Continuous improvements in digitized practices have created opportunities for businesses to develop more streamlined processes. This not only leads to higher success in day-to-day production, but it also increases the overall success of businesses. E-Manufacturing and E-Service Strategies in Contemporary Organizations is a critical scholarly resource that explores the advances in cloud-based solutions in the service and manufacturing realms of corporations and promotes communication between customers and service providers and manufacturers. Featuring coverage on a wide range of topics including smart manufacturing, internet banking, database system adoption, this book is geared towards researchers, professionals, managers, and academicians seeking current and relevant research on the improvement of cloud-based systems for manufacturing and service.

This book addresses concerns with the international trade and investment dispute settlement systems from a statist perspective, at a time when multilateralism is deeply questioned by the forces of mega-regionalism and political and economic contestation. In covering recent case law and theoretical discussions, the book's contributors analyze the particularities of statehood and the limitations of the dispute settlement systems to judge sovereign actors as autonomous regulators. From a democratic deficit coupled with a deficit of legitimacy in relation to the questionable professionalism, independence and impartiality of adjudicators to the lack of consistency of decisions challenging essential public policies, trade and investment disputes have proven controversial. These challenges call for a rethinking of why, how and what for, are States judged. Based on a "sovereignty modern" approach, which takes into account the latest evolutions of a globalized trade and investment law struggling to put people's expectations at its core, the book provides a comprehensive framework and truly original perspective linking the various facets of "judicial activity" to the specific yet encompassing character of international law and the rule of law in international society. In doing so, it covers a large variety of issues such as global judicial capacity building and judicial professionalism from an international and domestic comparative angle, trade liberalisation and States' legitimate rights and expectations to protect societal values, the legal challenges of being a State claimant, the uses and misuses of imported legal concepts and principles in multidisciplinary adjudications and, lastly, the need to reunify international law on a (human) rights based approach.

A cantankerously funny view of books and the people who love them. It does take all kinds and through the misanthropic eyes of a very grumpy bookseller, we see them all--from the "Person Who Doesn't Know What They Want (But Thinks It Might Have a Blue Cover)" to the "Parents Secretly After Free Childcare." From behind the counter, Shaun Bythell catalogs the customers who roam his shop in Wigtown, Scotland. There's the Expert (divided into subspecies from the Bore to the Helpful Person), the Young Family (ranging from the Exhausted to the Aspirational), Occultists (from Conspiracy Theorist to Craft Woman). Then there's the Loiterer (including the Erotica Browser and the Self-Published Author), the Bearded Pensioner (including the Lyrca Clad), and the The Not-So-Silent Traveller (the Whistler, Sniffer, Hummer, Farter, and Tutter). Two bonus sections include Staff and, finally, Perfect Customer--all add up to one of the funniest book about books you'll ever find. Shaun Bythell (author of Confessions of a Bookseller) and his mordantly unique observational eye make this perfect for anyone who loves books and bookshops. "Bythell is having fun and it's infectious."--Scotsman "Virtuosic venting ... misanthropy with bursts of sweetness." Guardian "All the ingredients for a gentle human comedy are here, as soothing as a bag of boiled sweets and just as tempting to dip into."--Literary Review "Any reader finding this book in their stocking on Christmas morning should feel lucky...contains plenty to amuse--an excellent diversion"--Bookmunch

Learn about the luxury brand industry from the inside out with this masterful and insightful resource The newly revised Fourth Edition of Luxury Brand Management in Digital and Sustainable Times delivers a timely re-examination of what constitutes the contemporary luxury brand landscape and the current trends that shape the sector. Distinguished experts and authors Michel Chevalier and Gerald Mazzalovo provide readers with a comprehensive treatment of the macro- and micro-economic aspects of management, communication, distribution, logistics, and creation in the luxury industry. Readers will learn about the growing importance of authenticity and sustainability in the management of fashion, perfume, cosmetics, spirits, hotels and hospitality, jewelry, and other luxury brands, as well as the strategic issues facing the companies featured in the book. The new edition offers: A new chapter on the "Luxury of Tomorrow," with a particular focus on authenticity and durable development A completely revised chapter on "Communication in Digital Times," which takes into account the digital dimension of brand identity and its implications on customer engagement activities and where the concept of Customer Journey is introduced as a key marketing tool A rewritten chapter on "Luxury Clients" that considers the geographical changes in luxury consumption Considerations on the emerging notion of "New Luxury" Major updates to the data and industry figures contained within the book and a new section dedicated to the hospitality industry New semiotic analytical tools developed from the authors' contemporary brand management experiences Perfect for MA and MBA students, Luxury Brand Management also belongs on the bookshelves of marketing, branding, and advertising professionals who hope to increase their understanding of the major trends and drivers of success in this sector.

