Strength Of Competitors Research Articles

Under the shadow of the future: Gender‐specific reactions to (un)certain future interactions

AbstractExpectations are a key element of strategic environments. As it has already been shown that men's performance in current competitions is affected by the expected future opponents' strength, we investigate whether women are overshadowed by future competitors as well. We use data from professional tennis, replicate the results for men and compare it with women's behavior. Extending previous research, we focus on the role of uncertainty in this context, particularly, whether behavior differs when individuals have to form expectations instead of having accurate information. Our results suggest that individuals perform worse in competitions if the expected future opponent is stronger. We find gender‐specific behavior when analyzing uncertainty as a potential source: Women's current performance does not depend on the future competitor's strength when they know her for sure, whereas they are overshadowed when having to form expectations. In contrast, men are negatively affected by the future competitor's strength when they know him and when they need to form expectations. Moreover, women (men) rather seem to be sensitive to direct (more distant) incentives. These findings might be transferred to information revelation in promotion contests to help highly qualified individuals, especially women, climb the career ladder.

Opening up the court: analyzing player performance across tennis Grand Slams

Abstract In tennis, the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, and US Open are the four most prestigious events (Grand Slams). These four Grand Slams differ in the composition of the court surfaces, when they are played in the year, and which city hosts the players. Individual Grand Slams come with different expectations, and it is often thought that some players achieve better results at some Grand Slams than others. It is also thought that differences in results may be attributed, at least partially, to surface type of the courts. For example, Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer, and Serena Williams have achieved their best results on clay, grass, and hard courts, respectively. This paper explores differences among Grand Slams, while adjusting for confounders such as tour, competitor strength, and player attributes. More specifically, we examine the effect of the Grand Slam on player performance for matches from 2013 to 2019. We take two approaches to modeling these data: (1) a mixed-effects model accounting for both player and tournament features and (2) models that emphasize individual performance. We identify differences across the Grand Slams at both the tournament and individual player level.

Under the Shadow of the Future: Gender-Specific Reactions to (Un)certain Future Interactions

Expectations are a key element of strategic environments, accordingly in all competitive situations. As it has already been shown that men's performance in current competitions is affected by the strength of expected future opponents, we investigate whether women are overshadowed by future competitors as well. In doing so, we use data from professional tennis, replicate the results for men and compare it with women's behavior. Extending previous research, we focus on individuals that have already entered a competition and investigate the role of uncertainty in this context, particularly, whether behavior differs and is gender-specific when individuals have to form expectations instead of having accurate information about future competitors. Our findings suggest that highly qualified men and women perform worse in current competitions in case that the expected future opponent is stronger. We find gender-specific behavior when analyzing uncertainty as a potential source of this effect: Women's current performance does not depend on the future competitor's strength when they know her for sure, whereas they are overshadowed when having to form expectations. In contrast, men are negatively affected by the future competitor's strength, both when they know him and when they need to form expectations, whereby the effect is weaker in the first case. Finally, our results suggest that women (men) rather seem to be sensitive to direct (more distant) incentives. These findings might be transferred to information revelation in promotion contests in order to help highly qualified individuals, especially women, climb the career ladder.

Love thy neighbor: Facilitation and inhibition in the competition between parallel predictions

Ample evidence suggests that during word recognition and production, simultaneously activated lexical and sublexical representations interact, demonstrating varied patterns of facilitation and inhibition in various tasks and measures. A separate line of research has led to a growing consensus that prediction during sentence processing involves activating multiple possible predictions. However, very little is known about the nature of the interactions between parallel predictions. The current study employed a speeded cloze task to probe competition between simultaneously activated predictions. We focused on the modal response (the most probable completion for a sentence) and its strongest competitor (the second most probable completion). Examining production latencies of the modal response, the results showed an interaction between competitor strength and the semantic relatedness between the competitor and the modal: when the two were related, the stronger the competitor was, the more it facilitated production; however, when the two were unrelated, the stronger the competitor was, the more inhibition it caused. These results contrast with the pattern observed for the influences of near and distant semantic neighbors on word recognition and production. However, we show that when the different nature of the tasks is taken into consideration, these patterns of interaction between parallel predictions can be accounted for by the interactive activation and competition (IAC) model used to account for previous neighborhood effects (Chen & Mirman, 2012).

