International Journal of Industrial Engineering & Production Research

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  In today’s extremely competitive markets it is crucial for companies to strategically position their brands, products and services relative to their competitors. With the emerging trend in internationalization of companies especially SME’s and the growing use of the Internet with this regard, great amount of attention has been turned to effective involvement of the Internet channel in the marketing mix of the companies. This has introduced a new term of market space (the Web) versus the traditional battleground of marketplace in which companies compete with each other. The growth of presence in the market space has been exponential, both in general and within specific industries.

  Thus bringing to attention the importance of Web presence and that it is crucial for companies to strategically regard competition in market space. It is important to understand that positioning on the Net is very different and requires its own set of strategies as part of the new marketing paradigm. This study goes towards addressing the need to understand and measure the nature of positioning of company Web sites on the Internet. The aim of the study is to introduce a statistical technique to compare the positioning of Web sites, in and across industries.

  With this regard a group of Web sites from the home appliances manufacturing industry was selected and the technique of correspondence analysis was applied to produce maps which can be studied and interpreted.

The results indicated that either based on company strategies or accidentally, these Web sites are positioned differently and may follow or affect different marketing policies of their owners. At the end, the implications of this technique for management and how it can be used by new home appliance manufacturers or those who want to compare their sites with the ones of their competitors, in order to benchmark and/or revise their policies and strategies have been discussed .

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  Steel market and particularly rod bar market play important roles in economy of countries. Economic systems are considered as complex systems which are sophisticated to be modeled mathematically. One way to model these systems is simulation and use of system dynamics. This paper models rod bar supply chain in Iran using system dynamics. Data of this research is gathered from first hand materials published by governmental sector. In order to modeling relationships between variables, interviews were conducted with experts in Iran Ministry of Commerce. Proposed model explains turbulence of rod bar market during 5 years ago and the fluctuations of its price. In addition, it is examined and confirmed by experts of this market in Iran Ministry of Commerce. Although proposed model may not offer an exact prediction of future market, but could be used as an applicable tool for analyzing and adjusting the market in Iran Ministry of Commerce .

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Data mining is a powerful tool for firms to extract knowledge from their customers’ transaction data. One of the useful applications of data mining is segmentation. Segmentation is an effective tool for managers to make right marketing strategies for right customer segments. In this study we have segmented retailers of a hygienic manufacture. Nowadays all manufactures do understand that for staying in the competitive market, they should set up an effective relationship with their retailers. We have proposed a LRFMP (relationship Length, Recency, Frequency, Monetary, and Potential) model for retailer segmentation. Ten retailer clusters have been obtained by applying K-means algorithm with K-optimum according Davies-Bouldin index on LRFMP variables. We have analyzed obtained clusters by weighted sum of LRFMP values, which the weight of each variable calculated by Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique. In addition we have analyzed each cluster in order to formulate segment-specific marketing actions for retailers. The results of this research can help marketing managers to gain deep insights about retailers.

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Because of electricity subsidies, electricity price in Iran is much lower than its real value, and the growth of electricity demand is much more than its rational rate, which in turn implies ever increasing investment in the electricity section by the Government. Therefore, the recent Government policies are based on elimination of electricity subsidies, followed by commissioning complete electricity market to attract investors in the power industry. In this paper, a model is developed for electricity demand prediction and evaluating Iran's current electricity market and complete market to deal with optimistic and pessimistic electricity demand. Hence, a system dynamics framework is applied to model and generate scenarios because of its physical capability and information flows that allow understanding the of behavior nonlinear dynamics in uncertain conditions. To validate the model, it was compared with the available actual data within 21 years, since (1988-2008). After model validation, two scenarios are evaluated based on the influence of eliminating electricity subsidies on electricity demand in short-term and long-term and then commissioning of the probable complete electricity market is evaluated. For this purpose, first, the electricity demand is estimated for the target years and then changing dynamics in transition of Iran’s electricity market is analyzed.

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In today complex worldwide supply chains, intermediary organizations like Contract manufacturers and GPOs are mostly used. Well-known OEMs delegate their purchasing and procuring to these intermediaries. Because of their positive influence on supply chain efficiency, it is very important to investigate the role of intermediaries in today competitive supply chains. One important question arising about intermediaries is the conditions that the OEM controls his procurement or delegates this task to the intermediary organization?

