Kinds Of Customers Research Articles

Reconciling the Matchmaker Economy with Competition Policy

There is no doubt that the enforcement of competition law is an important part of global business law and policy. Proper enforcement of competition law increases market efficiencies, allows for innovation and creative destruction, and ensures consumers will be able to access the best products and services. However, over-enforcement or improper enforcement can lead to the opposite results destroying consumer welfare and halting vital innovation. Balancing these concerns have led to many improvements in the application of competition law, especially concerning the use of economics to inform enforcement. Yet, more analysis is needed on how to analyze matchmaker businesses under competition laws, even though we are in the midst of a matchmaker platform renaissance. A matchmaker -- sometimes referred to as a multi-sided platform -- is a “business that helps two or more different kinds of customers find each other and engage in mutually beneficial interactions.” In fact, there have increasingly been calls for enforcement against these business models without an adequate understanding how the economics differ from non-matchmaker models and how matchmaker platforms create consumer welfare. It is important we get enforcement right on these new platforms, which make up “three of the five most valuable companies in the world in 2015” and “seven of the ten start-ups with the highest market values.”

“The Kind of Cake, Not the Kind of Customer”

In June 2018 the Supreme Court of the United States decided the case of Masterpiece Cakeshop, in which baker Jack Phillips refused to provide a cake for a same-sex wedding. The Court decided the case on fairly narrow grounds; in particular, it set aside the question of whether Phillips illegally discriminated on the basis of sexual orientation by refusing to sell the same cake to a gay couple that he would sell to a heterosexual couple. Concurring opinions by Justices Kagan and Gorsuch do address that question, however, and in this paper I explore the debate between them. By distinguishing between design-based and use-based refusals of service and then arguing that some use-based refusals are tantamount to discrimination on the basis of protected traits, I argue that Jack Phillips did indeed discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. I also argue that another baker, who refused to create a “Leviticus 18:22 ‘Homosexuality is a detestable sin’ ” cake, did not discriminate on the basis of religion. I thus side with Justice Kagan against Justice Gorsuch on the question of whether the Colorado commission treated the two bakers inconsistently.

Untangling service denial motivations

Social Sciences In the United States, national debates continue about whether businesses should be allowed to deny services to specific kinds of customers for religious reasons. However, little is known about current public views on this issue. Powell et al. used a national-scale scientific survey to untangle the motivations of Americans who oppose or support a right to deny business services to minorities, including gay and interracial couples. American support for denying service to same-sex couples appears not to be driven by belief in religious freedoms, but instead by general libertarianism and personal opposition to marriage rights. Sci. Adv. 10.1126/sciadv.aao5834 (2017).

Interactive Digital Displays for Outdoor Advertising

As we live in a period called the ‘Information Age’, new communication technologies are enabling newer possible ways for advertisers to interact differently with customers. High-technology televisions, the Internet, touch screens and such technologies are changing the media environment. Therefore, it changes the ways of communication. Nowadays, interactive digital displays are more commonly used for outdoor advertisements such as shop displays, billboards and on public transport. This research explores the impacts of interactive digital displays for outdoor advertising and how efficiently they engage with customers. Advertising media is evolving into a whole new level with upcoming developments. However, it still needs a full adaptation by customers. While relatively young customers adapt more easily with the interactive displays, certain kinds of customers still prefer traditional media. This research seeks to find how effective interactive display use for advertising is, while comparing customer adaptation of new media technologies with traditional media. Keywords: Interactive displays, outdoor advertising, digital signage.

Design of an Optimal Frequency Reward Program in the Face of Competition

We optimize the design of a frequency reward program against traditional pricing in a competitive duopoly, where customers measure their utilities in rational economic terms. We assume two kinds of customers: myopic and strategic (Yilmaz et al. (2016)). Every customer has a prior loyalty bias (Fader and Schmittlein (1993)) toward the reward program merchant, a parameter drawn from a known distribution, indicating an additional probability of choosing the reward program merchant over the traditional pricing merchant. Under this model, we characterize the customer behavior: the loyalty bias increases the switching costs (Klemperer (1995)) of strategic customers until a tipping point, after which they strictly prefer and adopt the reward program merchant. Subsequently, we optimize the reward parameters to maximize the revenue objective of the reward program merchant. We show that under mild assumptions, the optimal parameters for the reward program design to maximize the revenue objective correspond exactly to minimizing the tipping point of customers and are independent of the customer population parameters. Moreover, we characterize the conditions for the reward program to be better when the loyalty bias distribution is uniform - a minimum fraction of population needs to be strategic, and the loyalty bias needs to be in an optimal range. If the bias is high, the reward program creates loss in revenues, as customers effectively gain rewards for “free”, whereas a low value of bias leads to loss in market share to the competing merchant. In short, if a merchant can estimate the customer population parameters, our framework and results provide theoretical guarantees on the pros and cons of running a reward program against traditional pricing.

