Foreign Divestment in E-business: Analysis of foreign market exit of Groupon and Lyyti

E-business is expanding dramatically as more companies are using the Internet to conduct business online. The Internet enables companies to internationalize rapidly and to expand to new markets outside of their home country. However, in recent years a new trend has become evident in the e-business industry: an increasing number of e-business companies is divesting operations from their foreign markets. This research examines the factors that lead to foreign divestment in e-business. The research question is divided into four sub-questions, i.e. what is the role of (1) environmental stability, (2) attractiveness of current operations, (3) strategic fit, and (4) governance issues on foreign divestment in e-business. The chosen research method was a qualitative case study. Lyyti and Groupon were selected as case examples through criterion-based sampling. Both are e-business companies that have divested operations from a foreign market. The empirical data was collected through three semi-structured interviews with key participants in the cases. In addition, in Groupon’s case public data and statements were used to complement the information from the interview. The interview themes derived directly from the theoretical framework of Benito created in 1997. The findings of this research support the validity of Benito’s divestment model in both cases. The strongest factor contributing to the decision to divest foreign operations was found to be ‘Attractiveness of current operations’. In both cases the current operations were not perceived as viable enough to continue. In Lyyti’s case the foreign operations were not financially profitable, whereas in Groupon’s case it was the poor performance of the parent company that led to a reallocation of resources in more promising markets. In addition, strategic considerations and governance issues were found to have an impact on the decision to divest. Environmental stability, however, was only a minor factor explaining foreign divestment decisions. The findings of this research have proved that even within the same industry the factors contributing to foreign divestment are not always the same. Even though there was evidence found for all factors of Benito’s divestment model, the importance of the given factors was found to vary greatly. Based on the findings of this research, four managerial implications can be drawn: (1) the company’s overall performance can be improved by reallocating resources to markets with better potential; (2) if a strategy appears to be bad, it should be changed already at an early stage; (3) a careful pre-investment analysis can help to avoid foreign divestments later on; and (4) a good contact in a foreign country can be the key to successsiirretty Doriast

Evacuation, Hygiene, and Social Policy: The Our Towns Report of 1943.

There has recently been much debate about social policy in Britain during the Second World War. This article takes up Jose Harris's suggestion that historians should look not at large-scale forces, but at ‘those minuscule roots of idiosyncratic private culture’. As a way into the complex amalgam that comprised ideas on social policy in the 1940s, we look in particular at the report on the evacuation of schoolchildren entitled Our towns: a close up, published by the Women's Group on Public Welfare in March 1943. Of course it is undeniable that one report is unrepresentative of all the many surveys that were produced on the evacuation experience. However, the initial wave of evacuation in September 1939 was the most significant, and the Our towns survey, along with a famous leader article in The Economist, has already received some selective attention from historians. Here we subject the survey to a more intensive examination, looking at the backgrounds of its authors, its content, and its reception by various professional groups. The article argues that it was the apparently contradictory nature of the report that explains its powerful appeal – it echoed interwar debates about behaviour and citizenship, but also reflected the ideas that would shape the welfare state in the post-war years

A Normative Classification of Consumer Big Data

The big data phenomenon has transformed every area of life and business. Businesses today rely on the volume, velocity, and variety (3Vs) of data available today in product design, advertisement, sales, and post-sale follow up activities. Communication between the firm and the consumer is personalized using data collected on the consumer to match the consumer’s location, time, and needs. Some marketers argue that this has birth a new era of marketing; transformative marketing, in which the firm’s ability to deliver value and to acquire and maintain long-run competitive advantage determined by the firm’s data resources. In other words, data are the currency of the transformative marketing era. This sentiment is pervasive and has led to massive investments in data in recent years. This dissertation puts forward a classification of consumer big data to aid the firm extract value out of big data despite the 3Vs. The classification also demonstrates how value in a transformative marketing era does not have to be created at the expense of the consumer, but with the consumer. Five conceptual dichotomies are put forward in essay two that are more comprehensive than any other classification of data available in the research. Finally, the third essay investigates how the big data phenomenon affects consumer freedom and emotions. Most people agree that freedom is a fundamental human right, and that business practices should respect consumer freedom. However, research on consumer freedom is scant. Two experiments investigate how the characteristics of data collected on consumers affects consumer perception of decision freedom and satisfaction with value propositions. With the big data phenomenon has come a push toward algorithmic decision making. Consumer’s anxiety toward algorithmic decision making is investigated along with the satisfaction derived from decisions made by third parties that collect data on consumers

Stop the Presses: Can Newspapers Survive in the Digital Age?

(Portion of Introduction) The first amendment of the U.S. Constitution is a powerful piece, giving Americans freedom of speech - and freedom of the press. Interpreting those freedoms and fighting for them in Washington and local and national courts has been a skirmish since the beginning of our country. There are those who just don't want you to know things you are entitled to know. Those who see too many abuses by the media have agreed with journalist A.J. Liebling, who said, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one" (Aug. 25, 2004 Slate.com). But a new challenge - some would say more dangerous than any facing journalism in the past - is threatening our cherished freedom of press. It is called technology. Newspapers are desperately trying to adapt to the explosion of the Internet and the high-tech devices that make communication more widespread and portable. In the balance is our right to freedom of the press. Some would argue with fewer gatekeepers we will have a flood of unfiltered information. Let us decide what is best and what we should know. Just look at 2010's big story: the release by the group WikiLeaks of classified and secret U.S. State Department documents that not only embarrassed our country and others, but proved to be enlightening on how the powerful do business. Internet activist Julian Assange, who runs the international non-profit organization, is in hot water on several fronts. But as Al Tompkins points out in his Poynter Institute piece, "What 2011 holds for investigative reporting": "Imagine a Julian Assange in every state and major city in the U.S.," some investigative reporters see the controversial leaks as a turning point that will lead to "an increase in nonprofit investigative journalism organizations that partner with legacy newsrooms to produce meaningful work" (Jan. 3, 2011 Poynter.org).Master'sCollege of Arts and Sciences: Liberal StudiesUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/117856/1/McMillan.pd

