Rethinking Marketing Programs for Emerging Markets

We point to a fundamental inconsistency in the emerging market strategies of multinational firms. On the one hand, they seek billions of new consumers in the emerging markets of China, India, Indonesia, and Latin America; on the other, their marketing programs are scarcely adapted for these markets. The result is low market penetration, low market shares, and poor profitability. These multinationals are trapped by their own devices in gilded cages, serving the affluent few and ignoring the potential of billions of new consumers that attracted them in the first place. In this paper, we propose that, in order to attract billions of new consumers, the marketing programs of multinationals need to be rethought from the ground up. We identify three key factors that characterize emerging markets: (1) low incomes, (2) variability in consumers and infrastructure, and (3) the relative cheapness of labor, which is often substituted for capital. We draw on numerous case studies from around the world to illustrate how to incorporate these realities into marketing programs. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of such an approach for the multinational's core strategic assumptions.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/39704/3/wp320.pd

Finite state verifiers with constant randomness

We give a new characterization of $\mathsf{NL}$ as the class of languages whose members have certificates that can be verified with small error in polynomial time by finite state machines that use a constant number of random bits, as opposed to its conventional description in terms of deterministic logarithmic-space verifiers. It turns out that allowing two-way interaction with the prover does not change the class of verifiable languages, and that no polynomially bounded amount of randomness is useful for constant-memory computers when used as language recognizers, or public-coin verifiers. A corollary of our main result is that the class of outcome problems corresponding to O(log n)-space bounded games of incomplete information where the universal player is allowed a constant number of moves equals NL.Comment: 17 pages. An improved versio

Two-Variable Logic with Two Order Relations

It is shown that the finite satisfiability problem for two-variable logic over structures with one total preorder relation, its induced successor relation, one linear order relation and some further unary relations is EXPSPACE-complete. Actually, EXPSPACE-completeness already holds for structures that do not include the induced successor relation. As a special case, the EXPSPACE upper bound applies to two-variable logic over structures with two linear orders. A further consequence is that satisfiability of two-variable logic over data words with a linear order on positions and a linear order and successor relation on the data is decidable in EXPSPACE. As a complementing result, it is shown that over structures with two total preorder relations as well as over structures with one total preorder and two linear order relations, the finite satisfiability problem for two-variable logic is undecidable

So You Want To Buy A Brand?

A company’s brand portfolio serves as its link to customers and markets, protects it from competitors, and provides it with a degree of channel power. Historically, brand portfolios were built, brand by brand. But in today’s fast-paced and highly competitive marketplace, companies cannot afford to rely solely on brands built from scratch. Consumer preferences change, yesterday’s star brands are today’s dogs, new segments emerge, and established competitors and nimble start-ups are quick to spot and respond to new opportunities. A brand portfolio that does not continually evolve to meet the changing strategic needs of the market risks becoming obsolete. At the same time, building brands has never been more costly, nor more fraught with risk. In response to these challenges, firms are increasingly choosing to acquire brands from other companies. Acquisitions of brands allow firms to respond far more quickly to the needs of an emerging market segment or to a competitive move. Furthermore, buying an established brand is considerably less risky than undertaking the launch of an entirely new brand. But acquiring brands presents its own set of challenges. Not only must the purchased brand have the potential to fulfill the strategic objectives for which it is purchased, but it must also be integrated into the existing portfolio of brands and brand management structures of the acquiring company, and be properly deployed to capture market opportunities. Strategic match, portfolio fit, and effective deployment can mean the difference between success and failure of a brand acquisition. Yet managers tend to underestimate the effort and risk associated with brand acquisition. Brand acquisitions may have a lower rate of failure than new products, but they are not risk- free. We develop a framework to guide managers in assessing potential acquisitions against key success factors. To develop the framework, we have assembled and examined a comprehensive set of brand acquisitions in the food and health and beauty sectors that took place over the past 25 years. We studied key variables that helped us understand how and why brands change hands, as well as the financial consequences of acquisitions that were ultimately deemed to be either successes or failures. We supplement the statistical results with in-depth case studies of brand acquisitions that help illustrate the key lessons.marketing ;

The 2016 EU International Procurement Instrument’s amendments to the 2012 buy European proposal: a retrospective assessment of its prospects

This paper assesses the European Commission’s 2016 Amended Proposal for ‘a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on the access of third-country goods and services to the Union’s internal market in public procurement and procedures supporting negotiations on access of Union goods and services to the public procurement markets of third countries.’ The proposed regulation aims to improve the conditions under which EU businesses can compete for public contracts abroad. It provides the EU with leverage through imposing a price penalty on any tender for an EU procurement which is originating in a country that does not offer the EU ‘reciprocity’ in access to its procurement markets. After introducing the 2016 International Procurement Instrument (IPI) Amended Proposal, the paper examines the legal framework of the Amended Proposal with reference to its evolution from the European Commission’s original 2012 proposed regulation. The analysis then turns to the concept of reciprocity, which serves as the justificatory basis of the Commission’s proposal before assessing the 2016 Amended Proposal’s compatibility with the EU’s commitments under the WTO, including most notably the World Trade Organization’s Government Procurement Agreement (WTO GPA), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (ASCM). This assessment concludes by questioning the compatibility of this proposed regulation with the EU’s obligations under the WTO as well as the objectives of the EU procurement rules, underpinned by Treaty principles

Legal issues of economic disintegration: government procurement and BREXIT

This paper examines some of the European Union (EU) and World Trade Organisation (WTO) legal issues that emerge for the United Kingdom’s (UK) public procurement law and policies following Brexit. It analyses the consequences and sequencing of international negotiations that will now have to take place because the UK has triggered Article 50(2) of the Treaty on the European Union (TEU). For once the UK revokes the European Communities Act 1972, it will no longer be obligated to follow either the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) or the EU Procurement Directives. Nor will the UK be subject to the commitments the EU has signed up to on behalf of the UK in the WTO Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) and in its Regional Trade Agreements (RTAs). After looking at the legal issues concerned with sequencing, the paper moves on to assess the domestic, centrifugal forces that will also impact on the UK’s public procurement law post Brexit. For under the Devolution Settlement of 1998, the competence for public procurement was devolved down to the regions of Scotland, Northern Ireland, England and Wales. The paper postulates that the legal issues of disintegration that have surfaced under Brexit could potentially fragment a coherent UK wide procurement policy, competition and value for money internally; as well as externally towards the WTO GPA, the EU and other regional procurement agreements. The paper puts forward a competition approach to address some of the potentially negative consequences of Brexit undermining value for money, transparency and integration in the UK’s lucrative markets for government procurement. It concludes with the limited hope that the legal and economic issues and challenges since the UK’s referendum on membership of the EU will be a salutatory lesson for all other nations

Using Customer Relationship Trajectories to Segment Customers and Predict Profitability

A central premise of relationship marketing theory is that economic benefits flow fromretaining customers. However, the early research focus on the duration of the relationship may obscure other important aspects of the interactions with the customer that drive profitability. Borrowing from the branding literature, where different types of customer relationships have been described (but not empirically examined), we study the patterns of business customers’ buying behavior, or trajectories that characterize customer-firm relationships over time, and their impact on profitability. We develop a finite mixture model relating customer relationship trajectories to profitability over a three year period. Our analysis yields five segments, or types of customer-firm relationships, for this dataset. We find key determinants of profitability vary across types of customer relationship. Interestingly, in none of these segments does duration predict profitability.marketing ;