Urban quality of life in Istanbul: Priorities and segmentation

The purpose of this paper is to model the desires, expectations and priorities of the inhabitants of Istanbul, a city with a population of about 15 milion, from a multidimensional perspective. In this way, effective allocation of the city's resources can be achieved to improve the quality of life for such a large number of people, which is the primary concern of the local authorities as well as the urban planners. A survey is conducted in Istanbul so that the priorities of the inhabitants are revealed and the city where they would like to live is portrayed. The data obtained are used as input for hierarchical conjoint analysis, a decompositional multivariate data analysis technique frequently used in marketing. The survey is primarily based on the evaluation os hypothetical , orthogonally-designed city profiles for four different constructs and a bridging construcy on a 0-10 rating scale. The relative importance of the constructs and thier attributes are estimated at both the individual and the aggregate level. A segmentation is made on the demographic and social characteristics of the respondents to reflect different classes. The research is an interdisciplinary group work acting as a bridge between urban planning and multiattribute decision mak?ing, thus judgments of experts from different disciplines are used in every stage of the study.

Penalty and reward contracts between a manufacturer and its logistics service provider

Contracts are used to coordinate disparate but interdependent members of the supply chain. Conflicting objectives of these members and lack of coordination among the members lead to inefficiencies in matching supply with demand. This study reviews different types of contracts and proposes a methodology to be used by companies for analyzing coordinating contracts with their business partners. Efficiency of the contract is determined by comparing the performance of independent companies under the contract to the supply chain performance under the central decision maker assumption. We propose a penalty and reward contract between a manufacturer and its logistics service provider that distributes the manufacturer’s products on its retail network. The proposed contract analysis methodology is empirically tested with transportation data of a consumer durable goods company (CDG) and its logistics service provider (LSP). The results of this case study suggest a penalty and reward contract between the CDG and its LSP that improves not only the individual firm’s objective functions but also the supply chain costs. Compared to the existing situation, the coordination efficiency of the penalty and reward contract is 96.1 %, proving that optimizing contract parameters improves coordination and leads to higher efficiencies

Modeling toothpaste brand choice: An empirical comparison of artificial neural networks and multinomial probit model

Copyright @ 2010 Atlantis PressThe purpose of this study is to compare the performances of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) and Multinomial Probit (MNP) approaches in modeling the choice decision within fast moving consumer goods sector. To do this, based on 2597 toothpaste purchases of a panel sample of 404 households, choice models are built and their performances are compared on the 861 purchases of a test sample of 135 households. Results show that ANN's predictions are better while MNP is useful in providing marketing insight

What Turkey expects from logistics outsourcing ?

Copyright @ 2011 Yasar UniversityThe economies of the world have become increasingly interdependent, and organizations have come under tremendous pressure to maximize productivity and profitability. Creating value through outsourcing has emerged as a popular competitive strategy for firms of all sizes in all types of industries. The aim of this research is to investigate the use of third party logistics in Turkish companies from the users’ perspective to identify the types of logistics services outsourced, problems encountered in outsourcing these services, logistics costs, decision makers in outsourcing logistics activities, and information sources used in the decision-making process. A structured survey was selected as the tool for data collection. The field study involved face-to-face interviews with 204 companies out of top 500 companies ranked in terms of turnover that are registered with industrial associations and chambers of commerce in Turkey. Moreover, a decision support system based on Bayesian Causal Map is proposed for 3PLs in order to assist them in their service proposals for different sectors. This study is a first attempt to reveal and compare the outsourcing perception of the companies in different sectors, to expose the firms’ underlying motives as well as the respective importance of these motives for outsourcing logistics activities in Turkey. The use of Bayesian Causal Map based on the survey results provides an important guide to the 3PL providers to pick a suitable strategy and to prioritize their operational activities in different sectors in such a way to achieve a competitive advantage

Analyzing competitiveness of automotive industry through cumulative belief degrees

Copyright @ 2012 The European Mathematical SocietyThis study aims to analyze the automotive industry from competitiveness perspective using a novel cumulative belief degrees (CBD) approach. For this purpose, a mathematical model based on CBD is proposed to quantify the relations among the variables in a system. This model is used to analyze the Turkish Automotive Industry through scenario analysis.This research is supported by SEDEFED (Federation of Industrial Associations), REF (TÜSİAD Sabanci University Competitiveness Forum), and OSD (Automotive Manufacturers Association

Are road transportation investments in line with demand projections? A gravity-based analysis for Turkey

