Francesca Di Pillo

A New Approach for Assessing Dealership Performance: An Application for the Automotive Industry

The competitive nature of the contemporary business scenario requires productivity-driven organizations to be aware of the efficiency level of their dealers. The recent economic and financial crisis has highlighted the need for effective evaluation methods going beyond the limits of traditional performance assessment methodologies in the retail industry. The automotive industry is no exception to this logic. In this sector, traditional methods are often based only on market share performances, ignoring the key role of input-output ratios on the overall productivity of the parent company. Following this lead, in this paper we propose a method to evaluate the performance of dealerships taking into account both their market share performances and their efficiency. In order to assess dealership efficiency we use the DEA technique, and apply the proposed methodology to a multinational automotive company considering its Italian dealer network.

Competiveness and Innovation in High-tech Companies: an Application to the Italian Biotech and Aerospace Industries

Innovation activities are a critical factor in national and regional development. The innovative behaviour of companies is one of the main sources of competitiveness, business survival, economic growth and employment in a territory. It is therefore important to identify and understand the factors that determine innovation behaviour among enterprises. In line with this, the aim of this study is to analyse the relations between innovation-related variables and the impact that they have on company performance. The research model proposed is applied to two high-tech sectors of the Italian region of Lazio to verify its validity. The examination concerns the aerospace and biotech sectors, which are characterized by strong innovative activity.

Cultural adaptation of web design services as critical success factor for business excellence : A cross-cultural study of Portuguese, Brazilian, Angolan and Macanese web sites

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine whether cultural backgrounds of nations are expressed through the web design of their companies. Actually, it investigates whether, in countries characterized by the same cultural matrix and language but by different national backgrounds, the cultural specificities of a country are a critical success factor for web design and enablers of business excellence. Design/methodology/approach – Starting from a deep literature review, four research hypotheses on the relationship between cultural background and web design are formulated. By employing both the content analysis and the cross-tabulation methodology, these hypotheses are tested. Findings – Brazilian, Portuguese, Angolan and Macanese web sites show that companies operating in these countries are aware that cultural background is a necessary success factor to consider for improving cross-cultural management of computer-mediated communication. Indeed, the findings confirm that the internet is not a cultur...

Mobile Telephony Industry: Price Discrimination Strategies for Interconnected Networks

The changes occurring in the mobile telephony industry, both at legislative and technological level, have affected the competitive scenario in various national contexts. The main aim of this paper is to highlights the results of price discrimination strategy in terms of market shares and profits in order to identify incumbent behaviours able to inhibit competition.

Measuring and comparing the performances of energy retail companies: Firm strategies following the liberalization

Purpose – In the last decade, the Italian natural gas market has undergone profound changes. The slow ongoing process of liberalization that began in 2000 has produced many changes in the industry as companies have had to react to the new regulatory framework. Many companies have sought agreements, alliances and mergers to consolidate their position in the market, other companies have sought to diversify their product range by becoming multi-utility companies, others, unable to react to the new competitive pressures, have gone bankrupt. The aim of the work is to analyse the performance of natural gas retail companies after the liberalization of the sector. Design/methodology/approach – The authors carry out a financial statement analysis for indexes in order to evaluate business management in terms of the financial, profitability and liquidity aspects. The authors analysed a sample of 111 companies operating in Italy for a six-year period (2004-2009) following the full liberalization of the sector (Januar...

Net neutrality versus discrimination in internet access: winners, losers and investment incentives

According to Neelie Kroes, the European Commission Responsible for the Digital Agenda, ‘the internet is a great place to exercise and enjoy liberty’. To hold true this requires that users must be free of restrictions on their access to content and use of services. Thus, supporters of the principle of ‘net neutrality’ assert that internet service providers should be legally prevented from discriminating between different types of web traffic. On the other hand, some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) oppose net neutrality on the grounds that prioritisation of bandwidth is necessary for future innovation and investment. This paper provides constructive input to the debate on net neutrality by comparing the pay-off of internet service providers, content providers and users under the two opposing regimes of discrimination and net neutrality. In particular, through a game-theory model, we analyse gainers, losers and investment incentives in a duopolistic market, under the two scenarios.

Mobile Networks Competition and Asymmetric Regulation of Termination Charges

This paper is aimed to verify the effectiveness of the asymmetric regulation of mobile termination charges, under the assumption of discriminatory retail pricing. In the mobile competition, the networks revenue depends on two factors: the retail price and the termination charge. If the retail prices are different between calls that terminate on the same network (on net) and calls that terminate on the rival network (off net), the competition is more complex, involving positive networks externalities for the incumbent operator.

A ‘power law’ based method to reduce size-related bias in indicators of knowledge performance: An application to university research assessment

Abstract The knowledge production provided by universities is essential to sustaining a country’s long-term economic growth and international competitiveness. Many nations are thus driving to create sustainable and effective funding environments. The evaluation of university knowledge, productivity and research quality becomes critical, with ever increasing share of public funding allocated on the basis of research assessment exercises. Nevertheless, the existing methods to assess the universities’ knowledge production are often affected by limits and biases, extensively discussed in the scientific literature. In this paper we study how to reduce the effect of size-related bias due to university size on the indicators of knowledge performance used in evaluation exercises. We propose an innovative utilization of the scale-free property of the power laws as a scaling relationship, to normalize research productivity indicators, and provide results independent by the university size. Our method has evident policy implications and gives a contribution for the future design of assessment exercises. We apply our findings in a recent Italian research assessment exercise.

Pricing Analysis in International Interconnected Networks

The international telecommunications market is characterised by the need of operators in different countries to be interconnected. These operators enter into agreements whose principal variables are, firstly the interconnection tariff, and secondly the traffic volumes. The liberalisation of the telecommunications market has affected the dynamics of the bilateral agreements between international operators. This paper examines the interactions between fixed telephone operators in interconnected countries and analyses the effects that various settlement agreements can have in terms of the operators profitability.