Sharing economy as a new business model for energy storage systems

Energy storage systems (ESS) are the candidate solution to integrate the high amount of electric power generated by volatile renewable energy sources into the electric grid. However, even though the investment costs of some ESS technologies have decreased over the last few years, few business models seem to be attractive for investors. In most of these models, ESS are applied only for one use case, such as primary control reserve.In this study, a business model based on the sharing economy principle has been developed and analyzed. In this model, the energy storage operator offers its storage system to different kinds of customers. Each customer uses the ESS for their single use case. A set of different use cases has been identified to make the operation of the ESS profitable (e.g. peak shaving, self-consumption and day-ahead market participation). Different kinds of stationary batteries (lithium-ion, sodium-sulfur and vanadium redox-flow) have been considered as energy storage technologies, which differ both in their investment costs and their technical properties, such as round-trip efficiency. The simulation of the business model developed showed that a sharing economy-based model may increase the profitability of operating a battery storage system compared to the single use case business model. Additionally, larger battery dimensions regarding power and capacity were found to be profitable and resulted in an increased revenue stream.

Social Networks on Cashback Websites

ABSTRACTThe relevance of Cashback sites as a profitable business model has grown considerably over the last decade, where customer's social networks have been one of the most important keys of success. Hence, the success of cashback websites business model not only lays on strategies such as offering a wide portfolio of affiliate merchants and competitive cashbacks per transaction to attract new customers, but also on their ability of engaging them and enrolling new target customers through recommendation in a word‐of‐mouth marketing strategy. By a applying this kind of strategies, both the recommender and the referee benefit from referee's transactions in the network, meaning that benefits for customers and companies grow at the same time that the customer's social network grows and become more active. Consequently, this research focuses on the analysis of the impact of customer's social network on cashback websites from two different perspectives. From the customer's perspective, determining the impact of the social network composition and their activity in customer's benefits of cashback. Second, the research focuses on the ecommerce's perspective, testing which kind of customers, characterized by whether they have social network or not, are more profitable to the brand in terms of purchase behavior and loyalty. The findings are a step forward to understand customer behaviour and the relevance of social networks on cashback websites business model and help the companies to establish the basis to develop new digital marketing strategies less concentrated in media advertisements and oriented to increase customer acquisition, retention, and profitability.

Geographical Delineation of Sugar Market Basing on Elzinga-Hogarty Method

The aim of the paper was to define the geographical scope of the sugar market using the Elzinga−Hogarty method. For practical use of this method the authors made three assumptions: 1) sugar market was studied integrally, independently from type of sugar, its origin and kind of customer, 2) the European Union market treated en bloc was the starting point for the analysis, 3) LOFI and LIFO tests were established at the level of 90% (“strong” market). The authors used secondary data on sugar production, consumption, imports and exports on country and the EU level gathered for 2013 by the International Sugar Organization. Sugar market was defined by “adding” to each other subsequent national markets characterised by the highest trade exchange.The markets were added until the requirements for LOFI and LIFO tests were met at the level of 90%. The results of the research allow the authors to define the sugar market as a global market which consists of the EU area and 30 other countries in the world. Such market has production of 114 million tonnes, consumption of 110 million tonnes and small share of import and export at the level of 10.7 million tonnes and 11.4 million tonnes, respectively. The geographical definition of the sugar market determined in the paper is much broader than the ones used by the European Union and the Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection. The controversy about the geographical scope of the sugar market suggests the need for further research in the area.