A decision making model for selection of café location: An ANP approach

Decision-making in business location selection is a challenging task for companies because it involves multiple alternatives and criteria. Previous studies have investigated this problem using various approaches, and AHP/ANP-based decision-making approach is the most used one due to its capabilities in dealing with the complex problem. Although numerous studies have adopted AHP/ANP approach in determining the business location, but most of them were conducted in the large-scale enterprises and not in the context of culinary business such as cafe. This study is intended for selecting the best business location alternative in the context of small enterprise of culinary industry. We developed a decision-making model based on theories and experiences of the culinary expert to choose the best café location. A total of five major criteria we identified namely location characteristics, demography, competition, physical features, and cost. Each major criterion consists of elements that range from two to five elements. Because there are relationships among elements, therefore we develop a network model, which depicts the criteria, sub criteria, alternatives, and their interactions. We apply ANP by using expert opinion to analyse the importance of each criterion and the rank of each alternative. The final result displays that the competitor strength is the highest importance for small enterprises in selecting the best business location.

New order-statistics-based ranking models and faster computation of outcome probabilities

AbstractIn sport, order-statistics-based models such as Henery’s gamma model and the Thurstone–Mosteller type V model are useful in estimating competitor strengths from observed performance of players in competitions between two or more players. They can also be applied in many other areas, such as analysis of consumer preference data, which would be useful to marketing management. Two new families of such models derived from the exponentiated exponential, and Pareto distributions are introduced. Use of order-statistics-based models when there are more than two competitors has been hampered by lack of an efficient method of computation of outcome probabilities as a function of competitor strengths, and a fast method of computation of outcome probabilities is presented, which exploits the fact that the integral to be evaluated is an iterated integral.

MRT Micro: The CardioScope

Jan Bakke, founder and chairman of Norway-based MRT, was planning the U.S. market entry strategy for CardioScope–its electrocardiograph system. How could MRT get a foothold in the U.S. market against competitors who had been around for 50 years? How could he ensure that MRT would be able to defend itself once it entered the market? What segments should it target, and how should it position itself?To introduce the development of a strategic target marketing plan in a business-to-business setting. To discuss the analysis skills and problem-solving framework necessary for determining a segmentation, targeting, and positioning strategy; to offer the opportunity for a complete market and competitive analysis, including market segmentation, competitor strengths and weaknesses, and consideration of a competitive advantage for the new product; and to develop students skills in assessing the risks of a new product/market entry strategy.

An empirical Bayes' procedure for ranking players in Ryder Cup golf

We describe a model to obtain strengths and rankings of players appearing in golf's Ryder Cup. Obtaining rankings is complicated because of two reasons. First, competitors do not compete on an equal number of occasions, with some competitors appearing too infrequently for their ranking to be estimated with any degree of certainty, and second, different competitors experience different levels of volatility in results. Our approach is to assume the competitor strengths are drawn from some common distribution. For small numbers of competitors, as is the case here, we fit the model using Monte-Carlo integration. Results suggest there is very little difference between the top performing players, though Scotland's Colin Montgomerie is estimated as the strongest Ryder Cup player.

Deterministic Evolution of Strength in Multiple Comparisons Models: Who is the Greatest Golfer?

AbstractWe present a statistical methodology for fitting time‐varying rankings, by estimating the strength parameters of the Plackett–Luce multiple comparisons model at regularly spaced times for each ranked item. We use the little‐known method of barycentric rational interpolation to interpolate between the strength parameters so that a competitor's strength can be evaluated at any time. We chose the time‐varying strengths to evolve deterministically rather than stochastically, a preference that we reason often has merit. There are many statistical and computational problems to overcome on fitting anything beyond ‘toy’ data sets. The methodological innovations here include a method for maximizing a likelihood function for many parameters, approximations for modelling tied data and an approach to the elimination of secular drift of the estimated ‘strengths’. The methodology has obvious applications to fields such as marketing, although we demonstrate our approach by analysing a large data set of golf tournament results, in search of an answer to the question ‘who is the greatest golfer of all time?’

