Stephanie S. Robbins

Global corporate web sites: an empirical investigation of content and design

Globally accessible web sites enable corporations to communicate with a wide variety of constituencies and represent a resource for any organization seeking a broad audience. Developing an effective multinational Internet presence requires designing web sites that operate in a diverse, multi-cultural environment. This is not simple, given that the field of web site development has lacked standards and vales relating to content and design. This study develops a conceptual model that differentiates web site content from design. The content component addresses the issue of what is included in the site and identifies the various types of information. The design component addresses presentation and navigational features. This conceptual web site content/design model was used to study the features of global corporate web sites to determine if the content and design features have become globally standardized or if differences exist as a result of national culture and/or industry. The majority of web site content features were found to be significantly different across various cultural groups. This, however, was not the case for design features. Furthermore, there appeared to be little association between the content and design features and industry classification.

Post-merger systems integration: the impact on IS capabilities

Mergers and acquisitions may disrupt the operations of the organizations involved. Major issues include the need to integrate personnel, business processes, information systems, and diverse information technologies across the merging organizations. However, if carefully planned and properly managed, the merger/acquisition and the resulting integration process can become an opportunity to strengthen the capabilities of the combined organization and place it in a better competitive position. This paper uses the results of a field survey to examine the effects of post-merger systems integration on information systems area capabilities. Factors influencing the success of the systems integration are identified.

Corporate mergers and the problems of IS integration

Abstract The process of integrating information systems (IS) during corporate mergers can be critical to their success. Factors that can support or impede the successful integration of IS include organizational and IS attributes, organizational merger management and IS integration activities. This study develops a conceptual framework for measuring IS integration success and identifies the factors influencing it. A field survey investigates the relationship between these factors and success. According to the results of our field survey of CIOs, prior merger experience, IS participation in merger planning, the quality of merger planning, the criteria used for setting IS integration priorities, and a high level of data sharing across applications appear to have a positive influence on the success of the IS integration. When changes that directly affect personnel have a significant impact, that impact seems to be mostly negative. Programming language incompatibilities also have a negative impact on IS integration success.

Linking advertising and quantity decisions in the single-period inventory model

Abstract The single-period problem (SPP), also known as the newsboy or news-vendor problem, is to find the order quantity which maximizes the expected profit in a single period probabilistic demand framework. Interest in the SPP remains unabated and many extensions to it have been proposed in the last decade. An important aspect of the SPP is the effect of advertising on sales. In this paper, we extend the SPP to a case in which advertising leads to increases in sales. We assume that the mean demand is increasing and concave in advertising expenditure and address three cases of demand variance as a function of advertising expenditure: (1) demand has constant variance, (2) demand has constant coefficient of variation, and (3) demand has an increasing coefficient of variation. We deal with two objectives: (a) maximizing the expected profit and (b) maximizing the probability of achieving a target profit. We provide closed or near-closed form solutions to the problem under uniform, exponential, and normal demand distributions. We illustrate the results using numerical examples and provide some insights into the effect of advertising.

Pricing on the Internet and in Conventional Retail Channels: A Study of Over-the-Counter Pharmaceutical Products

Business-to-consumer (B2C) electronic commerce survived the near-disastrous dot.com market crash in March of 2000 and has emerged as an integral component of doing business. Studies conducted before 2000, when companies had little experience with e-commerce, found that there were differences in pricing strategies and search and menu costs between the Internet and the conventional (brick-and-mortar) channel of distribution. The present study examines pricing data collected during a more mature period when companies routinely used both channels to sell products. The study utilizes data from the Internet and from conventional retailers for a bundle of over-the-counter pharmaceutical products. It finds that prices but not total cost are lower on the Internet, and therefore that shopping for such products on the Internet is likely to be a convenience issue. It also finds, contrary to expectations, that price changes are not more frequent or smaller on the Internet than on the conventional channel, whereas cost and price dispersion are greater. Finally, it discusses the pricing strategies of stores that have both Internet and conventional channels.

Optimal pricing and quantity of products with two offerings

This paper analyzes the decision of a firm offering two versions of a product, a deluxe and a regular. While both products satisfy the same market, the deluxe version is sold at a high price relative to its cost and is aimed at the high end of the demand curve. The regular version is sold at a low price relative to its cost and is targeted to customers at the low end of the demand curve. This two-offering strategy is especially popular with book publishers where a paperback book is introduced some time after the hardbound version is introduced. The time between the introduction of the two versions of the product is accompanied by a downward shift in the demand curve due to customers losing interest in the product or satisfying their demand from a secondary used market. We solve a profit maximization model for a firm using a two-offering strategy. The model is solved for linear and exponential deterioration in demand, which is assumed to be deterministic. Also, a model with linear deterioration in demand, which is assumed to be stochastic, is solved. The results indicate that substantial improvements in profit can be obtained by using the two-offering strategy. Numerical sensitivity analysis and examples are used to illustrate the results.

A Study of Cultural Differences in Global Corporate Web Sites

With the advent of the Internet and related networking and communication technologies, many have speculated that the ubiquitous nature of these technologies has a homogenizing effect and contributes to cultural convergence. Others would argue that as the rest of the world embraces the Internet, American influence will decline and the Internet will turn into a multi-cultural community as rich as the diversity of the world. In a landmark study, Hofstede (7) found that national cultures differ along several dimensions. He believed that national cultural values and differences have existed for a long period of time and are stable. Subsequent research has both confirmed and challenged the validity of Hofstedes conclusions for the long term. This paper investigates whether or not differences in national culture are evident in the web sites of global corporations or if national cultures, as reflected through these web sites, have converged.

Older Female Apparel Consumers: Have Retailers Overlooked This Market Segment?

The graying of America has led to an increasing number of women aged 55 and older who have considerable buying power and an interest in consuming women’s apparel. While several studies, reported herein, have examined older women’s attitudes toward fashion and their perception of retailer neglect, this study examines retailers’ current perceptions of older women’s shopping behavior and their marketing strategies used to attract this growing segment. Managers from retail stores carrying women’s apparel located in a major metropolitan area were interviewed. This study found that while retailers believed that older women apparel shoppers represent an important market segment with special problems, these respondents felt that these women purchased fewer clothes than other segments, and, therefore, no changes were needed in the retailing mix to better serve this age group.