Private Label Brand Choice Dynamics Logit model involving demographic and psychographic variables

Research on private label brands started with focus on explaining the choice of private label brands by simple demographics variables which later expanded into work on attitudinal and behavioral characteristics of customers. However, all these studies had never tried to integrate demographic and psychographic variables to achieve a higher explanatory power, even though researchers had suggested that such a combination is likely to have a higher explanatory power. This paper, after a review of literature, identifies the variables for private label brand proneness. This is followed by mathematical explanation which provides the mathematical model using discrete choice modeling. The paper also provides operationalization of integrated model in current Indian retail scenario and concludes with explaining the limitations.

How Can Indian Railways Service the Steel Sector Better?

The focus of this paper is on how Indian Railways can service the steel sector better. The steel sector is a core sector, with railways playing a critical role in its logistics. The paper examines the changing industry structure and brings to light the increased need for transportation, as compared to normal planning processes. Traditionally, crude and finished steel making was done in the same location by big producers having integrated plants. Now the industry has a large number of producers who primarily focus on crude steel making or finished steel making, necessitating the need for transporting crude steel to the finished steel makers. Even within finished steel making, there could be levels of value addition where the output of one finished steel maker could become the input for another. This has implications for the transporters including Indian Railways in formulating their strategies. Further, based on the growth projections of the steel sector and a possible increased share of rail transport, Indian Railways need to strategize for a six fold increase in traffic. This could be upto 1 billion tons of originating traffic by 2019-20. The papers examines the current issues in rail transport for the steel sector and proposes strategies for the way forward under the dimensions of infrastructure, technology and systems.

Brands at Work: The Search for Meaning in Mundane Work

Brand scholarship traditionally resides within the marketing literature and focuses on organizations’ external relationships with customers. However, increasing critical attention in organization studies has focused on the brand in order to understand its impact on the internal dynamics of employment relations in contemporary organizations. Drawing on an ethnography of frontline service work in an IT consultancy call centre, we explore the brand as an internal organizational resource sustaining the process of employee meaning-making activities. Documenting the ‘work of the brand’, we outline what the brand offers both employees and employers and, in doing so, we theorize the brand at work as a connecting mechanism between processes of identity formation/re-formation and regulation. While employees are encouraged to internalize particular brand meanings (in this case prestige, success and quality), we found that they often willingly buy into these intended brand meanings as a palliative to ‘cope’ with mundane work. In this way brand meanings are central to producing a self-disciplining form of employee subjectivity

The global biopharma industry and the rise of Indian drug multinationals: implications for Australian generics policy

This article provides a synopsis of the new dynamics of the global biopharma industry. The emergence of global generics companies with capabilities approximating those of 'big pharma' has accelerated the blurring of boundaries between the innovator and generics sectors. Biotechnology-based products form a large and growing segment of prescription drug markets and regulatory pathways for biogenerics are imminent. Indian biopharma multinationals with large-scale efficient manufacturing plants and growing R&D capabilities are now major suppliers of Active Pharmaceutical Ingredients (APIs) and generic drugs across both developed and developing countries. In response to generic competition, innovator companies employ a range of life cycle management techniques, including the launch of 'authorised generics'. The generics segment in Australia will see high growth rates in coming years but the prospect for local manufacturing is bleak. The availability of cheap generics in international markets has put pressure on Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) pricing arrangements, and a new policy direction was announced in November 2006. Lower generics prices will have a negative impact on some incumbent suppliers but industrial renewal policies for the medicines industry in Australia are better focused on higher value R&D activities and niche manufacturing of sophisticated products

Early Afternoon Concurrent Panel Sessions: Commercial Space Industry Snapshot: Presentation: 2015 Commercial Space Industry Snapshot as seen through the eyes of the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS)

The International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) is a nonprofit independently run annual event, that has taken place these past 11 years, whose speakers capture the growth and diversification of the global commercial space industry in the form of short powerful talks. Hence, it was appropriate that a 2015 snapshot of the commercial space industry should look at this body of experience and knowledge. The key developments, the key players and an accurate state of the industry are hereby presented through the eyes of the ISPCS from this past eleventh symposium that spanned two days and was held in New Mexico. The latest developments include the Lynx, the crewed Dragon, LauncherOne, and the Dream Chaser®

2015 Commercial Space Industry Snapshot as Seen Through the Eyes of the International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS)

The International Symposium for Personal and Commercial Spaceflight (ISPCS) is a nonprofit independently run annual event, that has taken place these past 11 years, whose speakers capture the growth and diversification of the global commercial space industry in the form of short powerful talks. Hence, it was appropriate that a 2015 snapshot of the commercial space industry should look at this body of experience and knowledge. The key developments, the key players and an accurate state of the industry are hereby presented through the eyes of the ISPCS from this past eleventh symposium that spanned two days and was held in New Mexico. The latest developments include the Lynx, the crewed Dragon, LauncherOne, and the Dream Chaser®

Georgia College Celebration of Faculty Scholarship 2016

TThis is the booklet that contains faculty scholarship achievements at Georgia College in 2016.https://kb.gcsu.edu/celebration/1001/thumbnail.jp

Why do commercial companies contribute to open source software?

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link belowMany researchers have pointed out that the opensource movement is an interesting phenomenon that is difficult to explain with conventional economic theories. However, while there is no shortage on research on individuals’ motivation for contributing to opensource, few have investigated the commercial companies’ motivations for doing the same. A case study was conducted at three different companies from the IT service industry, to investigate three possible drivers: sale of complimentary services, innovation and open sourcing (outsourcing). We offer three conclusions. First, we identified three main drivers for contributing to opensource, which are (a) selling complimentary services, (b) building greater innovative capability and (c) cost reduction through open sourcing to an external community. Second, while previous research has documented that the most important driver is selling complimentary services, we found that this picture is too simple. Our evidence points to a broader set of motivations, in the sense that all our cases exhibit combinations of the three drivers. Finally, our findings suggest that there might be a shift in how commercial companies view opensource software. The companies interviewed have all expressed a moral obligation to contribute to open source

Accessing Space: A Catalogue of Process, Equipment and Resources for Commercial Users, 1990

A catalogue is presented which is intended for commercial developers who are considering, or who have in progress, a project involving the microgravity environment of space or remote sensing of the Earth. An orientation is given to commercial space activities along with a current inventory of equipment, apparatus, carriers, vehicles, resources, and services available from NASA, other government agencies and U.S. industry. The information describes the array of resources that commercial users should consider when planning ground or space based developments. Many items listed have flown in space or been tested in labs and aboard aircraft and can be reused, revitalized, or adapted to suit specific requirements. New commercial ventures are encouraged to exploit existing inventory and expertise to the greatest extent possible