Company Store Research Articles

Furniture market demand forecasting using machine learning approaches

Researching consumer demand in the market for goods is essential for any business. The purpose of this study is to forecast the demand for furniture from a large manufacturer in Bulgaria. Significant factors influencing customer flow, both in the company and online stores, are investigated. Daily observations for nearly two years are modelled using CART Ensemble with arcing. The constructed models describe the demand for furniture with high goodness-of-fit statistics: coefficient of determination up to 93% and determine the order of the factors influencing the demand.

Managing business continuity in the Arctic: Experiences from mining.

This article presents a model for business continuity capacity, which shows how organizations can analyze possible gaps in their business continuity capability and thereby increase their capacity to recover value-adding critical activities. Using an example of a flooded mine on Svalbard, the study investigated how the mining company Store Norske Spitsbergen Coal Company (SNSK), with considerable experience with similar events and an excellent safety record, could fail to manage a well-known event and reduce recovery times of its critical activities. The analysis explored how experience in safety and incident management does not necessarily mean that these abilities are transferable to a new but similar event. The study sought to answer the research question: To what extent does SNSK's systematic work with safety, and experience with flooding events, improve business continuity capacity? In the Arctic, emergency response can take hours or days to arrive after the event. A structured recovery system can support pre-existing platforms aimed at safety, to include the critical activities needed to ensure an organization's overall survival. Systematic work can improve performance and make the organization engage in a virtuous cycle by implementing management structures, risk identification systems, competency development, and processes for the in situ evaluation of hazards. However, as seen here, the organization needs to pay attention to changes that could affect risk assessments and threat levels well-known events. These insights can be utilized by other organizations seeking synergy when strengthening their safety and business continuity performance.

Hungry for Revolution: The Politics of Food and the Making of Modern Chile

Hungry for Revolution: The Politics of Food and the Making of Modern Chile

Fighting Unemployment in Twentieth-Century Chile

Fighting Unemployment in Twentieth-Century Chile

Optimal Dual-channel Distribution Configuration of a Manufacturer Under Showrooming

We study the channel configuration problem of a monopolistic manufacturer under three dual-channel supply-chain configurations (DCSC). The first DCSC configuration corresponds to the manufacturer, the retailer (brick-and-mortar store) and the e-tailer (online store) who are all independent entities. In the second DCSC configuration, the manufacturer sells through its own brick and mortar stores (company stores) and competes with an independent e-tailer. In the third DCSC configuration, the manufacturer sells through an e-marketplace it owns and competes with an independent retailer. We find the equilibrium profit, price, and demand of each entity. Using numerical analysis, we find the effect of showrooming (examining product at the brick-and-mortar store and then buying from the online store).

Memorials and the Mine Disaster in Monongah, West Virginia: From Trauma to an Italian Global Memoryscape

Memorials and the Mine Disaster in Monongah, West Virginia: From Trauma to an Italian Global Memoryscape

What Use is Freud?

More than a hundred years into our field's development, examining Freud's place in psychoanalytic education is timely. What authority does he hold for psychoanalysts in 2021? Is he still the architect, or overseer, of psychoanalysis? Freud has been a metonym for psychoanalysis, yet the history of Freud's identification with the totality of psychoanalysis has had important unfortunate consequences. Negative aspects of this identification subtly linger, interfering in our collective appreciation of post-Freudian theoretical innovations. Too much of psychoanalysis has been "bought at the company store" of Freud's ideas. Though part of this problem is created by idealizations of Freud, much of it stems from Freud's precocious emphasis on psychoanalytic findings within his tripartite definition of psychoanalysis. As a result, many of his theoretical accounts were taken prematurely as definitive building blocks for a comprehensive psychoanalytic theory, when in fact they were only provisional formulations. Presently, portions of Freud's theories are silently withering on the psychoanalytic vine. Data from the PEP-Web archive reveal the declining use of a set of once important, closely linked conceptions-Freud's psychosexual theory and his characterology-and illustrate the kinds of Freudian ideas that have lost their usefulness. The indispensable and enduring elements in his work are identified.

