Online Competition Research Articles

Retinopathy Online Challenge: Automatic Detection of Microaneurysms in Digital Color Fundus Photographs

The detection of microaneurysms in digital color fundus photographs is a critical first step in automated screening for diabetic retinopathy (DR), a common complication of diabetes. To accomplish this detection numerous methods have been published in the past but none of these was compared with each other on the same data. In this work we present the results of the first international microaneurysm detection competition, organized in the context of the Retinopathy Online Challenge (ROC), a multiyear online competition for various aspects of DR detection. For this competition, we compare the results of five different methods, produced by five different teams of researchers on the same set of data. The evaluation was performed in a uniform manner using an algorithm presented in this work. The set of data used for the competition consisted of 50 training images with available reference standard and 50 test images where the reference standard was withheld by the organizers (M. Niemeijer, B. van Ginneken, and M. D. Abràmoff). The results obtained on the test data was submitted through a website after which standardized evaluation software was used to determine the performance of each of the methods. A human expert detected microaneurysms in the test set to allow comparison with the performance of the automatic methods. The overall results show that microaneurysm detection is a challenging task for both the automatic methods as well as the human expert. There is room for improvement as the best performing system does not reach the performance of the human expert. The data associated with the ROC microaneurysm detection competition will remain publicly available and the website will continue accepting submissions.

Online campaigning: an opening for the outsiders? An analysis of Finnish parliamentary candidates' websites in the 2003 election campaign

This article examines the campaign websites of the 2003 Finnish parliamentary candidates. By examining candidate-level online competition in the candidate-centred Finnish context, individual-level variables are brought to attention in explaining website uptake and how campaign sites are used by candidates in terms of functions and sophistication. The findings show that the distribution of the candidates' web presence was skewed towards an over-representation of major party candidates. Moreover, in predicting candidate website functions and sophistication, belonging to a major party was a strong predictor. Candidate competitiveness and incumbency were also found to be significant predictors. Nevertheless, the findings in the article indicate that the relevance of these political factors may be less significant than other factors, for example genre effects, in explaining candidate website content and presentation.

E-Banking Diffusion in the Jordanian Banking Services Sector

Grounded in the technology–organization–environment (TOE) framework, we have developed an extended model to examine factors, particularly technological, organizational and environmental factors, which influence e-banking adoption in Jordanian banks. This article added some constructs to (TOE) framework, other factors were excluded. The independent variables are the (technology readiness or competence, bank size, financial resources commitment, IT/Business strategy alignment, adequacy of IT professionals, availability of online revenues, competition intensity or pressure, and regulatory support environment) while e-banking usage constitutes the dependent variable. Our empirical analysis demonstrates several key findings related to the technological, organizational, and environmental aspects of the banks. This article can help further understanding of their role in the adoption of e-banking and examines the impacts of e-banking usage on banks’ performance in terms of sales-services-marketing, internal operations and coordination & communication. This could enable greater e-banking usage that could improve the overall economy.

Effects of consumer online purchase costs on online and traditional retailers

Our research provides a useful framework to help business marketers identify the effect of consumer online purchase costs on firm performances in online and traditional channel competition. A game theory model is developed to determine the optimal strategies for online and traditional retailers. We demonstrate that consumer online purchase costs always have a valuable impact on firm profits, and further show that consumer online purchase costs always have a much more valuable impact on firm profits whenever the traditional retail transaction costs and the product web-fit change. We also find that consumer online purchase costs have a greater impact on the retailer's profits in a Stackelberg competitive system than in a Bertrand competitive system. Based on our results, managerial implications are discussed and probable paths of future research are identified.