NEGÓCIOS COM IMPACTO SOCIAL: CARACTERÍSTICAS, MODELOS E MÉTRICAS DE AVALIÇÃO

Setting a business in the twenty-first century? As organizations face a wear scenario and scarcity of natural resources? Working in a marked social inequality reality? Businesses tend to be more committed to the social? All businesses would present social impact? What would a business with social impact? The answer to these questions would be: A business with adequate impacts? In what sense? Suitable for what kind of competition, what kind of market, what kind of customer, at what time, in what context? This study, descriptive theory, sought to verify and discuss the main concepts and definitions of business with social impact, relating them to the theme of innovation. The main results can be seen that there are several social business characteristics, advances in business valuation metrics with social impact, but the studies are very recent in the national spotlight, with some international prospects for a prosperous future, to work on organizations and science

Social media and its impact in marketing strategy

Marketing through social media nowadays represents one of the most effective ways to introduce the company and its products on the market. Various businesses are achieving amazing results being advertised via e-mail marketing. Online marketing is fast, simple, represents a different way to socialize the business and it is most direct marketing medium that is currently available. Through social media platform businesses are exposed to a global market and different kind of customers. Well-conceived marketing strategy may have positive results in different areas in business; it represents a breeding ground for business ideas. This paper aims to present the impact of social media and the impact that the electronic part, has in the marketing strategy. The paper is based in secondary data through different reports, scientific papers and literature regarding the importance of social media and its tools in the marketing strategy. Business marketing strategy in relation to social media platform and its channels (e-mail, social networks, blogs, etc.). How this type of marketing has affected and improved the business environment and in what form it is expected to effect in the future. The paper concludes that a well-conceived social media marketing strategy will have a great impact in the company’s level of exposure and awareness process, customer loyalty creation and interaction process and in the level of traffic increase.

Dominance, bargaining power and service platform performance

In this paper we study the relationship between a firm (hotel) and a service platform (Ctrip.com). We start with a newsvendor hotel facing two kinds of customers. D-customers order the room directly from the hotel front desk; C-customers order the room through Ctrip.com. Ctrip.com charges the hotel while introducing its members to the hotel. The hotel decides how many rooms are allotted to Ctrip.com to achieve optimal profit. We consider the situation where one party’s demand cannot be observed by another, and study the commonly used wholesale price contract. Interestingly, the contract can always coordinate the system. We then investigate the influence of bargaining power on the profit division under situations where Ctrip.com and hotel, respectively, dominate the system, and find that increasing (or decreasing) a party’s bargaining power without considering the other does not necessarily benefit (or damage) the first party. Further, we discuss how the parties choose dominance and appropriate bargaining power to make a trade-off for better cooperation. An interesting phenomenon is that bargaining power for each party can be identical when any party dominates the system. We also propose a threshold at which the wholesale price contracts can always be the Pareto optimal for the channel.

Service supply chain coordination with platform effort-induced demand

In this study we investigate the effort of a service platform in cooperation with a hotel and its influence on the hotel’s decision about the quantity of reserved rooms. We begin with a newsvendor hotel facing two kinds of customers: D-customers and C-customers. The D-customers order rooms from the hotel’s front desk while the C-customers book rooms through a service platform, i.e., Ctrip.com. The hotel makes decisions about how many rooms to allot to Ctrip.com to achieve optimal profit. Two newsvendor settings are proposed that depict the demands of the two parties independently. We discuss a fixed payment contract and a cost sharing contract and find that the cost sharing contract achieves channel coordination and that the division of profit depends upon the hotel’s payment to Ctrip.com. We then extend our study by taking into consideration the effort Ctrip.com exerts. We verify that a cost sharing contract can achieve channel coordination imperfectly if the idle cost of a vacant reserved room is shared between the hotel and Ctrip.com. Further, given that the cost of effort is shared, the channel is coordinated and a win–win is guaranteed as well if the terms of the new cost sharing contract are properly chosen.

The Return of Public Life. The Teahouse, Urban Citizens, and Socialist State in Post-Mao China

Political transformation since the late 1970s significantly modified economic and public life as the state relaxed control over the private sector in industry and commerce. The resulting development of private business also allowed for the revival of teahouses, which emerged across the landscape like mushrooms after rain, greatly changing the breadth and depth of public life.Teahouses served all kinds of customers across the social spectrum. Post-Mao reforms weakened state control, enriched opportunities for social life, developed cultural diversity, and expanded the public sphere. Teahouses provided gathering places for the sharing of hobbies and general socializing, providing a welcoming environment regardless of social status, class, gender, and age. As both a business and a culture, the teahouse reached an unprecedented level of success and influence.

Using binary logit model to develop the target consumer's differentiation standards for the marketing activities in tea retailers' sales observation method

The purpose of this research is to use binary logit model (BLM) to find out what kind of customer would be interested in certain types of marketingactivities in order to form the standards of sales ...

