Havana Whisky Run

Part of my period of service was spent with the Army Air Forces Air Transport Command. The mission of the Air Transport Command was explained somewhat by its name. We transported anything and practically everything which had to be delivered in a hurry to some place on one of our many battle fronts. Our personnel strength was maintained at a very high level because of the fact that we were called upon to transport almost unlimited amounts of cargo at unscheduled times. Naturally, our entire group was rarely if ever functioning all at the same time, and so there were usually a few of us who were doing nothing but waiting for the next flight. Those periods of waiting were rather dull, and it is about the enlivenment of one of them that I am writing

Marketing in 1985: A View from the Ivory Tower: How will the business environment of 1985 affect competitive marketing strategy?

Inflation and recession, resource shortages, a web of ecological problems, changing social values, a proliferation of business regulations, and other developments of recent years have taken their toll on American business. Such changes in the external environment of business have stimulated academicians and writers for the general media to address questions such as: Can Capitalism Survive: ; Can Marketing Survive? ; Will Shortages Bankrupt the Marketing Concept? Others are directing their efforts to forecasting the uncertain future and the burgeoning discipline of futures research. This article reports on the application of one futures research technique-the solicitation of expert opinion-to the field of marketing. Its purpose is to examine the major dimensions of the future of marketing as seen by marketing education leaders

Supplier Selection and Development: The Relationship between Small Manufacturing Enterprises and Mass Merchandisers

This study examines the results of a program intended to act as a selection tool for mass merchandisers and a development tool for small manufacturers. The evaluation program assessed the management practices and products of potential suppliers. Based on past experience, buyers for mass merchandisers consider small manufacturing enterprises a poor risk as potential suppliers of retail goods. As part of the evaluation process, firms were asked 34 closed-end questions regarding their management practices, and each product was evaluated on 41 specific qualities necessary for the mass merchandising market. Of the 1,690 firms that participated in this project, about 5 percent had their products accepted by a national mass merchandiser. A review of the evaluation data reveals that firms needed high performance in both areas of evaluation to be successful in the marketplace, not just a strong firm or a marketable product. However, each of these areas separately had a statistically significant effect on the success of the product in gaining a retail buyer’s attention

Inventions and Innovations: Does Stage of Development Matter in Assessments of Market Attractiveness?

The purpose of this study is to determine whether market attractiveness is affected by the product\u27s developmental stage-specifically, invention vs. innovation. Two databases were combined for this study to assess prototype or market-ready products (innovations) and ideas submitted by inventors and manufacturers (inventions). On average, invention stage products were more attractive to evaluators than were innovation stage products; however, one critical factor - the ability to create a new venture from the product - was significantly higher for innovations. In addition, overall market readiness was on average more than 10 percent higher for innovation stage products than those at the invention stage. Stepwise regression results indicate that stage of development and new venture likelihood are more critical than other factors in deciding the market viability of a product

P2P lending and outside entrepreneurial finance

Later stage, unlisted SMEs are typically too old to attract equity crowdfunding, one of the two novel sources of outside entrepreneurial finance. The other source is peer-to-peer (P2P) business lending – sometimes called marketplace lending or debt crowdfunding – where unlisted SMEs raise medium term loans from a combination of the crowd of small investors and financial institutions via internet portals. The institutions benefit from the collective wisdom of the crowd while institutional investments reduce information asymmetries for other investors and may lead to herding by the crowd. This paper studies the incremental decision to choose P2P over bank debt by means of probit and logit regressions. It establishes that firms with relatively high credit ratings, smaller assets, lower levels of prior capital expenditures, and low leverage ratios are more likely to raise P2P rather than bank debt. The conclusion is that P2P debt plays a unique role in accommodating the outside entrepreneurial capital needs of these SMEs wanting medium term funding. The empirical work employs a sample 1,249 small, private SMEs that received P2P loans with maturities of up to five years 2013–2015 from Funding Circle, the leading UK P2P business lender

Are chimpanzees really so poor at understanding imperative pointing? Some new data and an alternative view of canine and ape social cognition

There is considerable interest in comparative research on different species’ abilities to respond to human communicative cues such as gaze and pointing. It has been reported that some canines perform significantly better than monkeys and apes on tasks requiring the comprehension of either declarative or imperative pointing and these differences have been attributed to domestication in dogs. Here we tested a sample of chimpanzees on a task requiring comprehension of an imperative request and show that, though there are considerable individual differences, the performance by the apes rival those reported in pet dogs. We suggest that small differences in methodology can have a pronounced influence on performance on these types of tasks. We further suggest that basic differences in subject sampling, subject recruitment and rearing experiences have resulted in a skewed representation of canine abilities compared to those of monkeys and apes