Online Competition Research Articles

Big data and competition analysis under Australian competition law: comeback of the structuralist approach?

Abstract Competition assessment in Australia has traditionally been based on an evaluation of the market structure relying on five factors, namely the degree of market concentration, the height of barriers to entry, the extent of product differentiation, the extent of vertical integration, and the nature of arrangements between firms. These factors, known as the ‘QCMA factors’, are characteristic of competition in the manufacturing industries of the ‘old economy’. Since the ascendancy of Chicago and Post-Chicago School thinking competition analysis in Australia has also taken into consideration non-structural factors. However, in light of the dominance of big tech companies in online markets, the so-called ‘Neo-Brandeisian School’ has advocated focusing on structural elements that are characteristic of online markets. This article examines to what extent the QCMA factors still a suitable structural framework for the assessment of competition in online markets.

Impact of Online Music Competitions on the Young Musicians’ Professional Skills and Their Musical Development During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Classical music competitions present a medium for the development and motivation of young musicians. In this context, they prepare young musicians to professional life and play an important role in their career. Online competitions became more popular due to the Covid-19 pandemic with an increasing number of high professional quality applicants. This research aims to focus on the impact of online music competitions on the young musicians’ professional skills and their musical development. The research will set forth the differences between online competitions and real life competitions from various aspects such as application process, video presentations, and efficiency of the young musicians in using available technology, jury formation, evaluation of the applicants' performances by the jury as well as the applicants' evaluation of their own performance among other applicants.

Guitar movement in Ukraine at the beginning of the XXIst century

The article studies the development of guitar art in Ukraine at the beginning of the XXIst century. This topic is virtually not researched in domestic musicology. All the research is primarily devoted to pan-European trends or regional school. For the first time, this study analyzes various aspects of the activity of the Guitarists Association of the NUMU (National All-Ukrainian Music Union) presenting historical material on the formation of guitar art in Ukraine, and information on outstanding musicians of the past. Factual material on the history of the National All-Ukrainian Music Union and the Association of Guitarists as its creative center has been gathered. The article traces the development of the guitar movement in Ukraine at the beginning of the new century from the First All-Ukrainian Festival-Competition of Guitar Art of Valery Petrenko to the presentday events. It emphasizes ways of development of competitive activity, the case of Oleg Stefaniuk Open Competition of Music Masters (2019), online competitions of performers "Guitar Play" and competition "Compoguitar". The only specialized magazine Guitar in Ukraine, published regularly since 2008, facilitates the promotion of the guitar art. Hence, the active and diverse activities of Guitarists Association of the NUMU have significantly contributed to the development of Ukrainian guitar art in the performing and academic-pedagogical aspect.

Health disinformation & social media: The crucial role of information hygiene in mitigating conspiracy theory and infodemics.

Social media has been an effective vector for spreading disinformation about medicine and science. Informational hygiene can reduce the severity of falsehoods about health.

Digital Humanities: Community Participation in the Balinese Language Digital Dictionary

In recent years, the capability of Balinese people to write and speak their mother tongue has declined significantly among the younger generations because of the growing influence and adoption of the national language, Bahasa Indonesia. It has spread rapidly among Balinese youth because it is considerably more straightforward than the Balinese language and is free of caste regulations. In this paper, we present the details of our digital humanities preservation research dealing with the Balinese language. We utilize community-based crowdsourcing to participate in expanding and enriching the BASABali Wiki digital dictionary in the form of an online competition. Ninety-six participants in 24 groups participated in our study, and their contribution populated 2686 new unique sentences to the BASABali Wiki digital dictionary. We also discuss the procedures employed to evaluate the digital dictionary: to receive feedback on the digital dictionary system and our approach to acquiring the knowledge of the community.