This is not a fairytale : uncertainties faced by unicorn companies

The ‘unicorn’ phenomenon has been changing the startup industry during the past few years in tremendous ways as the amount of these private companies valued over one billion dollars has been increasing rapidly since the term was launched in 2013. As their amount has been increasing, the knowledge about how these unicorn companies’ function has become more comprehensive, and the startup world has come even closer to people. However, big rises do not come without big falls, and that is why this thesis concentrates on identifying the uncertainties and problems these unicorn companies are facing. This study has been created by interviewing experts on the field of startups and unicorns, which leads the reader to find the magic behind the valuation, economical bubbles and many other issues that are affecting unicorn companies in the present world. The private economy has achieved a trend position, which makes the startup industry and its success something people are willing to strive for. The hot question is: which companies survive through all this and what is their secret? In order to offer a full experience of this study, the reader will be taken down the path to understand some basic theories that are related to unicorn companies. Some issues like the Network effect are crucial factors that have been affecting companies becoming unicorns for a long time, and that is why this kind of issues have been covered in this study, too. Also, the relationship between unicorn companies and Born Globals is addressed, and questions like ‘Is a unicorn company always a Born Global?’ are answered during this research. The presentation of these theories brings the reader closer to the topic of finding out what are the exact stumbling blocks unicorns face and possibly, how to avoid them. Take a glance of what you should know about unicorns before considering them to be enormous, unbeatable companies. Find ways to block the trouble while making a startup journey that is aiming high, and keep in mind, that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is not. All of this and the reasons behind it you will learn when opening the cover of this research. Have fun

Snapchat\u27s Gift: Equity Culture in High-Tech Firms

Snap, Inc., the company that owns the platform Snapchat, controbersially offered nonvoting common shares to the public in 2017. This Article asks what it means to invest in Snap or other (mostly technology-based) companies in which common shareholders collectibely have little or no power to influence corporate policy. In particular, why do such investors expect to be compensated? This Article explores the familiar rationales for equity investing, including stock appreciation and dividends, and the logical shortcomings of those rationales in these circumstances. Adopting Henry Manne\u27s two systems approach to corporate affairs through both law and economics, we show that corporation law fails to ensure that corporations return business profits to shareholders. A similar analysis of the market for corporate control concludes that, without shareholder boting, the market for corporate control also fails to ensure a return to shareholders. Shareholders who invest in firms in the absence of legal or market mechanisms to secure a return on their inbestment, howeber, are not irrational. Instead, inbestors rely on cultural understandings of appropriate reciprocity. This Article employs Marcel Mauss\u27s cultural anthropology classic, The Gift, to explain the equity culture in which shareholders invest in Snap and other high-technology firms, and in which such firms operate. This Article concludes by suggesting some ramifications of understanding shareholding, and consequently management, in terms of equity culture. This Article also complements the substantial work of behabioral economics in explaining inbestor choice and organizational behabiors. The field of corporate finance traditionally has been organized around the figure of the rationally self-interested indibidual. Behabioral economics argues that people are not as rational as orthodox corporate finance assumes. This Article argues that people in markets are not as individual as corporate finance assumes

Essays on Marketing Strategies in the Context of Interdependent Consumption

This dissertation consists of two essays in which I study the impact of two interdependent consumer behaviors, fairness concerns and exclusivity seeking, on a companys marketing strategies and profits specifically in a context where it tries to expand its clientele with the objective of generating repeat purchases, for example by running deals on daily deal platforms. In the first essay, I examine the impact of customers fairness concerns on the profitability of a company running promotions on daily deal platforms. With the prevalence of social media and the internet, information about such targeted promotions can become available to all consumers including those who did not have access to the platform and paid a full-price. Conducting a laboratory experiment, I demonstrate that knowledge about targeted promotions often leads to post-promotional fairness concerns among these consumers resulting in an increased tendency to switch providers. Incorporating the results of the experiment in a two-period game-theoretic model I analyze the impact of customers post-promotional fairness concerns on the profits of quality differentiated companies who compete by running targeted promotions. I find that the low quality provider always suffers from consumers sensitivity to unfairness. Contrary, I show that the high quality provider can counterintuitively benefit from consumers fairness concerns as long as its quality advantage is not too large. Furthermore, I analyze how profits are impacted when information about the targeted deals leaks to non-targeted customers who would have bought at the regular price. I find that, counterintuitively, competing firms profits increase with leakage. In the second essay of this dissertation, I start with the observation that many platform members are new customers and are uncertain about the quality of the companys product or service until they consume it. In such a context, I examine a high quality sellers optimal signaling strategy in a market where consumers prefer to purchase a scarce product due to desire for exclusivity or to receive a service in a non-crowded environment due to better experience and service delivery. Utilizing a repeat purchase signaling model I show that, consistent with prior literature, the high quality firm signals its quality by making its product scarce as well as charging a high price when consumers desire for exclusivity is high and cost of quality is great. Contrary, I also find conditions under which the high quality firm counterintuitively makes its product widely available and prices it low to signal its quality. The model may in part explain how high quality sellers market their products or services on daily deal websites