Serious gaming and voluntary laparoscopic skills training: A multicenter study

This study assesses the issue of voluntary training of a standardized online competition (serious gaming) between surgical residents. Surgical residents were invited to join a competition on a virtual reality (VR) simulator for laparoscopic motor skills. A final score was calculated based on the task performance of three exercises and was presented to all the participants through an online database on the Internet. The resident with the best score would win a lap-top computer. During three months, 31 individuals from seven hospitals participated (22 surgical residents, 3 surgeons and six interns). A total of 777 scores were logged in the database. In order to out-perform others some participants scheduled themselves voluntarily for additional training. More attempts correlated with higher scores. The serious gaming concept may enhance voluntary skills training. Online data capturing could facilitate monitoring of skills progression in surgical trainees and enhance (VR) simulator validation.

How to Improve Health for All: A Framework

This article describes the conceptual framework that was developed by Ashoka's Full Economic Citizenship initiative for Changemakers' global online competition on How to Improve for All. The Changemakers Innovation Awards series is based on a unique open source format where participants compete by entering the best solutions to pressing social issues while collaborating to advance current initiatives. This first health competition took place in the spring of 2006 and attracted 139 participants from 40 countries whose applications can be viewed on changemakers.net. This framework is meant to serve as a starting point for reflecting on the key challenges to achieving Health for All and developing effective responses. It describes successful innovations used by social entrepreneurs, businesses, and public entities around the world to overcome core barriers related to the availability of health for all. It then highlights the key principles emerging from these innovations.

DIFFERENCES IN AVERAGE PRICES ON THE INTERNET: EVIDENCE FROM THE ONLINE MARKET FOR AIR TRAVEL

I. INTRODUCTION Airlines adopt sophisticated flight-specific pricing strategies, charging dozens of different fares for tickets within the same class (see Borenstein 1989; Borenstein and Rose 1994). While advances in Internet technology have streamlined the information gathering process--making it easier for consumers to identify sites offering the best fares--average ticket prices varied widely in online markets during the late 1990s. For instance, Clemons et al. (2002) examine data from 1997 and observe that the fares for given flights systematically depended on where travelers purchased tickets. They document average price differences as large as 18% for tickets purchased through different online travel agents (OTAs), even after controlling for numerous factors that could affect the fares posted at different OTAs. Have competition and the evolution of the market for online travel information eliminated average price differentials across competing online sites, or are there any systematic differences in the fares obtained through different online travel sites? This question and my analysis are motivated by three important changes in the online market for air travel that have occurred since the late 1990s. First, between 1997 and 2002, there was an 11-fold increase in the use of OTAs; (1) today, 6 in 10 Americans book air travel on the Internet. (2) Second, since 1997, major airlines entered the online market and now directly compete with OTAs; today, travelers can bypass online travel agents altogether and purchase tickets directly from the carriers. Third, in summer 2001, five major airlines (American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, and United Airlines) established a joint venture, Orbitz, joining the crowd in the online market for air travel. One might expect the combined effects of more savvy shoppers and heightened online competition among competing sites to result in significantly lower fare differentials today than in 1997. To address these and related issues, I have assembled two data sets consisting of daily ticket price quotes collected from seven travel Web sites in 2002. The Web sites sampled include relatively new sites developed by individual carriers (both major and small airlines), as well as two of the largest OTAs. One data set tracks daily prices for flights with a fixed (future) departure date, and the other tracks daily prices for tickets satisfying a 60-day advance-purchase requirement. Each data set contains fares quoted at OTAs and carrier Web sites for 28 different pairs of flights between Los Angeles (LA) and New York City (NYC). (3) This permits me to examine whether the average price of a specific flight varies, depending on whether it was quoted directly from the carrier's own site or at one of the competing OTAs. In general, I find that after controlling for ticket availability and other factors that affect ticket prices, there was little systematic difference in the average fares when quotes were available at multiple online sites in 2002. This suggests that the market has evolved considerably since 1997. The parity in average fares observed in the 2002 data may stem in part from the fact that airlines directly compete for online travel dollars today but did not in 1997. Nonetheless, there is evidence that OTAs and carriers charge significantly higher average prices at their sites--ranging from 14.1% to 40.2%--in the absence of competition from other sites for those tickets. These findings are consistent with a growing literature comparing prices across traditional and online markets. Bailey (1998), Lee (1998), Brynjolfsson and Smith (2000), Scholten and Smith (2002), Clay et al. (2001), and Morton et al. (2001) document that the Internet need not eliminate price differences in online and traditional markets. Pan et al. (2003) as well as Baye et al. (2004) make similar points, but they also note that declining differentials are consistent with an evolutionary story regarding the increased competitiveness of the online marketplace over time. …