Building Community Knowledge In Online Competitions

Knowledge building is a prevalent feature in open online systems, but it is challenging to motivate participants to contribute and to maintain quality in the participants' contributions. Open online competitions, where participants compete for prizes with knowledge artifacts, offer a potential design model for online systems to incentivize community knowledge building activities. However, while there is evidence that participants contribute to public knowledge and share it during competitions, it remains unclear how and why they do so. In this study, through interviews with 14 participants in Kaggle Competitions, we investigate participants' motivation, practices, and challenges when contributing to community knowledge under a competitive structure. We find that competitive mechanisms impact expert and beginner participants very differently in their public knowledge building behaviors. Experts contribute to shared knowledge in order to compete for reputation, while they tend to form their own niches and only share knowledge artifacts that are abstract and not usable by less experienced participants. Beginners are often driven away from contributing to shared knowledge because of their vulnerable social image. We leverage Scardamalia's framework for Knowledge Building Communities to discuss the different challenges and opportunities that competitive design brings to expert and beginner participants. We offer design implications for effectively implementing competitive mechanisms that could benefit both expert and beginner participants in future knowledge building systems.

Seven deadly sins of tech?

There is currently a great deal of interest in online competition, particularly involving large tech firms such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (a group commonly known as “GAFAM”). In this essay I examine several issues involving these firms that have often come up both in the popular press and academic discussions. The goal of this paper is to examine the facts about the alleged seven deadly sins of tech: competition, innovation, acquisitions, entry, switching costs, entry barriers, and size. I argue that when you look at the facts, it is clear that competition among tech firms is working well, and this has yielded many positive outcomes for consumers and the economy as a whole.

Seven Deadly Sins of Tech?

There is currently a great deal of interest in online competition, particularly involving large tech firms such as Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft (a group commonly known as “GAFAM”). In this essay I examine several issues involving these firms that have often come up both in the popular press and academic discussions. The goal of this paper is to examine the facts about the alleged seven deadly sins of tech: competition, innovation, acquisitions, entry, switching costs, entry barriers, and size. I argue that when you look at the facts, it is clear that competition among tech firms is working well, and this has yielded many positive outcomes for consumers and the economy as a whole.

СУЧАСНИЙ ПОГЛЯД НА ЗАСТОСУВАННЯ ІНФОРМАЦІЙНОКОМУНІКАЦІЙНИХ ТЕХНОЛОГІЙ У ПРОФЕСІЙНІЙ ПІДГОТОВЦІ МАЙБУТНІХ МАГІСТРІВ ФІЗИЧНОЇ КУЛЬТУРИ І СПОРТУ

The article considers the application of information and communication technologies in the professional training of future of physical training and sports masters in modern conditions. It is noted that informatization of higher education is one of the most important means of improving the quality of training. The main parameters for the classification of information and communication technologies used in the masters’ training are determined. The main distinctive features of e-learning and distance learning are analyzed. The purpose of the study is the application of information and communication technologies in the training of future physical training and sports masters in terms of modernity. Theoretical analysis of scientific and methodological literature on certain issues, data comparison and generalization, comparison of different views on the research problem is used. Information and communication technologies used in the training of future PT and sports masters are: text editors, Power Point presentations, spreadsheets, online tests, Internet resources, training programs, multimedia dictionaries, electronic textbooks, distance learning, online competitions and contests, student research papers. The main directions that require additional research on the application of interactive learning technologies based on information tools are summarized. Information and communication technologies can significantly increase the efficiency of the educational process, solve the tasks set before the education institution to educate a comprehensively developed, creatively free personality. The analysis of scientific and pedagogical literature on the research problem shows that in modern conditions of educational development the interest of scientists in information technologies, their didactic potential and possibilities of application in the field of physical education and sports is being growing.

A REVIEW OF THE IMPACT OF GOOGLE CODE-IN ON OSGEO

Abstract. Many open source software communities rely on volunteer contributors and it is important to motivate, engage and retain members of the community to ensure long term sustainability of the community and software. Barrier to entry can be a problem for new developers and can stop them from contributing to large projects. It is important to mentor and guide new volunteers in an open source project and organisation such as OSGeo. The question is then raised how can open source organizations bridge this gap and bring younger developers into the organizations and ensure that they remain, in order to contribute something meaningful? OSGeo participated for a third time in Google Code-in (GCI). Google Code-in is an online competition that introduces teenagers (13–17 years) to open source development over the course of seven weeks. In the 2019 Google Code-in, there were 29 participating open source organisations, over 3000 students from more than 75 countries that completed 13 000+ tasks. During GCI, OSGeo had the lowest number of mentors in its three years of the competition but its highest number of completed tasks. Many of the submissions from the students was of a high standard and some of the task submissions got accepted into the projects. Having new developers in any open source community is key to the survival of the community and retaining them is also key to the longevity of any of the projects and it gives them time to contribute something meaningful.