Технологии Data Mining в управлении ассортиментом торговых компаний

In the conditions of fierce competition, satisfaction of all customer needs provides a trading enterprise with a sustainable competitive advantage. With the traditional structure of the assortment, there is a decrease in both the potential and real level of profit, the loss of competitive positions in promising markets, and, therefore, there is a decrease in the stability of the enterprise. The development of an analysis system to determine the specifics of the product range, optimize the range, and adapt it to the conditions of the Russian market is undoubtedly an urgent task. This article provides an overview of trade and IT companies that use data mining technologies. The survey showed that many companies are using data mining technology to improve customer service, turnover and sales in stores. In this regard, the management of Familia decided to develop its own software that will combine the analysis of turnover and sales in the company's stores in order to increase sales and improve the placement of goods in stores so that the client buys the necessary things, increasing the company's profit. The paper shows the possibility of combining several data mining methods in one system; shows the results of the analysis system and shows the effectiveness of the developed analysis system at Familia. The uniqueness of the developed software is the combination of data mining algorithms into one software product. The developed analysis system, based on the joint work of two data mining algorithms K-means and Apriori, allows you to manage the range of trade enterprises, reducing company losses.

“Bona Fide” Merchants: Negotiating Life, Labor, and Transnational Mobility in the Time of Chinese Exclusion

From 1875 until 1943, various policies increasingly circumscribed the free movement of Chinese immigrants into and within the United States. These efforts had a profound and lasting impact on the Chinese diaspora in the Pacific Northwest and divided the Chinese community into two distinct classes: laborers and a privileged class that included merchants. The authors of this research article argue that merchant businesses served a critical and multifaceted role in the formation, development, and decline of rural Chinatowns and in the lives of Chinese Oregonians who used the businesses to facilitate resistance and community persistence. Attaining officially recognized merchant status offered certainty and stability, as well as social and mobility, providing immigrants and their families with opportunities for prosperity in a largely unwelcoming land. The Wing Hong Hai Company Store (永同泰) in The Dalles (姐里阜) and the Wah Chung and Company Store (和昌) in Ashland each played important roles in the maintenance of Oregon’s Chinese diaspora communities. On the surface, they bought and sold goods and services; in reality, these transnational establishments did so much more as they navigated the waters of Chinese exclusion.

Research on optimization of warehouse layout based on SLP theory-- Take Deppon Express Warehouse for example

This paper takes Deppon Express Company as an example to study the optimization of the layout of the store warehouse under the standardized operation mode. First of all, it Analyzes warehouse layout present situation of the express company, and gets the problems of the warehouse layout of the company, for example, the layout of the lack of scientific, as well as part of the operational areas of position arrangement is not reasonable and unreasonable action path which leads to the whole business operation efficiency is low. Finally, thus using SLP to solve those problems, and put forward the company store aisle warehouse layout optimization strategy of management according to the comprehensive relations preliminary to the data warehouse layout optimization figure.

Equilibrium supply chain structures in the presence of asymmetric manufacturer capabilities in service efficacy and provision

In 2012, Tesla Motors announced that it would pursue company owned stores, while major automobile manufacturers, such as Ford and Honda, employ the traditional dealership model. Adding ‘service’ to the McGuire-Staelin duopoly game as another competitive instrument to ‘price’, this paper studies the role of service in shaping an equilibrium supply chain structure to show if and when a mixed supply chain structure of one integrated supply chain and one decentralized supply chain becomes an equilibrium outcome. Our model incorporates asymmetric manufacturer capabilities in service efficacy and provision, where service efficacy refers to the effectiveness of generating a higher demand for a given service level and service provision the cost-efficiency in producing service. Our results show that a mixed supply chain structure emerges as a Nash equilibrium outcome only if two products are moderately substitutable and one manufacturer is superior to the other in service provision with the former downward integrating and the latter decentralizing. Under this scenario, the superior manufacturer raises its profits by investing in service provision capabilities, widening the gap with its opponent, and furthermore, the superior manufacturer compensates for a less differentiated product if it is capable of providing service far more cheaply than its opponent.

