Analysis of the retail survey of products that carry welfare- claims and of non-retailer led assurance schemes whose logos accompany welfare-claims.

This report serves two aims. Firstly, this report contains analysis of the retail audit (sub-deliverable 1.2.2.1) of welfare-friendly food products in the 6 study countries. The report gives the results of an emerging comparative analysis of the ‘market’ for welfare-friendly food products in the 6 study countries. It also outlines ‘non-retailer’ led schemes1 whose products occurred in the study. In this way, an emerging picture of the actual product ranges, that make claims about welfare-friendliness, will be drawn based on fieldwork carried out from November 2004 until April 2005. Also, the report explores how the different legislative and voluntary standards on animal welfare compare across different countries and how these actively advertise their welfare-friendlier component to consumers through food packaging. <br/

Shopbots, Powershopping, Powersales: New Forms of Intermediation in E-Commerce - An Overview -

With the advent and proliferation of the Internet many aspects of business and market activities are changing. New forms of intermediation also called cybermediaries are becoming increasingly important as a coordinator of interaction between buyers and sellers in the electronic market environment. Especially the overwhelming abundance of information offered by the Internet promotes the development of new intermediarie like malls, shopbots, virtual resellers etc. This paper provides a detailed overview of different new forms of cybermediation and illustrates their influence on consumer choice, firm pricing and product differentiation strategies.comparison shopping, cybermediaries, e-commerce, shopbots

Evaluating Pricing Strategy Using e-Commerce Data: Evidence and Estimation Challenges

As Internet-based commerce becomes increasingly widespread, large data sets about the demand for and pricing of a wide variety of products become available. These present exciting new opportunities for empirical economic and business research, but also raise new statistical issues and challenges. In this article, we summarize research that aims to assess the optimality of price discrimination in the software industry using a large e-commerce panel data set gathered from Amazon.com. We describe the key parameters that relate to demand and cost that must be reliably estimated to accomplish this research successfully, and we outline our approach to estimating these parameters. This includes a method for ``reverse engineering'' actual demand levels from the sales ranks reported by Amazon, and approaches to estimating demand elasticity, variable costs and the optimality of pricing choices directly from publicly available e-commerce data. Our analysis raises many new challenges to the reliable statistical analysis of e-commerce data and we conclude with a brief summary of some salient ones.Comment: Published at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/088342306000000187 in the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

PENGARUH PRODUK BUNDLING TERHADAP KEPUTUSAN MENGINAP DI HOTEL BW SUITE BELITUNG : survei terhadap pengambil keputusan produk bundling residential meeting di hotel BW Suite Belitung

Keputusan Menginap merupakan isu utama yang dikaji dalam penelitian di bidang industri pariwisata dan bidang perhotelan. Hotel BW Suite Belitung merupakan hotel bintang empat di Belitung yang memiliki strategi untuk memberikan nilai (value) agar dapat mempengaruhi wisatawan untuk menginap melalui implementasi produk bundling. Penelitian ini, mengkaji bagaimana produk bundling sebagai variabel bebas (X) berpengaruh terhadap keputusan menginap yang menjadi variabel terikatnya (Y), Adapun dimensi pada variabel produk bundling terdiri dari complementarity, product uniqueness, price utility, dan brand attractiveness. Jenis penelitian yang digunakan adalah survei dengan teknik sampel jenuh kepada 115 responden, yaitu pengambil keputusan produk bundling residential meeting di hotel BW Suite Belitung. Teknik Analisis data dan uji hipotesis yang digunakan adalah Path Analysis. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa produk bundling yang terdiri dari complementarity, product uniqueness, price utility, dan brand attractiveness memberikan pengaruh yang signifikan terhadap keputusan menginap. Faktor yang paling mempengaruhi adalah complementarity dan brand attractiveness, dimana Hotel BW Suite Belitung berhasil membuat tamu bisnis memutuskan untuk menginap di Hotel BW Suite Belitung. Faktor yang memberikan pengaruh paling rendah terhadap keputusan menginap adalah price utility, aspek ini perlu ditingkatkan dengan memberikan special rate dengan kualitas produk dan pelayananan yang memuaskan tamu bisnis saat menginap di Hotel BW Suite Belitung;--- The guest decision to stay at one hotel has become the principal issues in many researches in tourism filed and hospitality field. Hotel BW Suite Belitung is one of the four-star hotel in Belitung, which has the strategy to improve the hotel value through product bundling for influencing the guest decision-making process to stay there. Hence, this research analyzed the influence of product bundling to the decision-making to stay at the hotel. The dimention for product bundling as the independent variable is complementary, product uniqueness, price utility, and brand attractiveness. The dependent variable is the decision to stay in the hotel. The types of research used is descriptives verification, and the method used is a survey with total sampling technique. The sample size is therefore, the sample size is 115 decision maker of bundling product residential meeting in Hotel BW Suite Belitung. The data and hypothesis is examined by Path Analysis. The result indicated that the product bundling has consists of complementarity, product uniqueness, price utility, and brand attractiveness had a significant influence on the decision making. The most influential factors is complementarity and brand attractiveness, where the Hotel BW Suite Belitung has successfully made the business guest decide to stay in Hotel BW Suite Belitung. The weakest factors that influence decision to stay is price utility, this aspect needs to be improved by giving special rates on its products and services, which satisfies the business guest the moment they stay at the Hotel BW Suite Belitun