This is the post-print version of the article which has been published and is available at the link below.In this research, an integrated gravity-based model was built, and a scenario analysis was conducted to project the demand levels for routes related to the highway projects suggested in TINA-Turkey. The gravity-based model was used to perform a disaggregated analysis to estimate the demand levels that will occur on the routes which are planned to be improved in specific regions of Turkey from now until 2020. During the scenario development phase for these gravity-based models, the growth rate of Turkey's GDP, as estimated by the World Bank from now until 2017, was used as the baseline scenario. Besides, it is assumed that the gross value added (GVA) of the origin and destination regions of the selected routes will show a pattern similar to GDP growth rates. Based on the estimated GDP values, and the projected GVA growth rates, the demand for each selected route was projected and found that the demand level for some of these road projects is expected to be very low, and hence additional measures would be needed to make these investments worthwhile

Tradable and Nontradable Expenditure and Aggregate Demand for Import in an Emerging Market Economy

The Turkish economy has recently showed a remarkable performance in economic growth. This performance is particularly meaningful because it has occurred just after the worst economic crisis of the economy. Among other factors, the availability of high liquidity in international markets has played an important role in the easy access to foreign savings, and also increased domestic expenditure in the Turkish economy. This paper examines the importance of international liquidity usage in financing domestic aggregate expenditure. In this regard, we divide this expenditure into nontradable and tradable expenditure in terms of their income generation capability in different currencies. Nontradable expenditure generates income in local currency whereas tradable expenditure has the capability to generate income in foreign currency through trade. This division of the domestic expenditure components is particularly important if domestic expenditure is increasingly financed from capital inflow and if the nontradable component in domestic expenditure rises. Since nontradable expenditure creates income in local currency, and as its importance in Turkey has recently become high, the dependency of the economy on foreign exchange earning has also increased. This is shown by estimating the import demand function which includes the effects of disaggregated domestic expenditure. Empirically we found that nontradable expenditure is as crucial as tradable expenditure in generating import demand in the short run. This empirical finding makes us particularly sceptical regarding the positive effects of capital inflows which are closely related to the use of these inflows in tradable economic activities.

Aggregate Imports and Expenditure Components in Turkey: Theoretical and Empirical Assessment

After the economic turmoil in 2001, the Turkish economy quickly recovered, and exhibited distinguished economic performance in successive years without any interruption. This success can be considered as a product of favourable international economic conditions, sound macroeconomic reforms, the beginning of the accession talks with the EU and political stability with a single party government. All these favourable conditions have allowed the Turkish economy to not have experienced any financial restraints in financing this distinguished economic performance. While increased expenditure, particularly in consumption and investment, together with high foreign demand for Turkish production, appear to have played an important role in these growth rates, the economy has begun to experience a large surge in imports and current account deficits in response to an increase in domestic expenditure. The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of macroeconomic components of aggregate expenditure in determining import demand in Turkey. Along with the empirical assessment, the paper also suggests a theoretical model of import demand, which is built upon a utility maximization of a country subject to budget constraints. The empirical model derived as a dynamic form of linear expenditure system was estimated with quarterly data from the Turkish economy for the period of 1987-2006. The results show that consumption and expenditure are two important demand components in determining imports in the long run whereas only the growth rates of consumption and investment are dominant factors in the short run. Public expenditure appeared to have no significant impact on import demand in Turkey.Aggregate Imports, Linear Expenditure System, Turkey, Error-Correction Model

How to improve the innovation level of a country? A Bayesian net approach

This study aims to provide strategic guidelines to policy makers who are developing strategies to improve their country’s innovativeness. In this paper, we claim that innovation cannot be related only to some factors inherent in the environment of a country, nor is it a single entity to be managed without any linkages to the rest of the actors comprising the competitiveness of a country. Hence, a comprehensive study on innovation should cover the interaction between competitiveness indicators and innovation. For this purpose, the innovation performance of 148 countries is analyzed using an integrated cluster analysis and a Bayesian network framework. These countries are first clustered based on the average values of their competitiveness indicators representing 12 pillars and several sub-pillars adopted from the Global Competitiveness Reports of World Economic Forum for the 2009-2012 period. As a result, five appropriate clusters emerge: Leaders, Followers, Runners Up, Developing Ones, and Laggers. A factor analysis is then conducted to reveal the main characteristics of each cluster in terms of competitiveness indicators. Subsequently, a Bayesian network is constructed and sensitivity analyses are performed to reveal important policies for each cluster