Characteristics of the meat stockbreeding market performance

Ukraine has gone through a difficult and over time long period of recognition of market relations, which was accompanied by the emergence of imbalances. This is also the independence of enterprises with administrative influence on their work; liberalization of prices; low purchasing power of the population, which leads to a decrease in demand; rise in energy prices, as well as unequal exchange between industry and agriculture. As a consequence of the influence of these factors, there are changes in the structure of the cattle herd, the interest of producers in increasing the volume of livestock products is lost, incl. and meat, even at the level of personal peasant farms. Assessment of the state of the beef cattle breeding industry indicates a reduction in the number of fattening cattle in all categories of farms. The main reason for this unsatisfactory trend is the loss of profitability of beef cattle breeding. Studies of its causes have confirmed the influence of indicators of the number of livestock, animal productivity, as well as the cost of production. In 2009-2019 alone, the number of cattle decreased by almost 30 percent. And the available livestock of productive livestock in the households of the population does not provide guarantees and rhythmic supplies of raw materials to processing enterprises. Intermediaries create their problematic influence on the formation of the market for beef cattle breeding. However, even under such conditions, the beef cattle industry confirms its self-sufficiency in the turnover of products. The experience of the developed countries of Europe and the world confirms that the functioning of economic systems, which are based on market conditions, confirms their feasibility, efficiency and viability. The preconditions for the approval of the Ukrainian beef cattle market were the privatization of land and property, restructuring, and in some places the cancellation of debts, the introduction of a fixed tax, and some additional payment for the sold cattle. Therefore, market relations already, and in the future, affect the development of agriculture and beef cattle breeding, which is a multifaceted system with a large number of subjects of production, processing and sale of the industry's products. This is confirmed by weighty factors of the objective need to form a commodity market for beef cattle breeding to meet the demand for food products through the formation of the necessary volumes of their supply. It is also important that the formation of a market for beef cattle breeding, the supply of products should be expressed through the exchange infrastructure: stock exchanges, wholesale markets, auctions, trading houses, company stores, retail trade, city markets. The foregoing confirms the objective need to form a market for beef cattle breeding, while adhering to the principle of competition, which can objectively reproduce the essence of market relations in determining prices, the volume of supply of products supplied to the market and their quality. The market must operate on the basis of the requirements of the laws of value, equilibrium of supply and demand, and fulfill its regulatory function. The advantages of the market system have been convincingly brought to light by many years of practical efficiency and it is recognized as the highest and perfect form of management. In the system of market relations, agriculture is an integral part of the national economic complex, the entire system of economic development. The article proposed by the author provides information on the situation on the market for beef cattle breeding, factors that affect its functioning, as well as the reasons that shape supply and demand. Separate inconsistencies in the activities of the subjects of the market of beef cattle breeding have been established, the elimination of which will provide an improvement in the actual state and improve its functioning. The author of the article guides the participants in the market of beef cattle breeding to take into account the peculiarities of its functioning in their activities, which will contribute to the formation of the necessary volumes of products to meet the existing demand on the market. Key words: market, meat cattle breeding, criteria, competitiveness, marketing, demand, supply, infrastructure.

Optimization of the internal procurement process at the world's leading producer of phosphate rock

Purpose: This article discuss the results of a field study that was carried out over a 6 months period. The objective of this research aimed at studying the internal procurement system of one of the world's leading Moroccan companies that has a 4.3% contribution to the national GDP. Design/methodology/approach: Our work, based first of all on the elaboration of an overview and then on the use of more than 6 methods and logistic tools, will allow this company to develop its own procurement method, adapted to its constraints and capacities. Findings: In terms of figures, this company sources 157 items from several suppliers. These references are then stored initially in the company's store, and depending on the demand from internal customers, a distribution is subsequently planned. A shortage of stock on some items and overstocking on others is a blatant contradiction suggesting several paths for improvement. Ultimately, the results of our work have enabled us to reduce financial immobilization by 40%, as well as a considerable gain in storage space. Practical implications: This paper shows the importance of responding to the problems of large companies with adapted and targeted methods. Originality/value: This article presents an original parallel application of almost all conventional logistics methods, for a global and efficient optimization.

