A go-to-market strategy for vertebral metrics

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Biomédica

A go-to-market strategy for green extration and impregnation

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Biotecnologia

Go-to-market strategy with pharmacies

The purpose of the research is to develop a go-to-market strategy with pharmacies. As it was agreed with the client of the study, Reckitt Benckiser, the focus is solely on non-prescription products. Therefore, prescription medicines are not considered in the study. The main objective of the research is to clarify consumer and pharmacy personnel behavior concerning non-prescription products. These issues are observed with surveys, which are provided to consumers and pharmacy personnel. The go-to-market strategy is based on the survey results and is comprised by utilizing the marketing-mix model. Legislation and the present state & trends are additional minor research problems of the study. The results of the research provide many descriptive insights about consumer and pharmacy personnel behavior. It is concluded that the consumers’ level of involvement with non-prescription products is low and the type of behavior is habitual. It is also demonstrated that several decision-making criteria are very different among different age groups and genders. Concerning pharmacy personnel, the factors that they base their product recommendations are revealed. In addition, the sources of medicine information for both consumers and pharmacy personnel are found out.

Competitiveness of chitosan-based implants

Biomaterials have been extensively developed and applied in medical devices. Among these materials, bioabsorbable polymers have attracted special attention for orthopedic applications where a transient existence of an implant can provide better results, when compared with permanent implants. Chitosan, a natural biopolymer, has generated enormous interest due to its various advantages such as biocompatibility, biodegradability and osteoconductive properties. In this paper, an assessment of the potential of a developed innovative production process of 3D solid and dense chitosan-based products for biomedical applications is performed and presented. Therefore, it starts with a brief explanation of the technology, highlighting its main features. Then, several potential applications and their markets were identified and assessed. After choosing a primary application and market, its potential as well as its uncertainties and risks were identified. A business model suggesting how to materialize the value from the application was sketched. After that, a brief description of the market as well as the identification of the main competitors and their distinctive features was made. The supply chain analysis and the go-to-market strategy were the following steps. In the end, a final recommendation based on the assessment of the information was prepared.

Process orientation and information technology:customer engagement at Xerox (UK) Ltd

Xerox Customer Engagement activity is informed by the "Go To Market" strategy, and "Intelligent Coverage" sales philosophy. The realisation of this philosophy necessitates a sophisticated level of Market Understanding, and the effective integration of the direct channels of Customer Engagement. Sophisticated Market Understanding requires the mapping and coding of the entire UK market at the DMU (Decision Making Unit) level, which in turn enables the creation of tailored coverage prescriptions. Effective Channel Integration is made possible by the organisation of Customer Engagement work according to a single, process defined structure: the Selling Process. Organising by process facilitates the discipline of Task Substitution, which leads logically to creation of Hybrid Selling models. Productive Customer Engagement requires Selling Process specialisation by industry sector, customer segment and product group. The research shows that Xerox's Market Database (MDB) plays a central role in delivering the Go To Market strategic aims. It is a tool for knowledge based selling, enables productive SFA (Sales Force Automation) and, in sum, is critical to the efficient and effective deployment of Customer Engagement resources. Intelligent Coverage is not possible without the MDB. Analysis of the case evidence has resulted in the definition of 60 idiographic statements. These statements are about how Xerox organise and manage three direct channels of Customer Engagement: Face to Face, Telebusiness and Ebusiness. Xerox is shown to employ a process-oriented, IT-enabled, holistic approach to Customer Engagement productivity. The significance of the research is that it represents a detailed (perhaps unequalled) level of rich description of the interplay between IT and a holistic, process-oriented management philosophy.

The Anchoring Bias of Investors and the 52-Week High Momentum Strategy in the OMX Helsinki Stock Exchange: Psychological Approach to Market Efficiency

The behavioural finance literature expects systematic and significant deviations from efficiency to persist in securities markets due to behavioural and cognitive biases of investors. These behavioural models attempt to explain the coexistence of intermediate-term momentum and long-term reversals in stock returns based on the systematic violations of rational behaviour of investors. The study investigates the anchoring bias of investors and the profitability of the 52-week momentum strategy (GH henceforward). The relatively highly volatile OMX Helsinki stock exchange is a suitable market for examining the momentum effect, since international investors tend to realise their positions first from the furthest security markets by the time of market turbulence. Empirical data is collected from Thomson Reuters Datastream and the OMX Nordic website. The objective of the study is to provide a throughout research by formulating a self-financing GH momentum portfolio. First, the seasonality of the strategy is examined by taking the January effect into account and researching abnormal returns in long-term. The results indicate that the GH strategy is subject to significantly negative revenues in January, but the strategy is not prone to reversals in long-term. Then the predictive proxies of momentum returns are investigated in terms of acquisition prices and 52-week high statistics as anchors. The results show that the acquisition prices do not have explanatory power over the GH strategy’s abnormal returns. Finally, the efficacy of the GH strategy is examined after taking transaction costs into account, finding that the robust abnormal returns remain statistically significant despite the transaction costs. As a conclusion, the relative distance between a stock’s current price and its 52-week high statistic explains the profits of momentum investing to a high degree. The results indicate that intermediateterm momentum and long-term reversals are separate phenomena. This presents a challenge to current behavioural theories, which model these aspects of stock returns as subsequent components of how securities markets respond to relevant information.

