Rural buyers' perception about mosquito repellants

Mosquito repellants prevent mosquito bites and prevention of "man-mosquito contact" is a critical factor in transmission and spread of any disease through mosquitoes particularly in rural area. There has been a long standing 'bias' towards rural buyers. The rural markets are considered rigid in the nature but it is not the case in real sense. Marketing to rural buyers is not only a challenge to the marketers but to the manufacturers, communicators, national planners and economists as well. That is why it has been necessary to understand the various aspects of selected rural areas and consumption pattern for such a fast growing market i.e. mosquito repellants and rural buyers’ perception towards such urban products. The present paper aims to find out the factors influencing the purchase decisions of rural buyers for mosquito repellants and to study the perceptions of present and potential rural buyers' of selected mosquito repellant brands.mosquito, repellent, malaria, rural market, buyers

A Review of the Monitoring of Market Power The Possible Roles of TSOs in Monitoring for Market Power Issues in Congested Transmission Systems

The paper surveys the literature and publicly available information on market power monitoring in electricity wholesale markets. After briefly reviewing definitions, strategies and methods of mitigating market power we examine the various methods of detecting market power that have been employed by academics and market monitors/regulators. These techniques include structural and behavioural indices and analysis as well as various simulation approaches. The applications of these tools range from spot market mitigation and congestion management through to long-term market design assessment and merger decisions. Various market-power monitoring units already track market behaviour and produce indices. Our survey shows that these units collect a large amount of data from various market participants and we identify the crucial role of the transmission system operators with their access to dispatch and system information. Easily accessible and comprehensive data supports effective market power monitoring and facilitates market design evaluation. The discretion required for effective market monitoring is facilitated by institutional independence.Electricity, liberalisation, market power, regulation

Defining and identifying the knowledge economy in Scotland: a regional perspective on a global phenomenon

The development and growth of a knowledge economy has become a key policy aim forgovernments in all advanced economies. This is based on recognition that technologicalchange, the swift growth of global communications, and the ease of mobility of capital across national borders has dramatically changed the patterns of international trade and investment. The economic fate of individual nations is now inseparably integrated into the ebb and flow of the global economy. When companies can quickly move capital to those geographical locations which offer the best return, a country's long term prosperity is now heavily dependent on its abilityto retain the essential factors of production that are least mobile. This has led to apremium being placed on the knowledge and skills embodied in a country's labourforce, as it has become a widely accepted view that a country which possesses a high level of knowledge and skills in its workforce will have a competitive advantage overothers with a lower domestic skill base. Knowledge and skills are thought to be thebasis for the development of a knowledge economy

Differentiation and Dynamics of Competitiveness Impacts from the EU ETS

We summarise the main factors that differentiate impacts of the EU ETS on profitability and market share. By examining and sampling a range of sectors, we present some simple metrics and indicators to help judge the nature of potential impacts. We also consider briefly the mitigation response to these impacts by sectors, and how they may evolve over time. The broad conclusion confirms the aggregate findings presented in the existing literature - more participating sectors are likely to profit under the current ETS structure out to 2012 at the cost of a modest loss of market share, but this may not hold for individual companies and regions. The period 2008-12 can assist technology investments and diversification, providing the continuation and basic principles of the EU ETS post-2012 is quickly defined and incentives are in place for sectors to pursue this

Mergers, acquisitions and technological regimes: the European experience over the period 2002-2005

Comparisons by countries and by sectors of mergers and acquisitions have usually been performed in separate fields of research. A first group of studies, focusing on international comparisons, has explored the role of corporate governance systems, investor protection laws and other countries’ regulatory institutions as the main determinants of takeovers around the world. A second group of contributions has attributed a central role to variations in industry composition, documenting that, in each country, mergers occur in waves and within each wave clustering by industry is observed. This paper aims to integrate both perspectives and to make comparisons by countries and by sectors, thus exploring the role of various driving forces on takeover activities. It also intends to consider the specific influence that technological regimes and their innovation patterns may exert in reallocating assets and moving capital among sectors. This will be done by examining the European experience of the last few years (2002-2005). We found that even in countries where transfer of control is a frequent phenomenon, mergers are less frequent in those sectors where innovation is a cumulative process and where takeovers may be a threat to the continuity of accumulation of innovative capabilities.Mergers and Acquisitions, Corporate Governance, Technological Regimes