A Tale of Mystery Shopping: Mausummery Perspective!

Mausummery, founded in the year 1997, designed and manufactured lawn (lightweight cotton) clothing in Lahore, Pakistan. As the lawn industry became more competitive and the product became homogeneous, the company wanted to focus on service excellence to differentiate its brand and achieve higher sales and market share. The company had opened a number of its own stores in the hope of providing outstanding customer service. However, mystery shopping research had shown the company stores performing poorly relative to the competition, despite the sales training. The CEO and COO had to decide how to handle the situation moving forward.

Sustainability-oriented management of retail stores through the combination of life cycle assessment and dynamic data envelopment analysis

A sound management of retail stores is a crucial aspect in the path towards a sustainable commercial sector, with a lack of research studies in the field of joint efficiency and sustainability assessment within this sector. In this sense, this work delves into the role of operational efficiency in the sustainability-oriented management of retail stores through the case study of 30 groceries in Spain over the period 2015–2017. With this purpose, and given the current knowledge gap in period-oriented sustainability benchmarking for management plans, for the first time a five-step methodological framework based on the combination of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and dynamic Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was proposed and applied to a case study within the service sector. The overall- and term-efficiency scores calculated through this method led to the general conclusion of a relatively good performance of the set of grocery stores over the evaluated period, which is associated with the centralised management strategy followed by the retail company. Furthermore, operational, socio-economic and environmental benchmarks were calculated as target values that could assist decision-makers at the retail company level in setting the path for a sustainable operation of the company's stores. Overall, the proposed period-oriented LCA + DEA method proved to be a feasible and valuable tool for sustainability management of retail stores, being preferred over the static (i.e., single term) alternative provided that time-series data are available at the company level.

Beyond Racism and Poverty: The Truck System on Louisiana Plantations and Dutch Peateries, 1865-1920 by Karin Lurvink

Reviewed by: Beyond Racism and Poverty: The Truck System on Louisiana Plantations and Dutch Peateries, 1865-1920 by Karin Lurvink Evan P. Bennett Beyond Racism and Poverty: The Truck System on Louisiana Plantations and Dutch Peateries, 1865-1920. By Karin Lurvink. Studies in Global Slavery. (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018. Pp. xx, 269. $157.00, ISBN 978-90-04-35180-6.) If Merle Travis had done nothing else in life, his distillation in his 1946 classic "Sixteen Tons" of the plight of the poor worker who "owe[s] [his] soul to the company store" would have earned him the everlasting thanks of southern historians searching for a way of explaining a world in which people were paid in wages other than cash (p. 1). The lyrics are a fitting epigraph to Karin Lurvink's study of the truck system, in which employers remunerated workers in scrip or store credit. Instead of Kentucky coal miners, however, Lurvink focuses on workers in two other parts of the world: the plantation districts of Louisiana and the peat-mining region of the Netherlands. These regions differed greatly from one another in most respects, except in that the truck system was common to both. One could say the same for the cotton- and sugar-growing sections of Louisiana, of course, but Lurvink is careful to explain their distinction even as she lumps Louisiana and the Netherlands together in her broader analysis. Since the truck system is Lurvink's central concern, it is fair to place the regions in a comparative frame. However, it results in a narrow study that is unlikely to lead southern historians to revise their discussions of poverty and power in the rural South. The book's greatest strength lies in its documentation and analysis of the functioning of the truck system at the local level in both Louisiana and the Netherlands. The author carefully examines the geographical similarities of regions where the truck system predominated and details how the truck system operated. The color images of various scrip currencies and explanations of their manufacture are a fascinating part of this section. She then explores why and how employers used the system. Rather than consciously deciding to implement the truck system as a tool of repression, she argues, employers paid in scrip or in goods largely because economic exigencies—notably, the lack of cash on hand—left them few other choices. That the system could be used as a tool of [End Page 470] labor control was ancillary in their thinking. In fact, Lurvink argues, the system itself was not as universally exploitative as popular memory would remember it. Interest rates, she demonstrates, were often on par with those charged to employers by their creditors, and debt was less often a hindrance to mobility than has been depicted. Employers could entrap workers, of course, but they could just as often stock their stores with better products as a way of attracting and retaining workers. While the author does not shy away from the poverty of workers paid in scrip, the rational-choice model employed for explaining the system at times does seem too rosy, much like models of sharecropping that describe the economic rationality of sharing the crop without accounting for the vast inequalities of risk between planters and sharecroppers. In her defense, Lurvink does not fall into that trap too far and is careful to account for the inequalities of power between employers and their workers. Indeed, the inequalities are at the core of her argument. Most interested in correcting what she sees as historians' simplifications of why the truck system became so entrenched in each area—racism in Louisiana, naturalized classism in the Netherlands—she argues that it was most fundamentally workers' lack of power that gave the system its durability. Merle Travis, and most southern historians, would probably agree. Evan P. Bennett Florida Atlantic University Copyright © 2019 Southern Historical Association