As financial systems migrate to a pervasive, online environment, business leaders and layman investors alike must adapt to changes in the market brought about by this new age of business. Strategic E-Commerce Systems and Tools for Competing in the Digital Marketplace advances the body of knowledge on electronic business and commerce with an in-depth look at the opportunities and concerns surrounding online business and finance. This cutting-edge reference aids business leaders, financial managers, investors, and consumers looking to build their portfolios and thrive in modern digital business environments.

Whether used as predictors or indicators of stock prices, financial risk, merger candidates, or bond yields, financial ratios have been, and continue to be, a popular tool for analyzing a firm and its performance. Practitioners and academics who employ financial ratios often compare and contrast across several industries, but such evaluations assume that the ratios of one industry measure the same underlying concepts as the ratios of another. This book provides evidence on the comparability of financial ratios across several industries, assessing the similarity or dissimilarity of ratios among industry taxonomies, or groups of ratios.

Extending previous studies that focused primarily on manufacturing firms, this work surveys a wide variety of both manufacturing and retail corporations, and determines the classification patterns of their respective financial ratios. The taxonomies of thirty two ratios, in seven representative industries, are examined for the ten-year period from 1978 through 1987. Two introductory chapters detail the nature of the research, the data utilized, variables employed, and statistical methodologies, as well as providing a brief summary of the results. A third chapter furnishes results for the entire economy by factors of return, cash flow, cash position, inventory, sales, liquidity, and debt; while seven separate chapters describe the study's conclusions for each of the primary industries: automobile and aerospace; chemical, rubber, and oil; electronics; food; retail; steel; and textile. The work concludes with a summary of the study and its conclusions, and an examination of the limitations of this type of research and possibilities for its extension. This book will be a valuable practical resource for accounting and finance professionals, as well as an important reference for courses in finance, accounting, and management. Public, academic, and business libraries will also find it a useful addition to their collections.

Fashion is a business of smoke and mirrors, notorious for crushing the souls of most who dare to be part of the industry. Go on a global expedition with New York City-based fashion buyer, strategist, and consultant, Mercedes Gonzalez, as she learns that there is no glamour in fashion and that only cutthroat corporate espionage prevails. From politicking with blood diamond dealers and Russian kingpins to living in indigenous villages, she has relied on her street smarts and fear of her uncle in order to outwit the industry tyrants at their own game. The underdog becomes the overlord (at-large). You'll want to grab a notebook for all the business (and life) tips this read has to offer. Advance warning, this book will convince you to become a proponent of child labor, an advocate of GMO, and a cynic of organic cotton.

Imagine planning an event like the Olympics. Now imagine planning the same event but not knowing when or where it will take place, or how many will attend. This is what humanitarian logisticians are up against. Oversights result in serious consequences for the victims of disasters. So they have to get it right, fast. This book comprehensively covers the problems of humanitarian logistics.

The linkages between WTO rules governing trade and energy security with a certain degree of focus on India are the main subject of this book. The edited volume brings together the views of academics, policymakers and experts with extensive experience covering WTO and international trade issues. The issues examined include mapping the linkages between trade and energy security in the WTO agreements, case law, accession and Doha negotiations; assessing the issues that could be raised by energy deficit or energy surplus countries at the WTO; analyzing the provisions of the ECT and NAFTA vis-a-vis the Indian policy framework and examining the trade regimes of selected OPEC members and other major suppliers of fossil fuels to India. While the Indian perspective is evident in the contributions, this book will also be of interest to an international audience, as trade, the WTO and energy security are global concerns and of relevance to all practitioners and academics working on these issues."

