Barriers to Entry

Entry of firms into a market is an important economic mechanism that influences industry dynamics and contributes to allocative and dynamic efficiency. However, there are barriers that can prevent companies from entering a market, hampering the competitive process. Therefore, it is clear that barriers to entry are an important issue in competition policy. In this report, we studied a number of 37 different barriers with a special focus on the possible size effect of the barrier, the sustainability of the barrier, the way it can be measured and the relation with other barriers to entry.

On the Economics of Innovation Projects Product Experimentation in the Music Industry

The paper is conceptual, combining project and economic organization literatures in order to explain the organization and management of market-based projects. It dedicates particular focus to projects set up in order to facilitate product innovation through experimentation. It investigates the internal vs. market economies of scale and scope related to projects, as well as the issues of governance, planning and coordination related to reaping such economies. Incorporating transaction cost perspectives as well as considerations of labour markets, the paper explains the management of market-organized innovation projects by virtue of localized project ecologies and local labour markets of leaders and boundary spanners. It illustrates its arguments with a case study of the Recorded Music industry.Project management, product innovation

An e-Business Model Ontology for Modeling e-Business

After explaining why business executives and academics should consider thinking about a rigorous approach to e-business models, we introduce a new e-Business Model Ontology. Using the concept of business models can help companies understand, communicate and share, change, measure, simulate and learn more about the different aspects of e-business in their firm. The generic e-Business Model Ontology (a rigorous definition of the e-business issues and their interdependencies in a company’s business model), which we outline in this paper is the foundation for the development of various useful tools for e-business management and IS Requirements Engineering. The e-Business Model Ontology is based on an extensive literature review and describes the logic of a “business system” for creating value in the Internet era. It is composed of four main pillars, which are Product Innovation, Infrastructure Management, Customer Relationship and Financial Aspects. These elements are then further decomposed.e-business models, ontology, e-business, strategy

Sunk costs and the dynamics of creative industries

This chapter examines the long-run evolution of modern entertainment industries such as the film and music industries. It investigates ways to conceptualise and quantify the subsequent waves of creative destruction, and investigates specifically how sunk costs affect the evolution of the industry through its interaction with variety, market integration, product differentiation and price discrimination, and how old entertainment formats almost never became extinct. It finds that within this framework, four economic tendencies shaped the entertainment industries evolution: first, endogenous sunk costs often led to a competitive escalation of production expenditures, which we call ‘quality races’, which increased industrial concentration. Second, the fact that marginal revenues largely equalled marginal profits led to extreme vertical integration through ownership or revenue-sharing contracts, as well as to an oversupply of variety and a dual market structure with high-concept blockbuster products and low-budget niche products. Third, entertainment’s public good characteristics led to substantial income inequality among creative inputs and business models optimising exclusion possibilities in the value chain. Finally, the project-based character of entertainment production implied large intra- and inter-industry agglomeration benefits and often led to geographical concentration. Dynamic product differentiation allowed various old formats to survive the waves of creative destruction, albeit in much smaller incarnations

The Role of the Mangement Sciences in Research on Personalization

We present a review of research studies that deal with personalization. We synthesize current knowledge about these areas, and identify issues that we envision will be of interest to researchers working in the management sciences. We take an interdisciplinary approach that spans the areas of economics, marketing, information technology, and operations. We present an overarching framework for personalization that allows us to identify key players in the personalization process, as well as, the key stages of personalization. The framework enables us to examine the strategic role of personalization in the interactions between a firm and other key players in the firm's value system. We review extant literature in the strategic behavior of firms, and discuss opportunities for analytical and empirical research in this regard. Next, we examine how a firm can learn a customer's preferences, which is one of the key components of the personalization process. We use a utility-based approach to formalize such preference functions, and to understand how these preference functions could be learnt based on a customer's interactions with a firm. We identify well-established techniques in management sciences that can be gainfully employed in future research on personalization.CRM, Persoanlization, Marketing, e-commerce,

eEnabled internet distribution for small and medium sized hotels: the case of hospitality SMEs in Athens

Advances in information and communications technologies (ICTs) have strategic implications for a wide range of industries. Tourism and hospitality have dramatically changed by the ICTs and the Internet and gradually emerge as the leading industry on online expenditure. The Internet revolutionised traditional distribution models, enabled new entries propelled both disintermediation and reintermediation and altered the sources of competitive advantage. This paper explores the strategic implications of ICTs and the perceived advantages and disadvantages of Internet distribution for small and medium-sized hospitality enterprises (SMEs). Primary research in Athens hotels demonstrates the effects of the Internet and ICTs for secondary markets, where there is lower penetration and ICT adoption. Interviews and questionnaires identified a number of strategies in order to optimise distribution. The analysis illustrates the strategic role of ICTs and the Internet for hospitality organisations and Small and Medium-sized organisations in general. Most hotels employ a distribution mix that determines the level and employment of the Internet. The paper demonstrates that only organisations that use ICTs strategically will be able to develop their electronic distribution and achieve competitive advantages in the future

Sustainable Competitive Advantage Through Servitization: An Investigation Into Servitization Strategy In the Real Estate Development Sector

Achieving sustainable competitive advantage, based upon services provision, is often claimed to be viable for businesses. There has, however, been little evidence captured on the application of aspects of servitization within the real estate development. By applying the RVB theory, the research propositions of this study include understanding how superior performance is driven from organization capabilities and how different organizations develop and position those capabilities to gain competitive advantage. This research was conducted using an exploratory research and in-depth case study. The study suggests that more strategic alignment between servitization decisions and operations management is required to create competitive advantage

Dynamic pricing models for electronic business

Dynamic pricing is the dynamic adjustment of prices to consumers depending upon the value these customers attribute to a product or service. Today’s digital economy is ready for dynamic pricing; however recent research has shown that the prices will have to be adjusted in fairly sophisticated ways, based on sound mathematical models, to derive the benefits of dynamic pricing. This article attempts to survey different models that have been used in dynamic pricing. We first motivate dynamic pricing and present underlying concepts, with several examples, and explain conditions under which dynamic pricing is likely to succeed. We then bring out the role of models in computing dynamic prices. The models surveyed include inventory-based models, data-driven models, auctions, and machine learning. We present a detailed example of an e-business market to show the use of reinforcement learning in dynamic pricing

The Interorganizational Dynamics of Brand Alliances.

The objective of the research is to put in evidence the interorganizational dynamics of brand alliances. More specifically the aim of the paper is to identify the business-to-business interactions within brand alliances through the governance adaptations that occur during a period of time. We show that these governance adaptations result from external (competitive pressure, value perception by consumers and customers) as well as internal forces (objectives and expectations of the partners, network positions, resources of the partners). Consequently the level of stability in the long run of brand alliances can be linked to organizational factors. To do our demonstration we propose an analytical framework that combines IMP concepts with theoretical works on dynamics of strategic alliances. The methodology follows the case study approach, with an empirical application to two examples of brand alliances: a certification brand with a banana brand on the Fair Trade market, and an association brand with a processed pork brand on the health food market.Relations interorganisationnelles; Gouvernance d'entreprise; Marque; Value; Brand Alliances;