Simulation of logistics in food retailing for freight transportation analysis

The study contributes to fill the gap between freight transportation analysis and logistic research. It describes the model SYNTRADE, a simulation model that reproduces logistic structures in the German food retailing sector. Logistic decisions and their interdependencies are simulated based on heuristics from the field of logistic optimization. The model provides the possibility to analyze changes in logistics and freight transport demand on a company, as well as on an overall sector level

E-logistics of agribusiness organisations

Logistics is one of the most important agribusiness functions due to the idiosyncrasy of food products and the structure of food supply chain. Companies in the food sector typically operate with poor production forecasting, inefficient inventory management, lack of coordination with supply partners. Further, markets are characterised by stern competition, increasing consumer demands and stringent regulation for food quality and safety. Large agribusiness corporations have already turned to e-logistics solutions as a means to sustain competitive advantage and meet consumer demands. There are four types of e-logistics applications: (a) Vertical alliances where supply partners forge long-term strategic alliances based on electronic sharing of critical logistics information such as sales forecasts and inventory volume. Vertical alliances often apply supply chain management (SCM) which is concerned with the relationship between a company and its suppliers and customers. The prime characteristic of SCM is interorganizational coordination: agribusiness companies working jointly with their customers and suppliers to integrate activities along the supply chain to effectively supply food products to customers. E-logistics solutions engender the systematic integration among supply partners by allowing more efficient and automatic information flow. (b) e-tailing, in which retailers give consumers the ability to order food such as groceries from home electronically i.e. using the Internet and the subsequent delivery of those ordered goods at home. (c) Efficient Foodservice Response (EFR), which is a strategy designed to enable foodservice industry to achieve profitable growth by looking at ways to save money for each level of the supply chain by eliminating inefficient practices. EFR provides solutions to common logistics problems, such as transactional inefficiency, inefficient plant scheduling, out-of-stocks, and expedited transportation. (d) Contracting, a means of coordinating procurement of food, beverages and their associated supplies. Many markets and supply chains in agriculture are buyer-driven where the buyers in the market tend to set prices and terms of trade. Those terms can include the use of electronic means of communication to support automatic replenishment of goods, management of supply and inventory. The results of the current applications of e-logistics in food sector are encouraging for Greek agribusiness. Companies need to become aware of and evaluate the value-added by those applications which are a sustainable competitive advantage, optimisation of supply chain flows, and meeting consumer demands and food safety regulations. E-business diffusion has shown that typically first-movers gain a significant competitive advantage and the rest companies either eventually adopt the new systems or see a significant decline in their trading partners and perish. E-logistics solutions typically require huge investments in hardware and software and skilled personnel, which is an overt barrier for most Greek companies. Large companies typically are first-movers but small and medium enterprises (SMEs) need institutional support in order to become aware that e-logistics systems can be fruitful for them as well