While e-commerce has experienced meteoric growth recently, security risks have similarly grown in scope and magnitude. Three major factors have driven the security risks in e-commerce: the growing reliance on the electronic medium for a company's core business, the growing complexity of the software systems needed to support e-commerce, and the value of the digital assets brought online to an inherently insecure medium - the Internet. While security has long been a primary concern in e-commerce, more recently privacy has also grown in importance to consumers. Many of the same Internet technologies that make e-commerce possible also make it possible to create detailed profiles of an individual's purchases, to spy on individual Web usage habits, and even to peer into confidential files that reside on an individual's machine. E-Commerce Security and Privacy is the first volume to pull together leading researchers and practitioners in diverse areas of computer science and software engineering to explore their technical innovations to problems in security and privacy in e-commerce. The information is drawn from selected papers presented at the first Workshop on Security and Privacy in E-Commerce (WSPEC'00) held in Athens, Greece, November 4, 2000. As such, E-Commerce Security and Privacy introduces both practitioners and researchers to innovations in secure and private e-commerce. Practitioners will gain great insight from the case studies, and researchers will learn about state-of-the-art protocols in secure and private e-commerce that will serve as the basis for future innovations in applied e-commerce technologies. E-Commerce Security and Privacy is suitable as a secondary text for agraduate level course, and as a reference for researchers and practitioners in industry.

Concentration tendencies, globalization, increasing cost pressure and well-informed customers all make up the hard competition faced by today's businesses. The "right" products, a successful market image, a strong positioning between suppliers and customers, efficient logistics and optimum organization structures contribute to a company's survival. Achieving this goal requires flexible information and communication systems that are fully adaptable to the specific situation. Modern retail information systems are not bound by organization borders but support both business partner cooperation and electronic commerce. This book presents the architecture of retail information systems, as well as the functions of SAP Retail, and in so doing links modern retail management with the implementation strategies based on innovative software systems.

From the Civil War through the Great Depression small businessmen and their stores dominated retailing in nearly every city and town. Within the walls of their shops, grocers wrestled with fundamental changes in the structures of industrial and commercial capitalism, including the development of mass production, distribution, and marketing, the growth of regional and national markets, and the introduction of new organizational and business methods. Yet today we know very little about the considerable achievements of these small businessmen and their corner stores and even less about their major contributions to the making of "modern" enterprise in the United States. Popular stereotypes of Rockwellian storekeepers as avuncular men who prevailed over pickle-barrel conversations and checkers games, have characterized grocery retailers as backward and resistant to modernizing impulses. Cornering the Market challenges these conventions to argue that nineteenth- and early twentieth-century grocers were important but unsung innovators of business models and retail technologies that fostered the rise of contemporary retailing. Small businessmen revolutionized business practices from the bottom by becoming the first to own and operate cash registers, develop new distribution paths, and engage in transforming the grocery trade from local enterprises to a nationwide industry. Drawing on private thoughts from storekeepers' diaries, business ledgers and documents, and the letters of merchants, wholesalers, traveling men, and consumers, Spellman shows how proprietors confronted industrialization by crafting solutions centered on notions of efficiency, scale, and price controls, without abandoning local ties, turning social concepts of community into commercial profitability. It was a powerful combination businesses from chain stores to Wal-Mart continue to exploit in the twenty-first century.

As media evolves with technological improvement, communication changes alongside it. In particular, storytelling and narrative structure have adapted to the new digital landscape, allowing creators to weave immersive and enticing experiences that captivate viewers. These experiences have great potential in marketing and advertising, but the medium's methods are so young that their potential and effectiveness is not yet fully understood. Handbook of Research on Transmedia Storytelling, Audience Engagement, and Business Strategies is a collection of innovative research that explores transmedia storytelling and digital marketing strategies in relation to audience engagement. Highlighting a wide range of topics including promotion strategies, business models, and prosumers and influencers, this book is ideally designed for digital creators, advertisers, marketers, consumer analysts, media professionals, entrepreneurs, managers, executives, researchers, academicians, and students.

As retailing becomes an increasingly important part of economics worldwide, the similarities and differences of retailing from country to country are now more evident. Retailing in the European Union is a unique and timely study of the difference retail structures across Europe, offering an insightful overview of the internationalisation of retailing and asking important questions about the effectiveness of different retailing sectors.

This book investigates the industrial agglomeration and dispersion within a country under trade liberalization and interregional integration by considering both economic forces and geographical elements. Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction about the background, research topics and organizations in this book. Chapter 2 provides a detailed explanation of Krugman's new economic geography (NEG) model and reviews the subsequent refinements of the original model from mainly geographical viewpoints. Chapter 3 extends Krugman's original model to a two-country and three-region case where the domestic regions are fully asymmetrical in terms of their sizes and accessibilities to global markets. To better explain the reality of developing countries, chapter 4 presents an analytical model which assumes that unskilled workers are employed in both traditional and manufacturing sectors. Chapter 5 empirically investigates the home market effect (HME) in terms of wages in the case of China by using panel data for the period 1980-2012. Chapter 6 gives a summary and implication about the findings and conclusions in this book.

