Global opportunities for securing overseas retail deposits within the UK banking industry

The UK banking industry is very competitive and banks work hard to keep their existing customers and entice new customers to join their banks. This report will focus on a single global opportunity for a UK bank to secure deposits from overseas customers in order to facilitate its growth strategy. To protect the identity of the bank, it will be referred to as the UK Bank throught this report

Definition, Measurement and Determinants of the Consumer's Willingness to Pay: a Critical Synthesis and Directions for Further Research

Differentiated prices, bundling, Web auctions : firms' pricing practices are evolving. When there is no market or for customised pricing, the willingness-to-pay concept seems to be interesting. This article aims at presenting a synthesis of the marketing research stream relative to willingness to pay. First, a definition of the concept is given and compared to other similar concepts, notably reference price and acceptable price. Then the methods of measurement are presented, compared to those used to measure elasticity and criticized. Furthermore, the research on external determinants of willingness to pay is commented. Finally, numerous directions for further research are proposed.willingness to pay, price elasticity, reference price, acceptable price, conjoint analysis, contingent valuation, Vickrey auctions, BDM lottery, prices

From Business model to Business model portfolio in the european biopharmaceutical industry

At the crossroad of firm's core competencies and of the anticipations of consumers' needs, the business model approach complements corporate and business strategy approaches. Firms combine several business models simultaneously to deliver value to different markets, building a portfolio of business model. For managers, business model and business model portfolio are particularly useful to address customer's needs and organisational capabilities of the firm. They also emphasise how the initial core competency of the firm can be extended or redeployed to increase the rent. Business model portfolio describes the firm's strategy to balance time-to-market, revenue stream, risk and interdependencies. It conceptualises firm diversification within the same industry to generate and capture rents. They finally describe two generic dimensions: core competence extension to enlarge the market and to address additional customers and core competence redeployment to serve similar market with the same core competence.Biopharmaceutical; portfolio; corporate strategy; business strategy; core competence; coherence; value chain

Crowdsourcing as a way to access external knowledge for innovation

This paper focuses on “crowdsourcing” as a significant trend in the new paradigm of open innovation (Chesbrough 2006; Chesbrough & Appleyard 2007). Crowdsourcing conveys the idea of opening the R&D processes to “the crowd” through a web 2.0 infrastructure. Based on two cases studies of crowdsourcing webstartups (Wilogo and CrowdSpirit), the paper aims to build a framework to characterize and interpret the tension between value creation by a community and value capture by a private economic actor. Contributing to the discussions on “hybrid organizational forms” in organizational studies (Bruce & Jordan 2007), the analysis examines how theses new models combine various forms of relationships and exchanges (market or non market). It describes how crowdsourcing conveys new patterns of control, incentives and co-ordination mechanisms.communauté ; crowdsourcing ; innovation ; formes organisationnelles hybrides ; plateforme ; web 2.0

The hope for neglected diseases: R&D incentives

Neglected diseases are neglected because they cannot generate enough return on R&D to pharmaceutical firms. This paper analyzes and compares existing proposals for public intervention in R&D for neglected diseases. Incentives for neglected diseases are comprehensively evaluated based on seventeen selected criteria grouped into four categories: efficiency, feasibility, fairness, and sustainability. Our conclusion is that public-private partnerships coordinated through a centralized service platform have the highest potential to satisfy the criteria for the successful development..neglected diseases, incentives, pharmaceutical R&D, policy analysis

The economics and business models of prescription in the Internet

L'économie de l'Internet a contribué à une ouverture du jeu concurrentiel en dissociant les fonctions physique et informationnelle des activités de distribution. Plus précisément, elle a ouvert la voie à de nouvelles structures de marché en mettant en avant une fonction de prescription clairement distincte des fonctions d'offre d'une part, des fonctions logistiques et de mise à disposition des biens d'autre part. Nous nous attachons ici à montrer que l'analyse des fonctions et modalités de prescription permet de mieux comprendre les modèles d'affaires et les structures concurrentielles à l'œuvre dans l'économie de l'Internet organisées autour de l'articulationde trois marchés : biens primaires, référencement, prescription. Cette modélisation de marchés à prescription contribue à enrichir la compréhension des chaînes de valeur et des relations d'affaires repérables dans l'Internet.prescription;internet

Auctioning Bulk Mobile Messages

The search for enablers of continued growth of SMS traffic, as well asthe take-off of the more diversified MMS message contents, open up forenterprises the potential of bulk use of mobile messaging , instead ofessentially one-by-one use. In parallel, such enterprises or valueadded services needing mobile messaging in bulk - for spot use or foruse over a prescribed period of time - want to minimize totalacquisition costs, from a set of technically approved providers ofmessaging capacity.This leads naturally to the evaluation of auctioning for bulk SMS orMMS messaging capacity, with the intrinsic advantages therein such asreduction in acquisition costs, allocation efficiency, and optimality.The paper shows, with extensive results as evidence from simulationscarried out in the Rotterdam School of Management e-Auction room, howmulti-attribute reverse auctions perform for the enterprise-buyer, aswell as for the messaging capacity-sellers. We compare 1- and 5-roundauctions, to show the learning effect and the benefits thereof to thevarious parties. The sensitivity will be reported to changes in theenterprise's and the capacity providers utilities and prioritiesbetween message attributes (such as price, size, security, anddelivery delay). At the organizational level, the paper also considersalternate organizational deployment schemes and properties for anoff-line or spot bulk messaging capacity market, subject to technicaland regulatory constraints.MMS;EMS;Mobile commerce;SMS;multi-attribute auctions

Two-stage public-private partnership proposal for R&D on neglected diseases

We propose a 2-stage procurement model of public-private partnership to provide better incentives for R&D on neglected diseases. The model combines advance market commitment, subsidized clinical trials, and rewards based on therapeutical contributions of new drugs through a prize screening mechanism. The model is primarily intended to facilitate small firms’ R&D by providing cash flow, rewarding quality of new drugs, and sharing risks and costs of new drugs development, while limiting moral hazards. The model’s advantages include reduction of overpayments, better disclosure of information, provision of production licences, and direct targeting of better quality drugs.neglected diseases, prize screening, pharmaceutical R&D

THE FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT OF THE SMALL AND MEDIUM SIZED COMPANIES IN ROMANIA

The objective of the paper is to identify the possibilities and promotion limits of the financial management in the small and medium sized companies in Romania starting from the concepts expressed in the literature and expressed in the concrete situations in the Romanian economy practice. We have also presented the role of the financial management in small and medium sized companies and the risk management objective of financial management considering that the risk is a fundamental component of a strategic and tactical decision. At the end of the paper we have presented the conclusions stemming from the study, the basic one being that there is a beginning in the promotion and applicability of theoretical elements of financial management in small and medium sized companies in Romania together with the European integration.small and medium sized companies, financial management, investment, risk, economic profitability