Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Strategies of the competitors'

Program: MIMA student – International business and Entrepreneurship

Course name: Master Thesis (EFO705)Title: Imitation as Organization’s StrategyAuthors: Voravej AssavapisitkulSataporn Bukkavesa

Supervisor: Sven-Åke NyströmProblem: Does imitation really benefit organization?

Purpose: The authors are writing this topic because the authors feel that this topic is not widely been investigated, moreover, it is a very interesting topic for the authors. According to the course literatures that the authors have read, the authors perceived that most of them focused on innovation and seems like they ignored or mentioned little on the topic of imitation and how can imitation benefits organization. Therefore, the authors are personally interested in the topic. The authors hope that the readers would gain more knowledge on the topic and would be able to apply with their business or study.

Method: Interpretivist; Documentary; Interview

Summary: In this Master Thesis, the authors have discussed several dimensions of imitation with examples. First, the authors discussed about imitation during the early stage of industrialization with the examples in Korea. This topic discussed of the opportunity provided through imitation process for the new firms to be able to catch up and compete with experienced firms. The next topic is on unique capability. Firms can apply imitation as their own capability that can prevent others’ imitation, moreover, they can become successful in the new market. Then the authors found that there are ways to imitate other firms’ knowledge legally in the form of strategic alliances. In the topic of creation of strategic alliances, the authors suggested four patterns of engagement that firms can select according to their objectives. Under the topic of firms experience, there are some empirical data supported that the degree of imitation has negative relationship with firms’ experience curve. Moreover, the authors discussed about the how competitors’ actions affect the firms to select different strategy of organization management in the topic of the choice of alliances and mergers and acquisitions by competitor’s move. Then the authors discussed about how successful were the imitations by reverse-engineering implemented by Korea’s electronics industry. Furthermore, the authors also provide examples of imitations in other industries. The next topic is limitation and prevention on imitation. Then the authors provided the reasons why do firms imitate. Moreover, the authors discussed about the factors that affect the speed of imitation process and show how the speed of imitation related to benefits and losses of the firms. Next, the authors suggested some successful strategies for product imitation. Then the authors discussed about the drawbacks of imitation with some examples. Finally, the authors provided the results and analysis of the interviews as primary data collection to show the success of firms that implemented imitations, people’s attitudes toward imitation, and the degree that originality and product origin can limit imitation.

Historically, time series forecasting has been mainly studied in econometrics and statistics. In the last two decades, machine learning, a field that is concerned with the development of algorithms that can automatically learn from data, has become one of the most active areas of predictive modeling research. This success is largely due to the superior performance of machine learning prediction algorithms in many different applications as diverse as natural language processing, speech recognition and spam detection. However, there has been very little research at the intersection of time series forecasting and machine learning.

The goal of this dissertation is to narrow this gap by addressing the problem of multi-step-ahead time series forecasting from the perspective of machine learning. To that end, we propose a series of forecasting strategies based on machine learning algorithms.

Multi-step-ahead forecasts can be produced recursively by iterating a one-step-ahead model, or directly using a specific model for each horizon. As a first contribution, we conduct an in-depth study to compare recursive and direct forecasts generated with different learning algorithms for different data generating processes. More precisely, we decompose the multi-step mean squared forecast errors into the bias and variance components, and analyze their behavior over the forecast horizon for different time series lengths. The results and observations made in this study then guide us for the development of new forecasting strategies.

In particular, we find that choosing between recursive and direct forecasts is not an easy task since it involves a trade-off between bias and estimation variance that depends on many interacting factors, including the learning model, the underlying data generating process, the time series length and the forecast horizon. As a second contribution, we develop multi-stage forecasting strategies that do not treat the recursive and direct strategies as competitors, but seek to combine their best properties. More precisely, the multi-stage strategies generate recursive linear forecasts, and then adjust these forecasts by modeling the multi-step forecast residuals with direct nonlinear models at each horizon, called rectification models. We propose a first multi-stage strategy, that we called the rectify strategy, which estimates the rectification models using the nearest neighbors model. However, because recursive linear forecasts often need small adjustments with real-world time series, we also consider a second multi-stage strategy, called the boost strategy, that estimates the rectification models using gradient boosting algorithms that use so-called weak learners.

Generating multi-step forecasts using a different model at each horizon provides a large modeling flexibility. However, selecting these models independently can lead to irregularities in the forecasts that can contribute to increase the forecast variance. The problem is exacerbated with nonlinear machine learning models estimated from short time series. To address this issue, and as a third contribution, we introduce and analyze multi-horizon forecasting strategies that exploit the information contained in other horizons when learning the model for each horizon. In particular, to select the lag order and the hyperparameters of each model, multi-horizon strategies minimize forecast errors over multiple horizons rather than just the horizon of interest.

We compare all the proposed strategies with both the recursive and direct strategies. We first apply a bias and variance study, then we evaluate the different strategies using real-world time series from two past forecasting competitions. For the rectify strategy, in addition to avoiding the choice between recursive and direct forecasts, the results demonstrate that it has better, or at least has close performance to, the best of the recursive and direct forecasts in different settings. For the multi-horizon strategies, the results emphasize the decrease in variance compared to single-horizon strategies, especially with linear or weakly nonlinear data generating processes. Overall, we found that the accuracy of multi-step-ahead forecasts based on machine learning algorithms can be significantly improved if an appropriate forecasting strategy is used to select the model parameters and to generate the forecasts.

Lastly, as a fourth contribution, we have participated in the Load Forecasting track of the Global Energy Forecasting Competition 2012. The competition involved a hierarchical load forecasting problem where we were required to backcast and forecast hourly loads for a US utility with twenty geographical zones. Our team, TinTin, ranked fifth out of 105 participating teams, and we have been awarded an IEEE Power & Energy Society award.

Doctorat en sciences, Spécialisation Informatique
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The multi-vendor consulting model is a transorganizational development topic that has gained importance as more organizations strategically source professional services, such as management consulting. Multi-vendor consulting models often require competitors to collaborate on service delivery, fostering coopetitive relationships. This research study acknowledged the paradoxical nature of coopetition and aimed to understand more fully the frequency of coopetition in the management consulting industry, the perceived benefits and risks of coopetition, and the key factors that motivate management consulting leaders to collaborate with their competitors on client engagements. The study revealed that there is a deeper level of motivation for management consulting leaders who chose to collaborate with competitors: the fear of missing out on current and future opportunities and the desire to develop stronger relationships in both their vertical and horizontal networks.

Species interactions can regulate a population’s density and therefore can act as a selective force on that population. Such evolutionary responses have the potential to feedback and change ecological interactions between species. For species that compete for resources, the interaction between ecological and evolutionary dynamics will regulate the stability of the species interactions, determining whether competing species can coexist. The outcome of competition between species is determined by two factors: (1) niche overlap, or the similarity in how species use resources and are affected by their environment, and (2) fitness differences, or differences in how efficiently each species uses resources in their environment. Decreasing niche overlap will decrease competitive interactions, thereby stabilizing coexistence. Decreasing fitness differences makes species more equal in their competitive abilities, facilitating coexistence. In the absence of evolutionary constraints, both niche overlap and fitness differences among species are subject to change as a consequence of evolution among competitors, and thus ecological dynamics between two species will also change. In this dissertation, I develop a broader understanding of (1) how niche overlap and fitness differences between species change after evolution in response to competition, (2) how changes in niche overlap and fitness differences are mediated through changes in resource use of protists, and (3) what role evolutionary history plays in shaping ecological and evolutionary dynamics.

I address these goals with a suite of approaches including theoretical models, an experimental lab system, and comparative methods. I constructed a quantitative genetic model of trait evolution, where the trait of a species determined its resource use, and found that species are prone to change in their niche overlap as well as their fitness differences as a result of trait evolution. However, the magnitude of changes in niche overlap and fitness differences were determined by the resource availability within the environments. When resources were broadly available, species changed more in their niche overlap, whereas when resources were narrowly available, species changed more in their fitness difference. To test these predictions, I developed a system in the laboratory where protists competed for a bacterial resource. Species were allowed to evolve in either monoculture or a two-species mixture; the effects of evolution on competition, niche overlap and fitness differences were quantified using parameterized models. In general I found that species tended to converge in their niche as a result of evolution, however, changes in fitness differences between species were larger and more influential on coexistence than changes in niche differences. Both increases in niche overlap, and increases in fitness differences decreased coexistence among species pairs. By describing the bacterial communities associated with these protists before and after selection I determined that protists tended to converge or not change in which bacteria they were consuming as a result of selection. Additionally, for eleven protist species, I determined whether traits or relatedness predicted competitive ability by placing species on a molecular phylogeny and conducting pairwise competition experiments for all pairs. I found no correlations, suggesting neither traits, nor evolutionary history was informative for explaining current ecological and evolutionary interactions in this deeply divergent clade.

There are two major conclusions from this dissertation: (1) when species evolve in response to competition, changes in fitness differences may often be more important than changes in niche overlap, (2) evolution can, and may be likely to, decrease the ability of species to coexist through increases in niche overlap and increases in fitness differences. This work suggests that one must simultaneously consider the role of evolutionary and ecological processes to understand community processes. Specifically, when researchers are attempting to explain mechanisms of coexistence between species, they must consider how evolutionary dynamics may change the ecological interactions within communities of competitors.

