industry are consistent with noncollusive pricing behavior, despite the high price-cost margins. Leading firms are able to maintain a portfolio of differentiated products and influence the perceived product quality. It is these two factors that lead to high price-cost margins. [source] How Critical is Employee Orientation for Customer Relationship Management?JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES, Issue 2 2008Insights from a Case Study abstract This paper explores the interface of employee orientation and the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) process based on an in-depth case study of a leading firm in the UK automotive services sector. Employee orientation is embedded in the Organizational Culture (OC) of the firm and manifested through its key elements, notably assumptions, values, behaviours and artefacts. CRM consists of four organizational activities: strategic planning, information, value creation, and performance measurement sub-processes. Based on the case study evidence, the widely postulated link between CRM success and employee orientation is empirically supported and the mechanisms underlying this association elucidated. [source] Intellectual Property, Architecture, and the Management of Technological Transitions: Evidence from Microsoft CorporationTHE JOURNAL OF PRODUCT INNOVATION MANAGEMENT, Issue 3 2009Alan MacCormack Many studies highlight the challenges facing incumbent firms in responding effectively to major technological transitions. Though some authors argue that these challenges can be overcome by firms possessing what have been called dynamic capabilities, little work has described in detail the critical resources that these capabilities leverage or the processes through which these resources accumulate and evolve. This paper explores these issues through an in-depth exploratory case study of one firm that has demonstrated consistently strong performance in an industry that is highly dynamic and uncertain. The focus for the present study is Microsoft, the leading firm in the software industry. The focus on Microsoft is motivated by providing evidence that the firm's product performance has been consistently strong over a period of time in which there have been several major technological transitions,one indicator that a firm possesses dynamic capabilities. This argument is supported by showing that Microsoft's performance when developing new products in response to one of these transitions,the growth of the World Wide Web,was superior to a sample of both incumbents and new entrants. Qualitative data are presented on the roots of Microsoft's dynamic capabilities, focusing on the way that the firm develops, stores, and evolves its intellectual property. Specifically, Microsoft codifies knowledge in the form of software "components," which can be leveraged across multiple product lines over time and accessed by firms developing complementary products. The present paper argues that the process of componentization, the component "libraries" that result, the architectural frameworks that define how these components interact, and the processes through which these components are evolved to address environmental changes represent critical resources that enable the firm to respond to major technological transitions. These arguments are illustrated by describing Microsoft's response to two major technological transitions. [source] The diffusion of marketing science in the practitioners' community: opening the black boxAPPLIED STOCHASTIC MODELS IN BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY, Issue 4-5 2005Albert C. Bemmaor Abstract This editorial discusses an illustration of the potential hindrances to the diffusion of modern methodologies in the practitioners' (i.e. the buyers of research, not the consultants) community. Taking the example of classical regression analysis based on store-level scanner data, the authors discuss the potential limitations of the classical regression model, with the example of the occurrence of ,wrong' signs and of coefficients with unexpected magnitudes. In an interview with one of the authors, a (randomly picked) Senior Marketing Research Manager at a leading firm of packaged goods reports his/her experience with econometric models. To him/her, econometric models are presented as a ,black box' (his/her written words). In his/her experience, they provided results that were ,quite good' in a ,much focused' context only. There were experimental data obtained with a Latin square design and the analysis included a single brand with only four stock-keeping units (SKUs). The company ,dropped' the more ,ambitious' studies, which analysed the effect of the retail promotions run by all the actors in a market because of a lack of predictive accuracy (his/her written words are in quotes). The authors suggest that Bayesian methodology can help open the black box and obtain more acceptable results than those obtained at present. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] | ||||||||||