Two Cheers for Higher Education: Why American Universities Are Stronger Than Ever—and How to Meet the Challenges They Face

Two Cheers for Higher Education: Why American Universities Are Stronger Than Ever—and How to Meet the Challenges They Face

Modern dance commodification strategy in tourism promotion (Study on the modern dance community in Kupang city)

Purpose: This study aimed to describe the modern dance commodification strategy in promoting cultural tourism in East Nusa Tenggara Province. Research methodology: The research method used in this research is a qualitative method. Respondents used in this study were 15 people. Data processing was performed using a SWOT analysis. Results: According to the analysis results, the most appropriate strategy for the modern dance community in developing cultural tourism in East Nusa Tenggara is to work together with various parties, create online competitions, innovate with culture, and organize independent events by the dancer community. Limitations: This study only discusses the strategy of the commodification of modern dance in tourism promotion in East Nusa Tenggara. Contribution: This research can become scientific information for students specifically studying tourism. Keywords: Modern dance commodification, Tourism promotion

Big Data and Competition Analysis Under Australian Competition Law: Comeback of the Structuralist Approach?

Competition assessment in Australia has traditionally been based on an evaluation of the market structure relying on five factors, namely the degree of market concentration, the height of barriers to entry, the extent of product differentiation, the extent of vertical integration, and the nature of arrangement between firms. These factors, known as the ‘QCMA factors’, are characteristic of competition in the manufacturing industries of the ‘old economy’. Since the ascendancy of Chicago and Post-Chicago School thinking competition analysis in Australia has also taken into consideration non-structural factors. However, in light of the dominance of big tech companies in online markets, the so-called ‘Neo-Brandeisian School’ has advocated focusing on structural elements that are characteristic of online markets. This article examines to what extent the QCMA factors still a suitable structural framework for the assessment of competition in online markets.

Context-dependent preferences and retailing: Vertical restraints on internet sales

We provide an explanation for a frequently observed vertical restraint in e-commerce, namely that brand manufacturers partially or completely prohibit that retailers distribute their high-quality products over the internet. We assume that a consumer has context-dependent preferences in the sense that he overvalues a product attribute – quality or price – that stands out in the choice set. Our analysis reveals the following: If online competition determines the margin a retailer can charge at his brick-and-mortar store, he has no incentive to draw consumers’ attention to a product’s high quality. If however, the high-quality branded good is not available online, a retailer can charge a significant markup on it and this markup is higher if consumers focus on quality rather than price. Thus, a ban on online sales aligns a retailer’s incentive with the brand manufacturer’s interest to highlight its relative advantage, quality, and allows the manufacturer to charge a higher wholesale price. Consumer welfare and total welfare, however, are higher if distribution systems that prohibit internet sales are forbidden.

The online competition between pro- and anti-vaccination views.

Distrust in scientific expertise1-14 is dangerous. Opposition to vaccination with a future vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the causal agent of COVID-19, for example, could amplify outbreaks2-4, as happened for measles in 20195,6. Homemade remedies7,8 and falsehoods are being shared widely on the Internet, as well as dismissals of expert advice9-11. There is a lack of understanding about how this distrust evolves at the system level13,14. Here we provide a map of the contention surrounding vaccines that has emerged from the global pool of around three billion Facebook users. Its core reveals a multi-sided landscape of unprecedented intricacy that involves nearly 100million individuals partitioned into highly dynamic, interconnected clusters across cities, countries, continents and languages. Although smaller in overall size, anti-vaccination clusters manage to become highly entangled with undecided clusters in the main online network, whereas pro-vaccination clusters are more peripheral. Our theoretical framework reproduces the recent explosive growth in anti-vaccination views, and predicts that these views will dominate in a decade. Insights provided by this framework can inform new policies and approaches to interrupt this shift to negative views. Our results challenge the conventional thinking about undecided individuals in issues of contention surrounding health, shed light on other issues of contention such as climate change11, and highlight the key role of network cluster dynamics in multi-species ecologies15.