Shopping and Crimedraws on criminology, behavioural economics and marketing to help understand retail crime as a cultural phenomenon. Shopping is now the largest consumer leisure activity, and this has led to an exponential rise in the levels of retail crime. In this topical volume Professor Bamfield analyses important new datasets on employee theft and shoplifting to show the nature of the problem, its origins and possible solutions. Crime prevention is explored as a management issue, using criminomics, a new concept based on commercial realities rather than maximizing arrests. This emphasises communications and persuasion within organisations, supported by a web of collaborative projects between retailers, police and other crime agencies.

Internet and web technology penetrates many aspects of our daily life. Its importance as a medium for business transactions will grow exponentially during the next few years. In terms of the involved market volume, the B2B area will hereby be the most interesting area. Also, it will be the place, where the new technology will lead to drastic changes in established customer relationships and business models. In an era where open and flexible electronic commerce provides new types of services to its users, simple 1-1 connections will be replaced by n-m relationships between customers and vendors.
This new flexibility in electronic trading will generate serious challenges. The main problem stems from the heterogeneity of information descriptions used by vendors and customers, creating problems in both manual trading and in direct 1-1 electronic trading. In the case of B2B market places, it becomes too serious to be neglected. Product descriptions, catalog formats and business documents are often unstructured and non-standardized. Intelligent solutions that mechanize the structuring, standardizing, aligning, and personalizing process are a key requisite for successfully overcoming the current bottlenecks of B2B electronic commerce while enabling its further growth. Intelligent Information Integration in B2B Electronic Commerce discusses the main problems of information integration in this area and sketches several technological solution paths.
Intelligent Information Integration in B2B Electronic Commerce is designed to meet the needs of a professional audience composed of researchers and practitioners in industry and graduate level students in Computer Science.

CAO is one of the most misunderstood and underutilized weapons available to retailers today. International consultant Barbara Anderson makes clear that in only a limited sense does CAO replace manual ordering. In its full sense it is much more--the optimization of manufacturer, supplier, and retailer distribution to the retail store-- based on consumer and store data and corporate policy. Anderson thus provides a framework and checklist for implementing CAO, and understanding of key terminology, solutions to likely problems, and ways to make CAO implementation successful, and in doing so she covers the full spectrum of retailing. A readable, easily grasped, comprehensive, unique book for retailing management and for their colleagues teaching it in colleges and universities.

Anderson points out that CAO is not an off-the-shelf system but an ongoing project, each phase with its own unique set of benefits and cost justification. Retail systems must support a vision where a product may bypass the store on the way to the consumer, or even the distribution center on the way to the stores. Consumers have a wide range of choices, not only of where to shop, but how to shop, and this demands ever greater levels of service. CAO systems help assure that the correct product is available at the store, that it can be located throughout the supply chain, and that it can be moved easily from any location. In CAO, all levels of operation work with real-time information, using decision-making tools that react and learn from new information. Her book thus shows there is no one right system, product, or approach for successful CAO. It's too big a leap to make in one step but consists of modules and functions that can grow in sophistication over time, and that not all retailers nor all categories within one retailer will use the same methods for forecasting and ordering. She also shows that the distinct separation of replenishment product from planning product is artifically imposed and that the separation of head-quarters from stores is also artificial. Indeed, integration does not mean the integration of separate systems; rather, of business functions themselves. Readers will thus get not only a knowledgeable discussion of what CAO should be, what it is and how it works, but an immediately useful understanding of how to make it work in their own companies.

Examining the implications of recent important developments, the primary aim of this book is to bridge the gaps in existing literature on India-Pakistan economic engagement and to examine various aspects of the trade normalization process.

The book includes familiar themes of India-Pakistan bilateral trade in goods and services, providing new insights into the potential for trade and the challenges involved in realizing it. The respective chapters examine the current trade trends and identify the possible sectors for bilateral FDI flows between the two countries, which could help forge deeper economic ties between them. In light of India s changed investment policy, this analysis is pertinent for investors and policy-makers alike.