What we talk about when we talk about access deficits.

Semantic impairments have been divided into storage deficits, in which the semantic representations themselves are damaged, and access deficits, in which the representations are intact but access to them is impaired. The behavioural phenomena that have been associated with access deficits include sensitivity to cueing, sensitivity to presentation rate, performance inconsistency, negative serial position effects, sensitivity to number and strength of competitors, semantic blocking effects, disordered selection between strong and weak competitors, correlation between semantic deficits and executive function deficits and reduced word frequency effects. Four general accounts have been proposed for different subsets of these phenomena: abnormal refractoriness, too much activation, impaired competitive selection and deficits of semantic control. A combination of abnormal refractoriness and impaired competitive selection can account for most of the behavioural phenomena, but there remain several open questions. In particular, it remains unclear whether access deficits represent a single syndrome, a syndrome with multiple subtypes or a variable collection of phenomena, whether the underlying deficit is domain-general or domain-specific, whether it is owing to disorders of inhibition, activation or selection, and the nature of the connection (if any) between access phenomena in aphasia and in neurologically intact controls. Computational models offer a promising approach to answering these questions.

How Molecular Competition Influences Fluxes in Gene Expression Networks

Often, in living cells different molecular species compete for binding to the same molecular target. Typical examples are the competition of genes for the transcription machinery or the competition of mRNAs for the translation machinery. Here we show that such systems have specific regulatory features and how they can be analysed. We derive a theory for molecular competition in parallel reaction networks. Analytical expressions for the response of network fluxes to changes in the total competitor and common target pools indicate the precise conditions for ultrasensitivity and intuitive rules for competitor strength. The calculations are based on measurable concentrations of the competitor-target complexes. We show that kinetic parameters, which are usually tedious to determine, are not required in the calculations. Given their simplicity, the obtained equations are easily applied to networks of any dimension. The new theory is illustrated for competing sigma factors in bacterial transcription and for a genome-wide network of yeast mRNAs competing for ribosomes. We conclude that molecular competition can drastically influence the network fluxes and lead to negative response coefficients and ultrasensitivity. Competitors that bind a large fraction of the target, like bacterial σ70, tend to influence competing pathways strongly. The less a competitor is saturated by the target, the more sensitive it is to changes in the concentration of the target, as well as to other competitors. As a consequence, most of the mRNAs in yeast turn out to respond ultrasensitively to changes in ribosome concentration. Finally, applying the theory to a genome-wide dataset we observe that high and low response mRNAs exhibit distinct Gene Ontology profiles.

Acoustic underwater signals with a probable function during competitive feeding in a tadpole

Acoustic communication is widespread among adult stages of terrestrial animals and fish and has also been observed in insect larvae. We report underwater acoustic communication in the larvae of a frog, Gephyromantis azzurrae, from Isalo, a sandstone massif in western Madagascar. According to our field data, these tadpoles live in streams and prefer habitats characterized by comparatively low temperatures, shallow water depth, and a relatively fast current. Feeding experiments indicated that the tadpoles are carnivorous and macrophagous. They consumed insect larvae and, to a lesser extent, small shrimps, and conspecific as well as heterospecific tadpoles. Calls of these tadpoles consisted either of single click notes or of irregular series of various clicks. Some complex calls have a pulsed structure with three to nine indistinct energy pulses. Production of the pulses coincided with rapid closure of the jaw sheaths and often with an upward movement of the body. Calls were emitted while attacking prey and occurred significantly more often when attacking conspecifics. Tadpoles that had not been fed for some time emitted sounds more frequently than those that had been regularly fed. The spectral frequency of the calls differed in tadpole groups of different size and was higher in groups of smaller tadpoles, suggesting that spectral frequency carries some information about tadpole size which might be important during competitive feeding to assess size and strength of competitors. This report differs from those for the larvae of South American horned frogs, Ceratophrys ornata. These are the only other tadpoles for which sound production has reliably been reported but the calls of Ceratophrys tadpoles occur mainly in a defensive context.