The Organizational Transformation of Securities Brokerage Firms under Electronic Commerce Environment

Facing formidable pressure from on-line brokerage competition, traditional brokerage firms were forced to transform to maintain their competitive advantages in the securities market. This study investigates the organizational transformation of securities brokerage firms under the EC environment in Taiwan. The findings are: 1. Technology strategy is the most important strategy for brokerage firms to implement online trading; 2. The transformation strategies among the brokerage firms that have different environmental factors are significantly different; 3. The added value product and organizational change strategies have significant impacts on some performance indices; 4. The length of the implementation time for online trading has a significant impact on the transformation performance. Five cases were then studied to understand the brokerage firms' organizational behaviors under the EC environment. The results also validated the relationship obtained from the statistical analysis.

Factors Driving Electronic Commerce Initiative in Malaysian’ Organization

This study is trying to investigate major factors driving e-commerce adoption, and assess the organizational readiness for Malaysian companies operating in FIZ (Free Industrial Zone) in the state of Penang and Kedah. This study used structured questionnaires and a purposive judgmental sampling method in getting responses from IT managers or decision-makers on e-commerce initiative. Dependent variable is the organization readiness level in adopting e-commerce strategy and independent variables are online competitiveness, customer relationship management and value chain management. This study shows that Malaysian companies are lagging in e-commerce initiative compared to companies, but Malaysian companies are on par with European and East Asian companies. It reflects the general views that e-commerce is American Originated technology and companies have an edge in adopting this new and enabling technology to enhance their global competitiveness. The Malaysian companies have been proactively evaluating and embarking on IT projects to enhance their international competitiveness and they are on par with European and East Asian companies in e-commerce initiative. This study shows Online Competitiveness, Customer Relationship Management and Value Chain Management are affecting decision on e- commerce initiative. The results of this research will also serve as an initial feedback to Malaysian authorities to step up their efforts in promoting IT awareness, and adopting new and enabling technologies in Malaysian companies. It is also hoped that this study can provide a guideline for Malaysian companies in evaluating and formulating effective strategies and policies into e-commerce in this information age.

Ringing the Bell on the NYSE: Might a Nonprofit Stock Exchange Have Been Efficient?

This spring the New York Stock Exchange, Inc. (NYSE) completed an historic restructuring. On March 7, 2006, the NYSE completed its merger with Archipelago Holdings Inc. (Archipelago), a publicly traded trading platform. As a result, the old NYSE itself will become the New York Stock Exchange LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of NYSE Group, Inc. (NYSE Group). The former members, or seat holders, of the NYSE will receive one of three forms of consideration: all cash, all stock in NYSE Group, or a package of cash and stock. Then, NYSE Group will allow those former members to offer their shares to the public in a secondary offering.Because the NYSE was a not-for-profit corporation, the merger was also a change in organizational form. The change from nonprofit to for-profit, or demutualization, has mostly been viewed as a long-overdue response to new, on-line competition from electronic communications networks (ECN's). But there has been little assessment of the strengths or efficiencies of the nonprofit form of the exchange. This paper presents the possibility that the NYSE's choice of form was an efficient solution to a classic lemons problem, in which misinformation from bad issuing firms (firms whose shares trade on the exchange) could drive out good issuing firms. We apply a robust theory of nonprofits in which the highest demanding consumers of a nonrival good organize the production of that good. In this case, investment bankers and other financial intermediaries organize to produce liquidity. The resulting nonprofit is the former NYSE, which was able to align issuing firms' incentives to disclose with those of investors. Banker-owners of the NYSE acted as gatekeepers to the exchange, screening issuing firms through an extensive due diligence process, providing capital via underwriting, and connecting issuing firm insiders to one another via initial public offering (IPO) allocations. Over a period of many decades this system maintained an equilibrium in which issuing firms, big and small investors, and exchange members could participate with relative ease, transparency and fairness in the exchange. The shift to a for-profit corporation will have a significant, and potentially deleterious, impact on this equilibrium as it breaks up the longstanding components of the nonprofit system.

