Business Commons^™

Portwest’S Future Strategy: Fashionising Workwear – Threading The Needle, Fiachra Coll, Damian O'Reilly

Case Studies

Portwest- should they further pursue the leisurewear / workwear market or should they focus on expanding the current range?

Portwest is a global manufacturer and innovator of workwear, safetywear and Personal protective equipment (PPE) and one of the fastest growing workwear companies in the world. Recently, the company launched an “Inspired Workwear” collection targeting the leisurewear/workwear market. It is a departure from their traditional markets where their acquisition strategy has seen Portwest rapidly gain market share. Management are concerned that this new departure may take resources from the core business of Workwear and dilute key resources.

Selecting International Modes Of Entry And Expansion, Gregory E. Osland, Charles R. Taylor, Shaoming Zou

Gregory E. Osland

Selecting a mode for entering or expanding in a foreign market is a crucial strategic decision for an international firm. This article identifies and compares the most influential factors that affect the international modes of entry and expansion decisions of US and Japanese firms. Using mail surveys, this is one of the first studies on this subject to collect data from top executives in both Japan and the USA. Findings reveal that the Japanese are particularly sensitive to external risk and other target market factors. For Americans, company factors, such as international experience, appear to be most important when selecting …

Pricing Information Goods: A Strategic Analysis Of The Selling And Pay-Per-Use Mechanisms, Sridhar Balasubramanian, Shantanu Bhattacharya, Vish V. Krishnan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We analyze two pricing mechanisms for information goods. These mechanisms are selling, where up-front payment allows unrestricted use, and pay-per-use, where payments are tailored to use. We analytically model a market where consumers differ in use frequency and where use on a pay-per-use basis invokes a psychological cost associated with the well known "ticking meter" effect. We demonstrate that pay-per-use yields higher profits in a monopoly provided the associated psychological cost is low. In a duopoly, one firm uses selling and the other uses pay-per-use. Here, in contrast to the monopoly, selling yields higher profits than pay-per-use. We demonstrate that, …

Competitive Threats, Strategic Responses And Performance Of Brazilian B2b Firms, Syed Akhter, Paulo Barcellos

Syed H. Akhter

Purpose – The economic realignment in Latin America has created two clusters, one stagnant in the north and the other growth-bound in the south. This study aims to focus on Brazil, the key player in the growth-bound southern cluster, and address three fundamental questions: how Brazilian executives in four B2B sectors (telecommunications, business equipment, steel, and transportation) viewed the internal competitive developments, how they strategically responded to these developments, and what were the marketing and financial outcomes of these strategies. Design/methodology/approach – Data were obtained by interviewing top decision makers such as president, chief executive officer, and director of the …

Editorial For Dynamics Of Innovation And Competitive Strategy In Transportation Research, Janet K. Tinoco

Janet K. Tinoco

No abstract provided.

How Do Firms Become Different? A Dynamic Model, Matthew Selove

Business Faculty Articles and Research

This paper presents a dynamic investment game in which firms that are initially identical develop assets that are specialized to different market segments. The model assumes that there are increasing returns to investment in a segment, for example, as a result of word-of-mouth or learning curve effects. I derive three key results: (1) Under certain conditions there is a unique equilibrium in which firms that are only slightly different focus all of their investment in different segments, causing small random differences to expand into large permanent differences. (2) If, on the other hand, sufficiently large random shocks are possible, firms …

Competitive Threats, Strategic Responses And Performance Of Brazilian B2b Firms, Syed H. Akhter, Paulo Fernando Pinto Barcellos

Marketing Faculty Research and Publications

Purpose – The economic realignment in Latin America has created two clusters, one stagnant in the north and the other growth-bound in the south. This study aims to focus on Brazil, the key player in the growth-bound southern cluster, and address three fundamental questions: how Brazilian executives in four B2B sectors (telecommunications, business equipment, steel, and transportation) viewed the internal competitive developments, how they strategically responded to these developments, and what were the marketing and financial outcomes of these strategies.

Design/methodology/approach – Data were obtained by interviewing top decision makers such as president, chief executive officer, and director of the …

Pay-What-You-Want Pricing And Competition: Breaking The Bertand Trap, Yong Chao, Jose Fernandez, Babu Nahata

Yong Chao

Pay-What-You-Want (PWYW) pricing is a recent participative pricing strategy where a seller offers a good or service for any price consumers want to pay, including zero or some minimum payment. This paper provides a theoretical framework to study strategic effects of the PWYW pricing under duopoly by incorporating behavioral considerations of consumers in making voluntary payments when they could be freeloaders. Without identifying any particular behavioral factor, we assume that consumers feel a sense of guilt when they pay less than their reference points. It is shown that the PWYW pricing can be a profitable marketing strategy than the conventional …

Strategies Used To Defend Pharmaceutical Brands From Generics, Dean C.H. Wilkie, Lester Johnson, Lesley White

Lester Johnson

This research aims to provide an empirical comparison of the results of three brands' marketing defence strategies used in advance of generic brands entering the market. By reviewing the effectiveness of these strategies, this research looks to extend the research on marketing defence strategies into the importance of anticipating competitor launches.

The Upstart's Assault, Marco Bertini, Nirmalya Kumar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The article presents a fictional case study that focuses on how to manage competition in the telecommunication services industry. The issue is that one company could lose customers and market share because another company is offering free broadband. Georg Tacke, co-chief executive officer of Simon-Kucher & Partners company, and Anne Gro Gulla, a branding director at Telenor Group company, offer their views on how to respond to a competitive attack without causing a price war.

Editorial For Dynamics Of Innovation And Competitive Strategy In Transportation Research, Janet K. Tinoco

Management, Marketing and Operations - Daytona Beach

No abstract provided.

Selecting International Modes Of Entry And Expansion, Gregory E. Osland, Charles R. Taylor, Shaoming Zou

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

Selecting a mode for entering or expanding in a foreign market is a crucial strategic decision for an international firm. This article identifies and compares the most influential factors that affect the international modes of entry and expansion decisions of US and Japanese firms. Using mail surveys, this is one of the first studies on this subject to collect data from top executives in both Japan and the USA. Findings reveal that the Japanese are particularly sensitive to external risk and other target market factors. For Americans, company factors, such as international experience, appear to be most important when selecting …

The Flexible Executive Mindset: How Top Management Should Look At Tomorrow’S Markets, Gene R. Laczniak, Robert F. Lusch

Marketing Faculty Research and Publications

The need for management to better anticipate the future is the urgent message currently being advocated by consultants in strategic market planning. Uses a survey of high-level managers from Fortune 1,000 corporations to illustrate the advantages of cultivating a flexible mindset concerning environmental trends and their strategic marketing implications. Reviews projected developments in the economy, technology, ecology and the social/political environments that are expected to occur by 2005. Discusses appropriate marketing responses to these trends.