Tradable Services: Understanding the Scope and Impact of Services Outsourcing

Exporting through international supply chains was a successful way for East Asian countries to develop their textile and apparel industries in the 1970s and 1980s, but it is a less clear route for countries like Egypt trying to compete today. The challenge is particularly acute given the strength of competitors like China, and even more so in the post-MFA era. Some analysts suggest that lean retailing increases the importance of geography in exporting in the world of rapidly changing apparel fashion, in a way that could benefit a country like Egypt with its proximity to European end markets. Using a supply chain model, this paper suggests that shortening lead times can indeed have an impact on profits, but that the effect is not tremendous, being in the range of a 0.3 percent to 0.9 percent increase in profits for every week of improvement in lead times. The study also finds that the business environment in Egypt lags key comparator countries in several areas that help the firms compete in global apparel chains, although recent reforms by the Egyptian government are working to address several of these aspects. It concludes by exploring to what extent geography, trade preferences, and local production factors may help Egypt's textile and apparel industry carve out a role for itself in global supply chains, and provide an engine to drive industrial upgrading throughout the country.

Egypt after the Multi-Fiber Arrangement: Global Apparel and Textile Supply Chains as a Route for Industrial Upgrading

Exporting through international supply chains was a successful way for East Asian countries to develop their textile and apparel industries in the 1970s and 1980s, but it is a less clear route for countries like Egypt trying to compete today. The challenge is particularly acute given the strength of competitors like China, and even more so in the post-MFA era. Some analysts suggest that lean retailing increases the importance of geography in exporting in the world of rapidly changing apparel fashion, in a way that could benefit a country like Egypt with its proximity to European end markets. Using a supply chain model, this paper suggests that shortening lead times can indeed have an impact on profits, but that the effect is not tremendous, being in the range of a 0.3 percent to 0.9 percent increase in profits for every week of improvement in lead times. The study also finds that the business environment in Egypt lags key comparator countries in several areas that help the firms compete in global apparel chains, although recent reforms by the Egyptian government are working to address several of these aspects. It concludes by exploring to what extent geography, trade preferences, and local production factors may help Egypt's textile and apparel industry carve out a role for itself in global supply chains, and provide an engine to drive industrial upgrading throughout the country.

Matinees, Summers and Opening Weekends

Matinees, Summers and Opening Weekends

Competitive intelligence in china: A case study

AbstractCompetitive intelligence is a new discipline in China, where, despite a booming economy, many aspects of competitive business remain novel. The authors provide a look into how a large, state‐owned enterprise applied CI to adapt to the presence of market competition, providing insight into how Chinese companies appraise the competitive strength of competitors and use this information to create competitive strategies, as well as the emerging role of university academics as business consultants. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Winning contracts by understanding—and leveraging—the competitor's approach

AbstractSuccessful bidding for contract awards requires not only a detailed knowledge of competitor strengths and weaknesses but the ability to use this information to fortify your offering and neutralize competing bids. The author presents an approach for crafting a winning strategy that differentiates your firm from the competition on those attributes most important to the customer; clearly communicates why your offering best meets the customer's needs; explains why your analysis led you to reject the competition's approach in favor of your own; and otherwise identifies and discredits the competitor's strengths while exploiting every weakness. In addition, developing a competitive assessment in which your management has confidence will help your firm make more decisive competitive‐bidding investment decisions. If you are clearly going to win, additional prototypes and expensive promotion can be avoided. If headed for certain defeat, management can terminate the pursuit and cut its losses. Finally, competitive intelligence is vital to determining the “price‐to‐win” figure at which the maximum acceptable price can be bid. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Breaking away from the conventional ‘usability lab’: the Customer-Centered Design Group at Tektronix, Inc.

Abstract The conventional usability lab is primarily responsible for testing prototypes and products to determine if customers will accept a new design. Often this testing comes too late in the development cycle to allow major design or product changes to occur. In the Customer-Centered Design Group at Tektronix Labs, the usability lab is a small part of our group's involvement in the entire design life cycle of a Tektronix product. We work with design groups to bring the benefits of a usability lab to all phases of design, beginning with understanding our customer's current system and work processes to assessing the competitor's strengths and weaknesses to simulating and evaluating design alternatives. Our ‘lab’ is often on the road; meeting with customers where they work, working with design teams to simulate and prototype designs, and evaluating designs with our customers. To keep in touch with customers and to keep product development focused, we feel a usability group must break down the barriers inh...