The Hidden Dynamics of Print–Online Competition in Classified Advertising Markets

Classified advertisements are an important revenue source for newspaper publishers and they constitute a large share of non‐editorial content, highly valued by readers. By matching supply and demand in the corresponding markets for goods and services, publishers of classified advertisements serve as information brokers increasing transparency and driving market clearance. These days specific online services for each category of classified advertisements promise a far more efficient matching mechanism at a lower price and compete with the incumbent print players. In this article we present an empirical analysis of classified advertisements in the categories of recruitment, real estate and automotive, based on data from Germany. The substitution dynamics hidden by fluctuating overall market developments are derived from a simultaneous fit of the market dependence of advertising space in newspapers and a time‐dependent substitution term. The results show that approximately half of the classified print advert...

A Framework to Accomplish Strategic Cost Management

Currently, economic and technological developments are growing faster in an unprecedented way. The outcome is changing a great deal of concepts, transactions, and increasing competition allover the world. GATT agreement and emerging of large conglomerates extending competition zone to encompass the whole world. In addition, the improvements in information technology, communication means, and production systems open new horizons. The main consequence is to concentrate on quality and attain consumer's satisfaction. To respond, Companies pay a great attention to accomplish strategic cost management in order to overcome tough competition in local, international, and online markets. Traditional cost systems, those concentrate only on measuring and controlling products/services cost, are not sufficient to deal with new economic and technological developments. Therefore, companies shifted to strategic cost management as a powerful tool to attain competitive advantage and to maximize earnings and in short run and in long run as well. Prior research is constrained to develop and evaluate different tools to accomplish strategic cost management. There is no integrated framework to combine those tools and could be accepted from interested researcher in cost/management accounting and strategic management. This study aims to analyze tools of strategic cost management to introduce an integrated framework that could be useful to companies' stakeholder in short run and in long run as well.

Temporal price dispersion: Evidence from an online consumer electronics market

Economic theory indicates that e-retailers competing at price comparison sites, such as Shopper.com, must charge prices that cannot be systematically predicted by their rivals. Consistent with theory, we find significant variation in the identity of the low-price firm as well as the level of the lowest price for 36 of the best-selling consumer electronics products sold at Shopper.com between November 1999 and May 2001.The observed pricing patterns can be explained by firms engaging in short-term price promotions in an attempt to avoid the deleterious outcome associated with price competition. Based on our arguments and the evidence presented, the managerial implications are clear: Strategic unpredictability in prices—through the use of hit and run sales—is a widely used and effective weapon for avoiding all-out price competition in online markets.

Samsung Electronics brings the world cyber games finals to the U.S. for the first time in 2004

More Than One Million Gamers Expected To Participate Worldwide Finals of World's Top Digital Entertainment Event To Be Held This October in San Francisco First Online Qualifying Events In U.S. and Canada "Go Live" May 15 Los Angeles, CA -- San Francisco will be the world's Cyber capital this coming October when Samsung Electronics, a global digital entertainment leader, brings the World Cyber Games (WCG) Grand Final to the U.S. for the first time. The tournament, which has grown into the greatest global festival for gamers and digital entertainment culture, will allow 700 of the world's best gamers from 60 countries to compete for the #1 position at the Bill Graham Civic Auditorium, October 4-10. The announcement was made at the E3 show in Los Angeles. In addition to holding the finals in the U.S., the World Cyber Games 2004 and Samsung are giving more gamers than ever a chance to win $400,000 in prizes via the Internet. For the first time ever, beginning May 15, 2004, an extensive roster of WCG online qualifier events will be held in the U.S. and Canada each month through August. Online competition will include four world renowned games -- Half-Life: Counter-Strike (team-based), Unreal Tournament 2004, Starcraft: Brood War, and Warcraft III: Frozen Throne - and the top 2 players or teams in each game in each country advance directly to the WCG 2004 USA Final and WCG 2004 Canada Final. Casual gamers can also join in the excitement by logging on to play special Samsung-developed Flash games.