Robert Owen's Experiment at New Lanark: From Paternalism to Socialism

Robert Owen's Experiment at New Lanark: From Paternalism to Socialism

What Is Your Gut Telling You? Exploring the Role of the Microbiome in Gut-Brain Signaling.

What Is Your Gut Telling You? Exploring the Role of the Microbiome in Gut-Brain Signaling.

Social media as promotion trend for increasing tourist visit towards digital era

This study examines "Social media as a trend of promotion for increasing tourist visits of the digital era at Tegallantang village Ubud Bali". Marketing leaders need timely and accurate reports about current sales. Smart companies make use of "cookies," records of Web site users that are stored in a personal browser, are smart target marketing users. Companies must translate sales data carefully so as not to draw wrong conclusions. In addition to saving mail expenses, this data manipulation can often achieve a double-digit response rate. The company stores this data (data warehousing) and makes it easily accessible to decision makers. Furthermore, by employing analysis that has expertise in complex statistical methods, companies can "dig" data (data mining) and gather new knowledge about neglected customer segments, and other useful information. The internal data system provides results data, but the marketing intelligence system provides current data (happenings). Marketing intelligence system (marketing intelligence system) is a collection of procedures and resources used by managers to obtain daily information about various developments in the marketing environment. The marketing manager collects marketing intelligence by reading books, newspapers, and trade publications, talking with customers, suppliers, and distributors; observe "social media" on the internet through online discussion groups, e-mail lists, and blogs and meet with other company managers. In this context, social media plays an important role for every effort to connect with digital customers spread across the world indefinitely.

Optimal dual-channel supply chain configuration for product categories with different customer preference of online channel

This study addresses the supply chain configuration problem of manufacturer faced with multiple channel choices. We investigate the optimal combination of traditional and online sales channels for different product categories with differing customer preference of the online channel. We have considered three distinct dual-channel supply chain configurations comprising of a manufacturer, a traditional channel and an online channel viz. retailer–e-tailer; company store–e-tailer; and retailer–e-marketplace. As the manufacturer will face a quantity allocation decision between traditional and online channels, the competition is modeled using Cournot model with the manufacturer as the Stackelberg leader. Values of optimal order quantity and price for the different entities have been established. Influence of variation in customer preference of online channel on the optimal policies is also examined. We find that the manufacturer prefers retailer–e-marketplace configuration for products with high customer preference of online channel and company store–e-tailer configuration for products with low customer preference of online channel. In addition, we find that the retailer–e-tailer configuration is dominated by company store–e-tailer and retailer–e-marketplace configuration irrespective of the product’s customer preference of online channel.