Industrial procurement practices of Taiwanese firms in the Chinese market

Communications présentées aux Euro-Asia research Conferences, qui se sont tenues à Nantes et Poitiers (France) respectivement en novembre 1994 et 1995International audienceThis paper analyses the industrial procurement practices of Taiwanese firms in the Chinese market. It is based on data collected during the months of September through December 1995 and covers 95 firms currently doing business in this market. Industrial procurement practices of these firms were studied in New Task buying situations (Robinson, Faris, and Wind, 1967) and relate specifically to the following factors: (a) the role of purchasing managers in the purchase decision process for equipment and component parts, (b) the importance of different functional departments in the decision process, (c) the importance of technical, commercial, and social factors in the choice of a supplier, and (d) the impact of environmental factors such as market structure, economic, technology, and culture on the purchase decision process of buyers

Strategizing and Revenue Creation in Dynamic Paradigms: A Model to Support Revenue Analysis for Mobile Incumbent Telcos

The growth of the Mobile telecommunications business in Italy has largely offset the decrease in revenues coming from fixed telephony. More specifically, we are witnessing a significant growth in data services, mainly driven by connectivity. The competitive landscape is also evolving, thanks to the growing convergence between the markets of Telecommunications, Media and Consumer Electronics. In consideration of the above scenario, this study aims to develop a strategic model in to analyze revenue streams generated by Telcos in the Italian Mobile services segment. This model describes the variation of the main factors influencing income and creates three possible future scenarios (optimistic, pessimistic and expected), affecting these variables in the next 5 years. The goal of the model is to support Telco executives in the identification of any critical areas that may create large gaps in revenue in the coming years and in the formulation of the right strategies

Customer involvement through social media: the cases of some telecommunication firms

This study highlights the contribution of the role of social media in supporting customer involvement for service innovation. It is commonplace that many service firms and processes have characteristics that differ from manufacturing. Analyzing the literature, we note that there are many contributions on innovation in the manufacturing industry while few researches are concentrated on the service industry. Hence, we chose to deepen the analysis on marketing innovation, with specific reference to the involvement of the customer, through social media, in service firms. One of the key aspects of many service activities is the high involvement of the client/customer/user in the production of the final service. Without this coproduction process (i.e. interactivity of service production), the service would have often not been created. This customer involvement, together with the intangibility of many service products, leads service innovation to assume characteristics that are different from those learned by studies on manufacturing innovation. Service innovation is hard to capture in traditional categories like product or process innovation: the coproduction process and the interactions between the service provider and his client originate from so many touch points that it becomes difficult to identify what is the focus of innovation in service firms. Hence, the focus is on the role of innovation in marketing activities in favoring the customer's involvement in the service creation process through web tools, stimulating a closer relationship between the firm and its customers. The study develops into the following steps: we start from the objectives and the definition of the research question through the study of the literature; we try to find some assumptions that can be useful to analyze the selected case studies. Results help us to discuss the analysis and to get to some conclusions