A Review of DOS Attacks in Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is an emerging trend in the field of IT providing scalable and flexible services to the end users on demand. Cloud offers services in three levels namely infrastructure, platform and software to meet the needs of different kinds of customers. The key cloud characteristics include multitenancy, location and device independence, elasticity, resource pooling and measured service. The IT companies especially the Small and Medium Scale Businesses are moving onto the cloud which enables them to perform high end computational tasks in a cost effective manner. As more and more IT capabilities can be provided as a service in cloud, security becomes a major concern. Among the numerous attacks that can target the cloud environment, DoS or DDoS attacks can cause a major breach in security. This paper discusses the various DDOS attacks and the defense mechanisms that can be employed to secure the cloud.

Equilibrium Mixed Strategies of Customers in an Unobservable Queue with Multiple Vacations

This paper studies and compares the equilibrium mixed strategies of customers with different decision criteria in an unobservable single-server queue with multiple vacations. Arriving customers can’t observe the queue length and the server state, whereas they are informed that the service time is exponentially distributed with unknown parameter, which is either an alternative of two values or belongs to a range. We consider three kinds of customers classified by their different waiting cost functions: linear, quadratic and exponential functions, and find that for the two types of partial information on service time parameter, both the equilibrium threshold expressions of customers’ effective arrival rates based on each criterion are consistent with each other except for the Laplace thresholds.

Integrated Quantitative Analysis of Customer Satisfaction Based on Kano's Model

The satisfaction of customer requirements (CRs) is the objective of product configuration. A methodology Based on the Kano's model was proposed to explore customers' stated needs and unstated desires and to resolve them into different categories which have different impacts on customer satisfactions (CSs). The customer satisfactions are classified into group satisfaction and individual satisfaction, and each of them has three types with Kano theory. Group requirements items were selected frequently by the same kind of customers. Individual requirements were specified by the customer himself. Based on a combination of group satisfactions and individual satisfactions, the integrated satisfaction was determined. A case study is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the presented method.

Critical Participatory Looping: An Agencing Process for Mass Customization in Language Education

Critical Participatory Looping (CPL) (cf. Falout and Murphey 2010; Murphey and Falout 2010) involves returning processed data from surveys or assignments back to students for further reflection and analysis in small groups. CPL affords dialogical interaction among class members (including the teacher), which can encourage them all as agents developing their own self-determination through action—otherwise known as agencing (cf. Murphey 2010, Nelson and Murphey, 2011). In this paper we first describe the kinds of customization that invite agency, then for CPL provide three examples of teaching and researching with it, theorize on its processes and potential, and discuss its correlates with other domains and mass customization.

An emergy-based evaluation of a reverse logistics network for steel recycling

Abstract Efficient implementation of recycling networks requires appropriate logistical structures for managing the reverse flow of materials from users to producers. The steel sheet distributor studied had established a protocol for scrap recovery with the steel plant and its customers. The company invested in producing containers, hiring a specialized labor force and in purchasing trucks for container transportation to implement the logistics network for recycling. That network interconnected the company with two kinds of customers: the ones returning scrap and the ones who preferred to continue business-as-usual. The logistical network was analyzed using emergy synthesis, and the data obtained were used to evaluate and compare the system's environmental costs and benefits from the perspective of the distributor and the steel plant operator. The use of emergy ternary diagrams provided a way to assess recycle strategies to compare the relative economic and environmental benefits of the logistical network implemented. The minimum quantity of scrap that the distributor must recover to improve environmental benefits was determined allowing decision on whether it is worth keeping the system running. The new assessment method proposed also may help policy-makers to create strategies to reward or incentive users of reverse logistics, and help to establish regulations, by decreasing taxes or stimulating innovation, for effectively implement the National Policy on Solid Waste.

La vida social de los precios Evaluaciones monetarias y acción económica en los mercados de la seguridad privada

Based on a study of private security markets in Argentina, this paper discusses the way in which prices are produced, perceived, interpreted and manipulated in the course of economic actions of various actors. My work is based on thirty interviews with leaders of security companies and forty interviews with different kinds of customers of these companies, as well as observations made in twenty companies in the sector and informal exchanges with key informants. In addition, I use materials produced by public institutions, chambers and professional organizations in the field of security, and by the companies themselves. In this paper, I show that prices are negotiated in the course of market transactions and that the actors introduce principles of interaction other than competition to ensure the profitability of their businesses or the quality of the products they buy.