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Title varies slightly.

Drivers of peak sales for pharmaceutical brands

Peak sales are an important metric in the pharmaceutical industry. Specifically, managers are focused on the height-of-peak-sales and the time required achieving peak sales. We analyze how order of entry and quality affect the level of peak sales and the time-to-peak-sales of pharmaceutical brands. We develop a growth model that includes these two variables as well as control variables for own and competitive marketing activities. We find that early entrants achieve peak sales later, and they have higher peak-sales levels. High-quality brands achieve peak sales earlier, and their peak-sales levels are higher. In addition, quality has a moderating effect on the order of entry effect on time-to-peak-sales. Our results indicate that late entrants have longer expected time-to-peak-sales when they introduce a brand with high quality.

A magyar háztartások ökológiai lábnyomának vizsgálata

Jelen tanulmány a magyar háztartások ökológiai lábnyomának foglalkozik, megvizsgáljuk az egyes termékcsoportok fogyasztásának teljes - közvetlen és indirekt - ökológiai lábnyomát. A teljes ökológiai lábnyom az elfogyasztott termék közvetlen lábnyomán túl figyelembe veszi az adott termék előállításához felhasznált más termékek és szolgáltatások ökológiai lábnyomát is (indirekt lábnyom).

A környezeti nevelés szerepe a fenntartható fogyasztás és életmód kialakításában

A környezeti nevelés akkor hatásos és hatékony, ha jelentős mértékben képes hatást gyakorolni a benne résztvevők környezeti tudatosságára, mindennapi életmódjára és fogyasztói magatartására. A cikk célja annak feltárása, hogyan tükröződik a környezeti nevelés-oktatás tartalma, intenzitása és módja a magyar egyetemi-főiskolai hallgatók és a középiskolás diákok tudásában, értékeiben, attitűdjeiben és cselekvésében. A kutatás alapjául szolgáló kérdőíves felmérést a Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem Környezetgazdaságtani és Technológiai Tanszékének munkatársai végezték el, a Norvég Alap támogatásával, a „Fenntartható fogyasztás, termelés és kommunikáció” c. projekt keretében. Az eredmények összehasonlításra adnak lehetőséget mind a felsőoktatás egyes szakmai területein, mind általában a felsőoktatásban és a középfokú oktatásban zajló környezeti nevelés között. Az eredmények azt mutatják, hogy a környezeti nevelés intenzitásának növelése szignifikáns módon nyilvánul meg a hallgatók környezeti tudásában – az oktatás mindkét vizsgált szintjén. A mintabeli középiskolások környezeti tudása mélyebbnek mutatkozott a vártnál (bár alacsonyabbnak az egyetemistákénál); a tágabb értelemben vett környezeti tudatosság ugyanakkor erősebb összefüggésben van a belső motiváltsággal és elkötelezettséggel, ami a felsőoktatásban tanulók szintjén jelent meg a specializáció-választásban. A fogyasztói magatartás kérdésköre jóval összetettebb; a környezeti nevelés itt csak egy a számtalan befolyásoló tényező közül. Mindazonáltal, a környezeti nevelés tartalma nagyon lényeges a fogyasztás csökkentésére irányuló attitűdök kialakításában. Ebben a tekintetben a középiskolai környezeti nevelést érdemes lenne a felsőoktatásban tapasztalt szempontok mentén is fejleszteni, a felsőoktatási környezeti nevelésben pedig a gyakorlati oldalt tovább erősíteni.

Consumer behaviour and lifestyle patterns of Hungarian students in view of environmental awareness

The aim of this paper is to describe the consumer behaviour and everyday lifestyle patterns of Hungarian university and college students. The results are gained from an international survey, carried out by the Department of Environmental Economics and Technology at the Corvinus University of Budapest, supported by the Norwegian Financial Mechanism. As background literature, characteristics of the consumer society and the development of sustainable consumption as a concept are interpreted in the paper. The empirical analysis aims to describe the most important clusters of students, based on the factors of their consumer behaviour, environmental activism and pro-environmental everyday habits. Our results identify two extreme clusters which most significantly differ from each other: the environmental activists and the indifferent group. However, a third cluster has the most modest consumer behaviour, namely the group which considers product features, energy consumption and the behaviour of producers. They spend the least on consumer goods. The three other clusters show quite mixed lifestyle patterns.