Cluster is a common phenomenon in developed countries. Horizontal clusters and vertical clusters are often seen in these countries. In the domestic retailing, a particular type of cluster—competitors’ cluster plays an important role in the past, nowadays and in the future. Though many researchers have investigated into clusters and talked a lot about the benefits firms could share by clustering together, few of them explained directly why the competitors of the same trade cluster together for competition. This dissertation tried to find explanatory factors that lead competitors to clusters by taking the electronics stores in Kristianstad as an example. Based on the cluster theory, the imitative behavior theory, Huff ’s model, the 4C theory, five underlying factors (the rivals, the costs, the traveling distance, the shopping area and the purchase volume) were put forward. Six propositions were set up to testify these five factors existing in formation of the cluster. A survey was conducted by using face-to-face interview on retailers and questionnaire on consumers. The results of the survey indicated that the propositions were valuable when it came to explain why the phenomenon of the competitors’ cluster emerged. The survey implied that when firms chose to locate the stores, from their own perspective, they wanted to constrain rivals and reduce costs by clustering. Meanwhile, firms also took the consumers’ attractiveness into their consideration. Shopping area and traveling distance were exact explanatory factors, which can reveal incentives of the retailing competitors’ cluster. The research will do help to the future retailing development in China and also can be helpful for the governments in China to plan the commerce distribution.

Date: 2008-06-05

Level: Master Thesis in Business Administration, 15 ECTS

Authors: Amina Ahmed Ibrahim Beatrice Yola Konlaan Carol Nakajugo Basudde

Tutor: Sigvard Herber

Title: Are competitors ready to take on a deregulated Apoteket AB? Problem: With the oncoming deregulation of the monopoly, Apoteket AB appears to have a competitive advantage over incoming competition therefore the problem is to find out:

 What competitive advantage Apoteket AB has over its competitors.

 If the competitors have the tools to successfully compete with Apoteket AB.

Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to find out whether competitors in Sweden are able to compete successfully with Apoteket AB for the market of non prescription medicine.

Method: Qualitative and quantitative methods have been used in this thesis. In order to achieve the desired result of this research it is appropriate to choose this approach since it enables the researcher to be able to explore all areas of the subject at hand and also give an in-depth discussion and analysis.

Conclusion: Apoteket AB has several competitive advantages over its competitors. It has a strong brand name that is known and trusted by customers. While all three competing companies see themselves as complements to Apoteket AB, we think that the competitors have what it takes to successfully compete with Apoteket. Judging from previous cases such as Norway and Denmark which showed different outcomes of deregulation in the retail pharmaceutical industry, the competitors in both cases have not been on the losing side. Supermarkets, petrol stations and grocery stores in Denmark and Norway were also competing with their respective pharmacies based mainly on price, accessibility and convenience. In conclusion this is an indication that the competitors in Sweden have more than enough tools to successfully compete with Apoteket AB.

Keywords: Deregulation, Pharmaceutical retail, Apoteket AB, Monopoly, Competition.

Datum: 2008-06-05

Nivå: Magister Uppsats i Företagsekonomi, 15 Högskolepoäng Författare: Amina Ahmed Ibrahim Beatrice Yola Konlaan Carol Nakajugo Basudde

Handledare: Sigvard Herber

Titel: Är konkurrenter beredda att konkurrera med Apoteket AB i en avreglerad marknad?

Problem: I samband med den kommande avregleringen av monopolet, Apoteket AB verkar ha konkurrensfördel gentemot konkurrenterna. Problemformuleringen lyder:

 Vilka konkurrensfördelar har Apoteket AB över sina konkurrenter?

 Har konkurrenterna de rätta verktygen för att framgångsrikt konkurrera med Apoteket AB?

Syfte: Uppsatsens syfte är att ta reda på om konkurrenterna i Sverige kan framgångsrikt konkurrera med Apoteket AB i den receptfria marknaden.

Metod: En kvalitativ och kvantitativ metod har använts i denna uppsats. För att uppnå det önskade resultat är det nödvändigt att använda sig av både en kvalitativ och kvantitativ metod, dels för att utförligt kunna utforska ämnet och ge en djupgående diskussion och analys.

Slutsats: Apoteket AB har en mängd konkurrensfördelar över sina konkurrenter. Företaget har ett starkt märke som kunderna känner till och litar på. De tre konkurrerande företag ser sig själva som ett komplement till Apoteket AB dock anser vi att konkurrenterna har vad som krävs för att framgångsrikt kunna konkurrera med Apoteket. Apotekets avreglering i Norge och Danmark har visat olika resultat, däremot har inte konkurrenterna i båda fall inte varit på den förlorande sidan. Matbutiker och bensin stationer i Danmark och Norge har konkurrerat med huvudsakligen pris, bekvämlighet och tillgänglighet med sina respektive Apotek. Detta är en indikation på att konkurrenterna i Sverige har tillräckligt med verktyg för att framgångsrikt kunna konkurrera med Apoteket AB.

Nyckelord: Avreglering, Apoteket AB, Monopol, Konkurrens.