To answer this question, this paper studies the equilibrium for component procurement strategies of two competing OEMs that produce substitutable products. Each OEM may either directly procure the input from the component supplier, or delegate the procurement task to the contract manufacturer. We analyze the OEMs’ procurement game under two contracting power schemes in such a supply chain: the supplier Stackelberg, where the component supplier acts as the Stackelberg leader, and the OEM Stackelberg, where the OEMs are the first movers.

We show that, the smaller OEM always prefers direct control of component procurement. This is because the OEM will receive a lower component price if the component supplier can price discriminate the OEMs. In contrast, the larger OEM’s preference depends on the contracting power scheme. Under the supplier Stackelberg, the larger OEM never prefers direct procurement; however, under the OEM Stackelberg, the larger OEM may have incentives to use direct procurement under reasonable conditions. This implies that a shift of the market power from the supplier to the OEMs may lead to more OEMs deviating from delegation to direct control.

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This study proposes an outsourcing mechanism for marketing plans in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) using knowledge sharing.  SMEs may not be able to establish a marketing department due to operational expenditures. Therefore, organizing a marketing agency to handle marketing concerns of SMEs is significant. First, SMEs are clustered regarding their activity area, products, services, and etc. Then, for SMEs in a same cluster, the marketing agency should collect the required information to process marketing actions. The challenge is how to gather and deposit information in common among SMEs in a cluster. Knowledge sharing is one of the stages of knowledge management helping to distribute information among elements of a system. Thus, the process of knowledge sharing is investigated in outsourcing marketing activities. Accordingly, a questionnaire was prepared based on research hypotheses. After confirmation of validity and reliability, the questionnaire was given to managers and employees of furniture companies in Tehran province, Iran. The collected questionnaires were analyzed using SPSS software version 24.0.  According to the statistical sample of the research, descriptive statistics, and inferential statistics were analyzed. Descriptive statistics were used to describe the demographic characteristics of respondents. The inferential statistics, Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used first for the test of normality of data. Considering normality of the data, T-student test was used to obtain the relationship between variables. Finally, the results of the research showed that there is a positive and significant relationship between outsourcing marketing in SMEs using knowledge sharing. Therefore, it is suggested that SMEs pay particular attention to outsourcing their marketing activities using knowledge sharing.

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Tourists are getting more aware of the environment. To determine the effectiveness of eco-tourism infrastructure management, the motivation and segmentation of demand for eco-tourism have been analysed using functional theory as a guide. The empirical analysis was conducted in the Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson regions. 382 surveys were obtained by random sampling. To make the data analysis, factor analysis and non-hierarchical segmentation were performed. The results indicate that there are several eco-tourism motivational aspects including self-development, interpersonal relationships, defence functions, building personal relationships, reward, and appreciation from nature. Three different segments of eco-tourists were also identified based on their motives related to nature, reward, and escape. Characteristics of different segments were also specified. This study will help government agencies and private companies improve their travel content and develop more effective marketing plans.
The research has shown that in most cases, the success of any project is in cooperation between NGOs, locals, authorities, and the private sector. The optimal level of local participation is determined by the specifics and scale of each project, which may focus on individual villages or several communities that experience any impact of tourism.
The economic essence of the concept of tourism motivation has been improved, which is defined as a set of needs that affect a person in the process of participation in tourism activities and are a central factor in the decision-making process. Studying the most important motivations of eco-tourists in the region, three groups of motives have been identified: cultural and educational activities, proximity to nature, health and rehabilitation measures.

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Floating markets are not only a unique type of market but also sustainable tourist attractions. The literature focuses on both of floating market Covid-19 preventive measures and tourist’ satisfaction dimensions. The study is using quantitative research by concentrated on the tourist’s satisfaction of an anonymous Floating Market in Nakhon Pathom province. The research concentrated on the floating market Covid-19 preventive measures and the tourists’ satisfaction. The visitors certainly got great enjoyment from the floating market and this resulted in overall good experience for them better than most of them expected. The most important of Covid-19 preventive measures factors for the tourists were the provide clear entry, exit routes and screening point, merchants and customers always wear masks and provide hand washing points. The tourism component clearly overshadowed the destination shopping experience. The close proximity of the market to Bangkok contributes to the success of this market and the perceived satisfaction of the tourists
 

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