Profile of Florida: Services in transitional housing programs for homeless women with children

Family homelessness is a disturbing social problem in the United States. This study was conducted to determine the scope of components that included services and programs available for homeless women with children in transitional housing programs in Florida and the effectiveness of these components in helping these women move towards independence. Primary data for this study were obtained through questionnaires sent to directors of homeless centers in Florida. Supportive services offered by these centers were evaluated to determine if they enabled homeless women with children to become self-sufficient. The findings of this research indicated that regardless of the size, length of participation, and scope of services provided by the centers, these women showed gains in their ability to move toward self-sufficiency. The results support the hypothesis that transitional housing programs have a positive effect on homeless women with children. ^

Strategic positioning of Taiwan in the outsourcing market: Evidence from information technology services and electronic manufacturing outsourcing to China

In outsourcing relationships with China, the Electronic Manufacturing (EM) and Information Technology Services (ITS) industry in Taiwan may possess such advantages as the continuing growth of its production value, complete manufacturing supply chain, low production cost and a large-scale Chinese market, and language and culture similarity compared to outsourcing to other countries. Nevertheless, the Council for Economic Planning and Development of Executive Yuan (CEPD) found that Taiwan's IT services outsourcing to China is subject to certain constraints and might not be as successful as the EM outsourcing (Aggarwal, 2003; CEPD, 2004a; CIER, 2003; Einhorn and Kriplani, 2003; Kumar and Zhu, 2006; Li and Gao, 2003; MIC, 2006). Some studies examined this issue, but failed to (1) provide statistical evidence about lower prevalence rates of IT services outsourcing, and (2) clearly explain the lower prevalence rates of IT services outsourcing by identifying similarities and differences between both types of outsourcing contexts. This research seeks to fill that gap and possibly provide potential strategic guidelines to ITS firms in Taiwan. This study adopts Transaction Cost Economics (TCE) as the theoretical basis. The basic premise is that different types of outsourcing activities may incur differing transaction costs and realize varying degrees of outsourcing success due to differential attributes of the transactions in the outsourcing process. Using primary data gathered from questionnaire surveys of ninety two firms, the results from exploratory analysis and binary logistic regression indicated that (1) when outsourcing to China, Taiwanese firms' ITS outsourcing tends to have higher level of asset specificity, uncertainty and technical skills relative to EM outsourcing, and these features indirectly reduce firms' outsourcing prevalence rates via their direct positive impacts on transaction costs; (2) Taiwanese firms' ITS outsourcing tends to have lower level of transaction structurability relative to EM outsourcing, and this feature indirectly increases firms' outsourcing prevalence rates via its direct negative impacts on transaction costs; (3) frequency does influence firms' transaction costs in ITS outsourcing positively, but does not bring impacts into their outsourcing prevalence rates, (4) relatedness does influence firms' transaction costs positively and prevalence rates negatively in ITS outsourcing, but its impacts on the prevalence rates are not caused by the mediation effects of transaction costs, and (5) firm size of outsourcing provider does not affect firms' transaction costs, but does affect their outsourcing prevalence rates in ITS outsourcing directly and positively. Using primary data gathered from face-to-face interviews of executives from seven firms, the results from inductive analysis indicated that (1) IT services outsourcing has lower prevalence rates than EM outsourcing, and (2) this result is mainly attributed to Taiwan's core competence in manufacturing and management and higher overall transaction costs of IT services outsourcing. Specifically, there is not much difference between both types of outsourcing context in the transaction characteristics of reputation and most aspects of overall comparison. Although there are some differences in the feature of firm size of the outsourcing provider, the difference doesn't cause apparent impacts on firms' overall transaction costs. The medium or above medium difference in the transaction characteristics of asset specificity, uncertainty, frequency, technical skills, transaction structurability, and relatedness has caused higher overall transaction costs for IT services outsourcing. This higher cost might cause lower prevalence rates for ITS outsourcing relative to EM outsourcing. Overall, the interview results are consistent with the statistical analyses and provide support to my expectation that in outsourcing to China, Taiwan's electronic manufacturing firms do have lower prevalence rates of IT services outsourcing relative to EM outsourcing due to higher transaction costs caused by certain attributes. To solve this problem, firms' management should aim at identifying alternative strategies and strive to reduce their overall transaction costs of IT services outsourcing by initiating appropriate strategies which fit their environment and needs.

High school classes: boy using sewing machine

Inscription: Verso: boy using sewing machine, home economics class, Thompson Jr. High School, Syosset, New York.

High school classes: boys making pizza

Inscription: Verso: boys making pizza, 7th grade home economics class, Thompson Jr. High School, Syosset, New York.