Implementation of global make to inventory strategy at BASF SE

La optimización y armonización son factores clave para tener un buen desempeño en la industria química. BASF ha desarrollado un proyecto llamada acelerador. El objetivo de este proyecto ha sido la armonización y la integración de los procesos de la cadena de suministro a nivel mundial. El proceso básico de manejo de inventarios se quedó fuera del proyecto y debía ser analizado. El departamento de manejo de inventarios en BASF SE ha estado desarrollando su propia estrategia para la definición de procesos globales de manufactura. En este trabajo se presentará un informe de las fases de la formulación de la estrategia y establecer algunas pautas para la fase de implementación que está teniendo lugar en 2012 y 2013.

Catch-up strategies in the Indian auto components industry: domestic firms’ responses to market liberalization

Market liberalization in emerging-market economies and the entry of multinational firms spur significant changes to the industry/institutional environment faced by domestic firms. Prior studies have described how such changes tend to be disruptive to the relatively backward domestic firms, and negatively affect their performance and survival prospects. In this paper, we study how domestic supplier firms may adapt and continue to perform, as market liberalization progresses, through catch-up strategies aimed at integrating with the industry's global value chain. Drawing on internalization theory and the literatures on upgrading and catch-up processes, learning and relational networks, we hypothesize that, for continued performance, domestic supplier firms need to adapt their strategies from catching up initially through technology licensing/collaborations and joint ventures with multinational enterprises (MNEs) to also developing strong customer relationships with downstream firms (especially MNEs). Further, we propose that successful catch-up through these two strategies lays the foundation for a strategy of knowledge creation during the integration of domestic industry with the global value chain. Our analysis of data from the auto components industry in India during the period 1992–2002, that is, the decade since liberalization began in 1991, offers support for our hypotheses.

ISO 9000 standards: quality as a market strategy

In a context of increasing globalization it is essential to have a comprehensive system to guarantee the quality of the final products and inputs that are traded around the world. The main goal is to satisfy the expectations and needs of the final customer, wherever s/he may be. The quality management systems set out in the ISO 9000 standards, used in conjunction with third party certification, have become a factor in market success for all commercial and industrial firms that have achieved this goal.

The CARIFORUM-EU Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA): an assessment of issues relating to market access, safeguards and implications for regional integration

The recent collapse of the Doha round once again underscores the tenuous nature of international trade negotiations. Likewise, the Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) between the CARIFORUM grouping and the European Union (EU) has generated a great deal of discussion and debate over the past several months. What has clearly emerged is the existence of two diametrically opposed views on the impact and usefulness of the agreement. One view has it that the EPA is a major breakthrough in trade relations that will greatly benefit the region. On the other hand, some see it as being detrimental to the region and perhaps a total capitulation to the EU on the part of the CARIFORUM. They assert that it is part of a global EU strategy to impose World Trade Organization (WTO) policies on developing nations and get around the Doha obstacles. Both sides in this debate attempt to back up their views with reference to the text of the agreement. The objective of this review is to shed some light on the issues driving this debate particularly in the areas of market access, the impact on tariff revenues, and the implications for regional integration. This review also attempts to clarify and distill some of the main contentious issues regarding the EPA and to inform further discussion regarding an implementation plan. The approach is based on detailed study of the EPA text and its annexes plus extensive interviews with some of the main negotiators on the CARIFORUM side. Interviews were conducted both in person and via the Internet as many of the regional negotiators live or work outside of the region. The reviewer also attended presentations and discussions with some of the leading regional critics of the agreement.

Unit Commitment and Electricity Prices Forecasting for Market Strategy Preparation in Interconnected Systems

In this paper we present a solution for building a better strategy to take part in external electricity markets. For an optimal strategy development, both the internal system costs as well as the future values of the series of electricity prices in external markets need to be known. But in practice, the real problems that must be faced are that both future electricity prices and costs are unknown. Thus, the first ones must be modeled and forecasted and the costs must be calculated. Our methodology for building an optimal strategy consists of three steps: The first step is modeling and forecasting market prices in external systems. The second step is the cost calculation on internal system taking into account the expected prices in the first step. The third step is based on the results of the previous steps, and consists of preparing the bids for external markets. The main goal is to reduce consumers' costs unlike many others that are oriented to increase GenCo's profits.

Pricing-to-market and the volatility of UK export prices

This empirical study examines the Pricing-To-Market (PTM) behaviour of 20 UK export sectors. Using both Exponential General Autoregressive Conditional Heteroscedasticity (EGARCH) and Threshold GARCH (TGARCH) estimation methods, we find evidence of PTM that is accompanied by strong conditional volatility and weak asymmetry effects. The PTM estimates suggest that when the currency of exporters appreciates in the current period, exporters pass-on between 31% and 94% of the Foreign Exchange (FX) rate increase to importers. However, both export price changes and producers' prices are sluggish, perhaps being driven by coordination failure and menu driven costs, amongst others. Furthermore, export prices contain strong time varying effects which impact on PTM strategy. Exporters do not typically appear to put much more weight on negative news of (say) an FX rate appreciation compared to positive news of an FX rate depreciation. Much depends on the export sector. © 2010 Taylor & Francis.

Learnings from real cases route-to-market redesign within the Portuguese lubricants sector

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Management from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics