The design and operation of different supply chains and logistics networks is a significant part of today’s economy. Production and service companies and logistics service providers must improve ...their systems and processes to strengthen the value chain and support cost efficiency, availability, flexibility, efficiency, sustainability, and transparency. This book offers a selection of chapters that explain the different aspects of the design and operation of supply chain solutions. The book is designed to help students at all levels as well as managers and researchers to understand and appreciate the concept, design, and implementation of supply chain solutions.
Ethical leadership has so far mainly been featured in the organizational behavior domain and, as such, treated as an intra-organizational phenomenon. The present study seeks to highlight the ...relevance of ethical leadership for extra-organizational phenomena by combining the organizational behavior perspective on ethical leadership with a classical marketing approach. In particular, we demonstrate that customers may use perceived ethical leadership cues as additional reference points when forming purchasing intentions. In two experimental studies (N = 601 and N= 336), we find that ethical leadership positively affects purchasing intentions because of customers' concerns for moral self-congruence. We show this by means of both mediation and moderation analyses. Interestingly, the effect of perceived ethical leadership on purchasing intentions holds over and above the ethical advertising claims (e.g., cause-related marketing) that are commonly used in marketing. We conclude by discussing the possible ramifications of ethical leadership beyond its effects on immediate employees.
Although many researchers in information systems and marketing have studied the effect of product reviews on sales, few have looked at their effect on product returns. We hypothesize that, by ...reducing product uncertainty, product reviews affect the probability of product returns. We elaborate this hypothesis starting with an analytical model that examines how changes in valence and precision of information from product reviews influence the purchase and return probabilities of risk-averse, but rational, consumers. We then empirically test our hypotheses using a transaction-level data set from a multichannel, multibrand North American specialty retailer. Harnessing different consumers’ purchases and returns of the same products, but with varying sets of product reviews over two years, we show that the availability of more reviews and the presence of more “helpful” reviews, as voted by consumers, lead to fewer product returns—after controlling for customer, product, and other context-related factors. Analyzing the purchase behavior of the consumers, we find that when fewer product reviews are available, consumers buy more substitutes in conjunction with a product, potentially to mitigate their uncertainty. Purchase of substitutes, in turn, leads to more product returns. Finally, leveraging a discontinuity in the displayed average ratings, we find that when products are shown with an average rating that is higher than the true rating, they are returned
more
often. These results support the predictions of our theoretical model—unbiased online reviews indeed help consumers make better purchase decisions, leading to lower product returns; biasing reviews upward results in more returns. The presence of online reviews has important cost implications for the firm beyond the cost of reprocessing the returns; we observe that when consumers return products, they are more likely to write online reviews and that these reviews are more negative than reviews that follow a nonreturned purchase.
The online appendix is available at
https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2017.0736
.
Efficient public-procurement systems are critical for ensuring Access to Medicines (ATM) and enabling universal healthcare delivery. This is especially true of India where public healthcare caters to ...the underprivileged population who have limited access to medicines. However, essential medicine shortage in the Indian public-healthcare system is significant and is exacerbated by inefficiencies in the procurement system. Healthcare policy makers have to constantly contend with delays and non-fulfillment of medicine orders leading to shortages. Pharmaceutical companies supplying orders argue that the current system is not business-viable or fair. To explore these issues in-depth, we distill insights from structured interviews with a Policy Maker and interactions with the pharmaceutical industry to identify supply side issues which lead to medicine shortages. We build a normative model and utilize public medicine procurement data to study how pharmaceutical supplier response and order fulfillment is impacted by orders from multiple Indian states with different procurement conditions. We then employ standard supply chain theory to propose solutions to mitigate some of these issues. We find that the current system can be significantly improved by increased capacity allocation at suppliers for state orders, staggered ordering at the state level, stricter but gradual implementation of penalties and blacklisting and sourcing from suppliers located closer to the state.
•Efficient procurement critical to ensure access to essential medicines.•Shortages and supplier non-fulfillment of orders widespread in the Indian system.•Capacity issues, varying state-level penalty and blacklisting norms impact supply.•Staggered orders, sourcing from closer suppliers can improve order fulfillment.
Purpose
This study aims to explore the plausibility of the functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) methodology for neuromarketing applications and develop a neurophysiologically-informed model ...of purchasing behavior based on fNIRS measurements.
Design/methodology/approach
The oxygenation signals extracted from the purchase trials of each subject were temporally averaged to obtain average signals for buy and pass decisions. The obtained data were analyzed via both linear mixed models for each of the 16 optodes to explore their separate role in the purchasing decision process and a discriminant analysis to construct a classifier for buy/pass decisions based on oxygenation measures from multiple optodes.
Findings
Positive purchasing decisions significantly increase the neural activity through fronto-polar regions, which are closely related to OFC and vmPFC that modulate the computation of subjective values. The results showed that neural activations can be used to decode the buy or pass decisions with 85 per cent accuracy provided that sensitivity to the budget constraint is provided as an additional factor.
Research limitations/implications
The study shows that the fNIRS measures can provide useful biomarkers for improving the classification accuracy of purchasing tendencies and might be used as a main or complementary method together with traditional research methods in marketing. Future studies might focus on real-time purchasing processes in a more ecologically valid setting such as shopping in supermarkets.
Originality/value
This paper uses an emerging neuroimaging method in consumer neuroscience, namely, fNIRS. The decoding accuracy of the model is 85 per cent which presents an improvement over the accuracy levels reported in previous studies. The research also contributes to existing knowledge by providing insights in understanding individual differences and heterogeneity in consumer behavior through neural activities.
The study aims to analyze Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) and exchange rates, inflation and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in developing and developed countries in Asia and Europe during the covid-19 ...pandemic. The data used secondary data, obtained from the websites of the Central Bank of Indonesia, World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) from 2003 to 2020. This research used method of Vector Error Correction Model (VECM). The results show that the GDP, inflation and exchange rate variables have positive and negative responses to changes in PPP values during the observation period, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. This condition can occur because the economy in each country experiences fluctuations, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. This has an impact on the PPP value in these 10 countries, which causes each country to take financial and monetary policies in accordance with the problems they face
PurposeThis paper explores how public buyers' capabilities promote collaboration with private suppliers to obtain enhanced performance in complex projects.Design/methodology/approachThe authors ...conducted two case studies on the procurement of complex military projects by the Brazilian armed forces involving public buyers and private suppliers. The authors followed the Gioia methodology to inductively analyze data from interviews, official documents, media articles and project meeting notes.FindingsThe authors identified public procurement capabilities that are antecedents of collaborative trust-based relationships with suppliers in complex public-private projects. The authors unpack these capabilities in three subsets: abilities to manage the bidding and contracting process, to handle relationships with prominent stakeholders, such as audit control bodies and to manage knowledge acquired within and across current and past projects. By developing these capabilities, public buyers can build collaborative trust-based relationships with suppliers, which enable the conciliation of operational performance (i.e. on-time delivery, budget and scope compliance) and policy goals (i.e. inclusion of local suppliers in supply chains).Originality/valueThe authors extend the literature on the enablers of trust and collaboration in buyer-supplier relationships by providing a detailed account of which capabilities are necessary on the buyer side in complex projects, especially when accountability standards create barriers for collaborative practices. The authors also reinforce the importance of the operations and supply chain management scholarship in policy debates by showing how buyer-supplier interactions can create value in complex projects with public and private sectors.
PDF
