摘要 :
Retail expansion is led by multistore firms, which often mix two organizational forms: franchised and company-owned outlets ("franchising decisions"). The authors examine whether strategic considerations in entry and expansion pla...
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Retail expansion is led by multistore firms, which often mix two organizational forms: franchised and company-owned outlets ("franchising decisions"). The authors examine whether strategic considerations in entry and expansion play a role in organizational-form decisions (e.g., franchising) in retailing. The authors utilize store count and revenues for franchised and company-owned outlets of nationwide convenience store chains in 47 geographical markets in Japan between 1984 and 2010. The empirical analyses show that strategic considerations in entry and expansion, ignored in the literature on franchising, appear to influence an organizational-form decision: firms rely more on company-owned outlets for expansion when the threat of entry from competitor firms in adjacent markets increases. The authors examine two interpretations: the convenience of quick deployment and a credible signal. Numerical analyses of a simple dynamic model of entry and franchising confirm that company-owned-outlet-based expansion arises under heightened entry threat. The simulation analysis highlights how franchising decisions in response to an elevated threat of entry may be beneficial (or harmful) for an incumbent firm, which yields key implications for firms, consumers, and policy makers.
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摘要 :
Whereas the extant literature on entry-order effects establishes that first entrants often earn higher market shares ("market-share advantage"), the literature on distribution suggests that increased distribution has a positive ef...
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Whereas the extant literature on entry-order effects establishes that first entrants often earn higher market shares ("market-share advantage"), the literature on distribution suggests that increased distribution has a positive effect on sales. Can distribution help us better understand entry-order effects on market shares? This paper examines how the first entrant in a geographical market achieves a market-share advantage through distribution. For this purpose, I propose a simple method of decomposing sales into physical distribution and sales performance. The data come from a manually collected panel on six major Japanese convenience-store chains from 47 geographical markets between 1991 and 2007. Using an instrumental variable approach to address the potential endogeneity of entry order, I find first entrants have a positive market-share advantage over later entrants. Specifically, the physical distribution, measured by the number of outlets in a market, drives most of the advantage. Meanwhile, the positive effect on sales performance for the first chain brand becomes nonexistent when I control for the outlet density. This paper further finds that the density of own outlets is nonmonotonically (inverted U) related to sales performance per outlet, suggesting dynamic outlet expansion faces a trade-off between the business-stealing effect in a chain ("cannibalization") and the advertising effect through repetition.
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A lignin-based gel (AL-PE gel) was obtained from hardwood acetic acid lignin (AL) and poly(ethylene glycol) diglycidyl ether (PE) as a cross-linker at a high AL concentration, while the reaction at a lower AL concentration yielded...
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A lignin-based gel (AL-PE gel) was obtained from hardwood acetic acid lignin (AL) and poly(ethylene glycol) diglycidyl ether (PE) as a cross-linker at a high AL concentration, while the reaction at a lower AL concentration yielded an amphipathic derivative (am-AL-PE). The gel has been reported to swell in aqueous ethanol but shrink in pure water and ethanol. In the present work, swelling behaviors in other aqueous binary solvents and the swelling mechanism were investigated to explore novel lignin-based functional materials, such as stimuliand/or environment-responsive gels. The AL-PE gel swelled in aqueous methanol, isopropanol, acetone, and tetrahydrofuran, and the order of swelling in the solvents was consistent with that of the am-AL-PE. Spin-spin relaxation time (T-2) measurements with H-1 NMR analysis of the gel in aqueous acetone revealed that gel swelling was closely related to an increasing T-2 of acetone bound to the gel network. The nature of the lignin moiety in the gel also enabled a pH response, and the amphipathic nature of the gel provided it with a function as an absorbent for cationic surfactants. The results of this study can contribute to the valorization of lignin as a main component for solvent sensors and environmental purification materials.
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摘要 :
We demonstrate that regulations that lower consumer search costs and make them less heterogeneous across consumers can lead to higher prices charged by firms. We estimate the distribution of consumer search costs for 366 isolated ...
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We demonstrate that regulations that lower consumer search costs and make them less heterogeneous across consumers can lead to higher prices charged by firms. We estimate the distribution of consumer search costs for 366 isolated retail gasoline markets, and find that reducing the mean and standard deviation by 20% and 48%, respectively, leads to price increases in 32% of markets and an average price increase of 5.2 cents per gallon across all markets. Thus, price transparency regulation that results in higher prices may not stem from collusion, but from an equilibrium with less consumer search. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
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