The book also includes chapters on a variety of unconventional subjects, such as estimating the levels of informal trade, an analysis of a trade perception survey and identifying trade potential using a CGE modeling approach. Further, a number of sectors have been identified for in-depth analysis, including sports goods, healthcare and energy. These sector-based analyses reflect the gap between current levels of trade in the selected industries and the possible trade potential. The studies identify key tradable commodities in the health and sports industries, as well as opportunities for trading in energy. The book thus provides readers with a deep understanding of the process of normalizing economic relations and enhancing bilateral trade at the micro and macro levels, on the basis of which the authors subsequently provide recommendations for policymakers."

Japanese distribution was long seen as archaic and difficult to understand, but today that has changed. Domestic firms stretching across all retail formats and categories have taken control of channels and now lead the consumer market from the front. They are now so advanced that the very best are bursting out of the Japanese market and operating across Asia and even as far as Western Europe. Through case studies and concrete examples, this book provides the most detailed analysis of retailing in Japan ever written; it is the definitive guide to how Japan has changed and what to expect in the future.

This book investigates the transfer of parent country organizational practices by the retailers to their Chinese subsidiaries, providing insights into employment relations in multinational retail firms and changing labour-management systems in China, as well as their impact on consumer culture.

Samli provides an academic rather than a practical day-to-day approach to retailing, and his book may help move retailing toward the mainstream of academic research and interest. . . . The author incorporates good references and an overview of many theories that can be applied in an academic retail setting. Recommended for advanced undergraduate, graduate, and professional collections. "Choice"

Samli breaks new ground in the study of retailing by providing, for the first time, a comprehensive look at overall retail marketing strategy written specifically for advanced-level students and professionals in the field. Whereas most books in this area have stressed a how-to approach, Samli focuses on planning, implementing, and analyzing the results of the retail marketing strategy. He argues that as retail competition becomes keener and as the retailing environment becomes more adverse, success in retailing will be equated with the ability to develop an effective marketing strategy rather than extensive emphasis on day-to-day operations.

Organizing his study according to the three key phases of the strategy-making process--planning, implementation, and control--Samli proposes a new concept, differential congruence, as the basic philosophy of success in developing a retail marketing strategy. He draws upon the extensive, yet until now largely neglected, body of research in the field to illustrate the principles of effective marketng and demonstrates that these principles and strategies are equally applicable to large retailing giants and small retailing establishments. The comprehensive discussion ranges from an examination of intermarket shopping patterns and the plight of downtown shopping areas to detailed analyses of segmentation in retailing, store-image definition measurement, and retail pricing strategy. An essential text for advanced courses in marketing, sales, and retailing, this book will also be read with profit by store managers and corporate retailing executives.

The retail sector has undergone a major structural transformation in the past fifteen years and one aspect has been the enormous growth in airport retailing which now represents one of the major methods of profit generation for the airport authorities. With this trend set to continue, retailing will increasingly represent an important aspect of future airport development. In European Airport Retailing the authors set out to examine the contemporary and future developments in airport retailing, both from a strategic and operational perspective. Including coverage of both tax free and duty paid retailing, the book looks at such issues as retail marketing; location and design; supply chain relationships and human resource issues.

How did America's largest clothing retailer, an institution that changed the way Americans shopped and dressed, manage to rise so fast, then fall so hard? From its boom years in the 1970s, Gap's performance went from bad to dismal. By the close of the 1990s there was severe doubt it could survive at all. Gap's alleged labor practices around the world didn't help either. Nevaer leads you through the boom years of this extraordinary corporation, the acquisitions that soured, the product strategies that failed, and thus through the social history of America during those churning years--the changing mores and how they shaped not only the GAP but mass-merchandising itself worldwide.

From a single store in San Francisco in 1969, the Gap, which grew to include Banana Republic and Old Navy, was soon operating more than 3,800 stores with worldwide sales approaching $15 billion. Gap's traditional constituency-- Generation Y--could not be less interested. Gap kids and Baby Gap don't even register a blip on the radar screen. Nevaer shows how all this came about. He describes how the Gap's success in the last quarter of the 20th century parallels the development of consumerism in the United States. He shows how its ability to bridge generations holds lessons for others in corporate America. He also shows why the Gap's history can be seen as a reflection of America's, how it ran on the same track with the country's social mores, particularly in the rise of the antifashion revolution and the proliferation of gay aesthetics. Nevaer's book is a stunning achievement, a true and lasting examination of why we wear what we wear and of the industry that makes it happen.