Service delivery system design: characteristics and contingencies

publication-status: Publishedtypes: ArticleThis is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published in International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Vol. 31 (3), pp.324 – 349. DOI: 10.1108/01443571111111946 "This article is (c) Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear here: https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/. Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited."Purpose: The aim of this paper is to explore and empirically investigate the characteristics and contingencies of service delivery system design. Design/methodology/approach: Informed by the service strategy triad, a single embedded case study was designed to explore empirical data on four target markets, four service concepts, and on the design characteristics of the corresponding four service delivery systems. Data was collected in a market leading organisation in the B2B sector within the power industry. The service delivery systems comprise processes that sell electricity contracts and processes that bill against those contracts. Findings: First, the findings indicate what design characteristics are contingent upon the degree of customisation of the service concept. We show how this contingency has implications for the extents of employee skills, employee discretion, task routineness, automation, and for front office – back office configurations. Second, we challenge the consensus that low customer-contact processes are designed for the purpose of efficiency. Third, our findings contradict Metters and Vargas (2000) who state that it is not possible to have different front office – back office configurations in a single organisation. Research limitations/implications: While there are major interactions between the four service delivery systems supporting each individual service concept, this research does not examine the trade-offs between the various possible designs of these service delivery systems. Practical implications: The study emphasises the importance of considering the complexity of the service offering, the customer relationship strategy, and of taking a process-orientation to address service delivery system design

Expectations and Forward Risk Premium in the Spanish Power Market

To analyse the forward risk premium in the Spanish electricity market, we adopt not only an ex post approach, but also an ex ante. We find that the sign of the ex post forward premium depends on the unexpected variation in demand and on the unexpected variation in the hydro-energy capacity, and that the ex ante forward premium varies with the expected demand in tight market conditions, showing that the participation of forward dealing agents in the Spanish market responds to risk considerations. Moreover, we find support for the implications derived from the Bessembinder & Lemmon (2002) equilibrium model.

Data-Driven Test Cases for Sustainability Assessment of Smart Grid Initiatives in Organized Electricity Markets

The primary aim of this dissertation is to deliver a technique to augment power system test cases with realistic open-source data to represent a deregulated power system. These test cases are intended to be used by power system researchers who require a test case that is capable of performing economic and environmental analysis on a bulk-power level. These test cases are capable of estimating the cost of bulk-energy for economic analysis and harmful greenhouse gas (GHG) and air polluting (AP) emissions for environmental sustainability analysis. These cases are developed for simulations that are intended to be at the transmission level where the independent system operator (ISO) has control. In the second part of this dissertation, an aggregator based demand response (DR) model is studied as-a-service to the bulk-power market, and its economic benefit is estimated using the augmented test cases. The augmentation technique presented in this dissertation has three-layer data over the existing generator information in a test case. The first layer of augmented data replaces the cost functions of the test case generators with functions developed based on the generator offers from a real electricity market. An unsupervised learning technique had to be implemented to classify the market offer data because the identity of the generators is masked to honor a fair market policy. The offer data was converted to cost functions and is sampled statistically such that the test cases represent a similar generator supply curve as the real power system. In addition to the cost functions layer, the test case generator data has an augmented generator fuel-turbine data. This data in a test case will represent the energy sources and generator technology of the system that the test case is intended to emulate. The hourly energy mix of the electricity market is utilized to augment the generator fuel-turbine type of test case generators. Because the number and capacities of test case generators may not represent the real system, assigning one fuel-turbine type to one test case generator will not result in a right energy mix. The augmentation technique creates an additional layer of information for each test case generator which can represent multiple fuel-types. The third layer of augmented data on test cases contains the heat curve and emission information. With all these layers of data, the test case is capable of representing the dynamic cost nature of a deregulated power system and is able to dispatch generators similar to the real power system. PJM interconnection data was chosen to implement the proposed augmentation technique. The marginal cost result from optimal power flow (OPF) is compared with the marginal cost of energy of the PJM interconnection along with the GHG and AP emissions. Smart-grids have opened opportunities for end customers to participate in the power system operation. DR is one of the activities that the end customers can perform to participate in the electricity market. Revenue earned from energy markets has been relatively low compared to DR used for capacity markets and ancillary services. An aggregated DR model participating in the bulk-power market as a service through a pool-based entity called demand response exchange (DRX) is proposed to improve the benefits of DR to the market. The economic benefits to the market entities have been studied using the proposed augmented test cases. The key contributions of this dissertation are: power systems test case generator data for researchers who do not have access to the real power system data, a technique that utilizes only open-source data to develop augmented data for any test case to represent the dispatch of a real power system in terms of cost, and emissions, a DR model capable of improving the revenue for DR participants in the bulk-energy market

PRIORITY MANAGEMENT – A DIRECTION TOWARDS COMPETITIVENESS

In a time when the most of us have to cope with globalization, the key for surpassing the negative effects produced by it, resides in choosing the right strategy. This necessary involves a performance management. Through this paper we propose priority management as an efficient way of thinking about gaining the vital competitive advantage.priority management, the Pareto law, 1-3-6 method, competitiveness, efficiency