Economic Policy and Desertification in Arid and Semi-arid Developing Countries

Environmental degradation in arid and semi-arid regions often results from trade-offs between immediate and long-term needs. Ecological (and ultimately economic) benefits of restrained, sustainable resource use are well-understood by scientists, and are usually apparent to local farmers and herders as well. However, immediate economic needs often conflict, and excessive exploitation of resources may be necessary to subsistence producers’ survival. Such issues are illustrated in a variety of settings. Solutions to problems containing important economic components require appropriate economic policies, as well as technical action. Long-term sustainable resource utilisation rather than short-term exploitation must be made more attractive to local producers in their daily lives.

Economic Policy and Desertification in Arid and Semi-arid Developing Countries

Environmental degradation in arid and semi-arid regions often results from trade-offs between immediate and long-term needs. Ecological (and ultimately economic) benefits of restrained, sustainable resource use are well-understood by scientists, and are usually apparent to local farmers and herders as well. However, immediate economic needs often conflict, and excessive exploitation of resources may be necessary to subsistence producers’ survival. Such issues are illustrated in a variety of settings. Solutions to problems containing important economic components require appropriate economic policies, as well as technical action. Long-term sustainable resource utilisation rather than short-term exploitation must be made more attractive to local producers in their daily lives

Business-to-Consumer Electronic Commerce Success Factors in Thailand: The Website Merchant Perspectives

Electronic Commerce (E-Commerce) is considered a new channel of distribution that consumers can reach websites at anytime and from anywhere. In reality, however, consumers are not yet confident in on-line transactions. Several Thai website owners who operate business to consumer (B2C) e-commerce stated nine major success factors: government support, security and privacy, customer service, administrative support, online promotion, product uniqueness, logistics, product variety, and image creation. It is necessary that website merchants study various success factors, having impact on achieving business value of e-commerce investment and building customer trust which would then bring long-term profits to the organization

Integrating Service Fairness Into The Post-Acceptance Model Of Is Continuance In Cloud Computing

This study integrates service fairness into a post-acceptance model of information system continuance. This study added constructs based on Greenberg’s (1993) four-component taxonomy of organizational justice. The research model seeks to be useful in predicting satisfaction, which enhances continued usage of an IS. The results show that perceived usefulness and satisfaction influence continuance intention, as the post-acceptance model predicts. Three of the four distinct service fairness dimensions, systemic, configural and interpersonal fairness, significantly enhanced satisfaction. However, the relationship between informational fairness and satisfaction was negative and significant

Internet banking benefits: a qualitative study among Thai Internet Banking Service Providers

Internet banking has become one of the new electronic service delivery channels that banks use in order to improve services they provide to their customers. Internet banking has allowed banks to offer information and services to customers at their convenience, and many Thai banks follow the worldwide trend to implement Internet banking. Information benefits are the major benefits for corporate customers, whereas transaction benefits seem to be less valuable because of concerns about security and reliability on the web. Banks do believe that Internet banking reduces operating costs and assists banks to interact with their customers more efficiently. Hence, when banks decide to use web technology to enhance customer interest and to develop customer relationships, they have to figure out how to create customer value and lower barriers of the web so that they can maintain long-term customer relationships and gain sustainable competitive advantage

Delivery in Online Sales: The Role of Communicating Quality and Price Positions

E-retailing, though growing rapidly, is still a very small proportion of total retail sales. One issue inhibiting sales over the internet is delivery. Many customers are not happy paying what they often perceive to be excessive delivery charges. However, the average customer on the internet is not highly price oriented, so resistance to paying delivery charges may occur because customers do not believe that they are receiving any value for this additional cost. Our research looks at the impact on willingness to pay delivery charges of different price levels and a message informing the customer that the delivery time specified is considered good service by industry standards. This simple message seems to focus customer thinking on value received (better quality service), and lowers resistance to paying delivery charges. Thus, explicit reference to the quality of the delivery service, where companies actually have good delivery, seems to be a useful message to include when customers are considering information about delivery charges

The Impact Of Offshore Manufacturing On Quality Perceptions

As competition in world markets intensifies, moving production offshore has been one key strategy of many firms in industrial countries, including those in Japan and the USA. Some offshore manufacturing is undertaken to ensure market access, as is often the case when firms from one industrial country set up plants in another industrial country. For example, much Japanese manufacturing in the US, and some US manufacturing in Japan, is mainly for market acces

MARKETING IN THE AGRICULTURAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT OF KORDOFAN, SUDAN.

Although Sudan is a country with enormous agricultural potential, agriculture has not prospered over the last two decades and Sudan now finds itself a bankrupt net importer of food. Much of the country's agricultural resource base is found in the rainfed agricultural region of Western Sudan, which includes Kordofan. This study focuses on Kordofan, and reports on data gathered during work for the Western Sudan Agricultural Research Project. Rather than following the production orientation usually employed by economists, it addresses issues related to the role of marketing in agricultural economic development. Marketing in Kordofan, as well as production, is subject to disruption because of climatic variations characteristic of arid and semi-arid regions. Extended annual dry periods and droughts distort price performance for agricultural commodities and cause shifts in marketing channel structure. Risk levels are substantially increased for producers and small traders, while at the same time they must take on increased responsibility for many channel functions. Marketing also suffers from infrastructure deficiencies: roads are often impassable during the rainy season, and storage losses become huge over the course of a year. The private marketing system in Kordofan has adapted to these conditions, and is performing quite effectively, efficiently, and equitably, given the adverse conditions. Competition is extensive, farmers have many alternatives when selling crops, and merchants operate on fairly modest profit margins. A widespread bias against the private sector has led to extensive government intervention into marketing spheres. These policies include direct operation of some marketing channels, manipulation of price structures through artificial exchange rates and price controls, and restrictive licensing practices. Wherever such policies have been applied in Kordofan, they have led to declining production of government controlled crops, they have restricted competition in marketing channels, and they have lowered living standards for producers and consumers. Sudan has not successfully identified areas where private channels in Kordofan cannot solve problems, and which therefore require public intervention. The government seems to have based its economic decisions upon ideological considerations and intervened in areas which it cannot perform as well as the private market

Sultan and Imam: an analysis of economic dualism in Oman

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