E-Markets and Competition

Electronic markets are thought to be perfectly efficient in terms of price levels, price dispersion, menu costs and the number of competitive sellers in the market. Indeed, menu costs and prices are usually lower online, but some empirical studies have found that electronic markets are characterised by high price dispersion and high concentration of market power. The author suggests that because of low costs of searching and acquiring information, small number of sellers and low menu costs electronic markets provide better conditions for tacit collusion. The fact that sellers are able to react to competitors' actions faster than buyers may even foster prices to increase. Tighter online competition forces each seller to differentiate from others by advertising his own brand name. In a static equilibrium an increase of the number of buyers may lead to escalation of advertising expenses and force less efficient sellers out of the market.

Distance Education Library Services in Swaziland

Reports on a study of distance library services at the University of Swaziland. Observes that the user group is young and unemployed. Identifies the access challenges arising from transportation and funding limitations, lack of library and information technology skills, insufficient resources and user support, restrictive policies, poor photocopying, ILL and online search services and competition from on-campus students. Argues that public libraries support distance library services more than the Internet in Swaziland. Recommends a dedicated budget and staffing, relevant user education, liberalization of access policies, provision of more Internet and OPAC terminals, satellite library services and consolidated resource sharing agreements.

An integral framework for information systems security management

Business use of Internet has exposed security as one of the key-factors for successful online competition. Contemporary management of E-business security involves various approaches in different areas, ranging from technology to organizational issues and legislation. These approaches are often isolated, while management of security requires an integrated approach. This article presents an attempt at management of E-business systems security that is based on integrating existing approaches in a balanced way. To foster practical use of the conceptual model in this paper, brief background knowledge in related areas is given.

Patience is a virtue: the effect of slack on competitiveness for admission control

We consider the online competitiveness for scheduling a single resource non-preemptively in order to maximize its utilization. Our work examines this model when parameterizing an instance by a new value which we term the patience. This parameter measures each job's willingness to endure a delay before starting, relative to this same job's processing time. Specifically, the slack of a job is defined as the gap between its release time and the last possible time at which it may be started while still meeting its deadline. We say that a problem instance has patience κ, if each job with length ||J|| has a slack of at least κ ċ ||J||.Without any restrictions placed on the job characteristics, previous lower bounds show that no algorithm, deterministic or randomized, can guarantee a constant bound on the competitiveness of a resulting schedule. Previous researchers have analyzed a problem instance by parameterizing based on the ratio between the longest job's processing time and the shortest job's processing time. Our main contribution is to provide a fine-grained analysis of the problem when simultaneously parameterized by patience and the range of job lengths. We are able to give tight or almost tight bounds on the deterministic competitiveness for all parameter combinations.If viewing the analysis of each parameter individually, our evidence suggests that parameterizing solely on patience provides a richer analysis than parameterizing solely on the ratio of the job lengths. For example, in the special case where all jobs have the same length, we generalize a previous bound of 2 for the deterministic competitiveness with arbitrary slacks, showing that the competitiveness for any κ ≥ 0 is exactly 1 + 1/(⌊κ⌋ + 1). Without any bound on the job lengths, a simple greedy algorithm is (2+ 1/κ)- competitive for any κ > 0. More generally we will find that for any fixed ratio of job lengths, the competitiveness of the problem tends towards 1 as the patience is increased. The converse is not true, as for any fixed κ > 0 we find that the competitiveness is bounded away from 1, no matter what further restrictions are placed on the ratio of job lengths.