High affinity DNA-microtubule associated protein interaction.

We have isolated the MAP/tau proteins from twice-cycled chick brain microtubule preparations and demonstrated that they are responsible for the nitrocellulose DNA binding activity we and others have measured. Using the isolated MAP/tau proteins we then measured the apparent affinity constant K(app) for the homologous chick DNA interaction and found evidence for two equilibrium affinity classes-a K(app) = 6 x 10(7) M-1, responsible for the bulk of the DNA binding activity and a small (less than 10%) higher affinity K(app) = 10(8) - 10(9) M-1, likely due to sequence specific binding protein species. Using the same chick brain MAP-tau protein, a heterologous interaction with D. melanogaster DNA, was found to possess just the lower affinity class-K(app) = 2 x 10(7) M-1. Under stringent binding conditions we carried out equilibrium nitrocellulose filter binding experiments in a ternary reaction mixture at constant MAP/tau protein and 35S radiolabelled chick DNA concentration using increasing and excess concentrations of competitor DNAs of different sources. The order of competitor strengths found was-chick DNA greater than mouse DNA greater than D. melanogaster = E. coli. DNA. These data and specifically the homologous DNA: protein case being the strongest competitor corroborate our previous studies using total microtubule protein and provide new evidence for a conserved interaction of a small DNA sequence class with MAP/tau protein species. Moreover, these data allow us to conclude that the conserved DNA sequence: MAP/tau protein interactions do not critically depend upon any energetic feature co-involving tubulin for their properties since tubulin is absent from these preparations.

Seasonal, Annual, and Among‐site Variation in the Ground Ant Community of a Deciduous Tropical Forest: Some Causes of Patchy Species Distributions

I examined patterns of species distributions in ground ants on Barro Colorado Island (BCI), Republic of Panama, using baited transect samples and Berlese extraction of litter arthropods. I sampled during wet and dry seasons in 1976 and 1977. All sites sampled were under closed—canopy rain forest at least 75 yr old. More species and more individuals were collected in wet than dry season using either method. Evenness of species abundance at baits also increased during the wet season. Ant activity was higher in 1977 than 1976 at all periods; this was correlated with increased rainfall during the dry season. Measures of species abundance and activity were positively correlated with protection from physical stresses. Over all seasons, fewer species and fewer individuals were collected at drier, sunnier sites. Patterns of seasonal and annual change were similar at bait transects and in Berlese samples. Species that were both active at baits and collected in Berlese samples varied in abundance the same way in both sampling methods. Several lines of evidence suggest that moisture availability is an important contributor to these patterns of among—site and among—season variation. First, ant activity, measured in several different ways, increased rapidly when moisture availability was increased, either through rainfall or through experimental watering during the dry season. Second, moisture availability may affect the distribution of suitable nest sites. This hypothesis was supported by differences in the number of colonies collected in Berlese samples from sites which differ in moisture availability. Third, the availability of food among sites may be correlated positively with soil moisture content, but there was not enough evidence to test this possibility. Fourth, there is some evidence that reduction of army ant raids in drier parts of the island during the dry season may concentrate the effects of these ant predators in moist, sheltered areas of BCI. Establishment and persistence of a given species in an area is a complex function of the availability of suitable food and nest sites and the strength of competitors and predators. Patchy species distributions were more the result of changes in the frequency of a species' occurrence among areas, than due to the existence of unique groups of species at separate sites, at least during the periods I sampled. Thus physical conditions were probably at least marginally acceptable to a large fraction of the fauna at all sites. However, differences in abundance and activity of ant species were correlated with changes in moisture availability. I have considered four hypotheses to account for these patterns, but they are by no means exhaustive. Moisture availability, acting through many intermediate steps, has major effects on the small—scale composition of ant faunas, even in a relatively sheltered environment like a tropical forest floor.