Competition between whole-word and decomposed representations of English prefixed words

English aspiration is influenced by word structure: in general, a voiceless stop following s is unaspirated (des[t]royed), but it can be aspirated if a prefix-stem boundary intervenes (dis[th]rusts) (Baker et al. 2007). In a production study of 110 words prefixed with dis- or mis-, we show that even in prefixed words, there is variation (dis[k]laimers ∼ dis[kh]laimers), and that aspiration in such words is correlated with word and stem frequency. The more frequent the word, the less likely aspiration, but the more frequent the stem, the more likely aspiration. This contrasting frequency effect is characteristic of the type of competition Hay posits between whole-word lexical access and morphologically decomposed lexical access (Hay 2003): frequent words will tend to be accessed as wholes (and therefore behave as though there is no prefix-stem boundary), but frequent stems will encourage decomposed, prefix + stem access. In order to test whether there is active online competition, as opposed to simply frequency effects that are somehow lexicalized, we also conduct a priming experiment. We find that exposing participants to other prefixed words encourages them to aspirate target words, as compared to when they have been exposed to similar but non-prefixed words. These results provide evidence for active online competition.

Therapeutic servicescapes: Restorative and relational resources in service settings

This article introduces the concept of ‘therapeutic servicescapes’ to the retailing and services discipline. In the health literature, therapeutic landscapes emerge when physical and social conditions in a geographically bounded space combine to produce an atmosphere that is conducive to human well-being. Traditionally, therapeutic landscapes have been associated with natural and leisure settings, such as parks, green spaces, and beaches. This work breaks new ground in the marketing domain by linking therapeutic landscapes to commercial retail establishments. This study empirically demonstrates the extent to which physical and social conditions may combine in a customer-centric grocery store to positively enhance customers' well-being and promote feelings of attachment to the establishment. Furthermore, this study reveals that customers' future behavioral intention are driven by the store's impact on their well-being and their desire to maintain ‘place attachment.’ From a managerial perspective, this work recommends that retail and consumer service organizations facing online competition focus on creating architectural and human resource conditions that promote consumer well-being and place attachment.

The role of competition and timeframes: A commentary on Ambridge (2020)

Ambridge argues persuasively for the importance in language learning of a rich database of input exemplars. However, a fuller account must also consider the importance of on-line and developmental competition between rote exemplar-based storage and emergent patterns that can optimize retrieval.

Frontline Employees' Acceptance of and Resistance to Service Robots in Stationary Retail - An Exploratory Interview Study

Due to rising online competition, increasing cost pressure and cross-channel customer journeys, stationary retail has tried to develop innovative value propositions and co-create value with customers through new technologies, which are expected to profoundly change the stationary retail’s service systems. Among other technologies, service robots are said to have the potential to revitalise interactive value creation in stationary retail. However, the integration of such technologies poses new challenges. Prior research has looked at customers’ acceptance of service robots in stationary retail settings, but few studies have explored their counterparts – the frontline employees’ (FLEs) perspective. Yet, FLEs’ acceptance of service robots is crucial to implement service robots for retail innovation. To explore FLEs’ acceptance of and resistance to service robots, a qualitative exploratory interview study is conducted. It identifies decisive aspects, amongst others loss of status or role incongruency. The findings extend prior studies on technology acceptance and resistance and reveal i.a. that FLEs perceive service robots as both a threat and potential support. Moreover, they feel hardly involved in the co-creation of use cases for a service robot, although they are willing to contribute.

Strategically Engaging with China's Relational Digital Ecosystem

Western firms are recognizing that digitization is transforming the way business is conducted in China, the world’s largest online market, just as much if not more than in their home markets. However, the importance of what we call the “Relational Digital Ecosystem” – a fundamental determinant of online competition in China – remains overlooked by many Western firms. By applying the concept of the Relational Digital Ecosystem to understand the workings of the “wanghong” economy in China – a sweeping recent digital phenomenon still largely unheard of in the West – we illustrate how digital competition is different in China than in the West. We then discuss how Western firms can respond to this ecosystem by more strategically engaging Chinese consumers in five ways.