Because of the high cost and the irreversibility of the big investment company decision maker often choose to defer the investment until the uncertainty gets clear. That is a management flexibility to decrease the risky. This article analyze that when company faces two competing technology that one have competing advantage comparing with the other under an uncertainty situation how does the company decide when and which to adopt. We develop a continuous-time stochastic model that aids in determination of optimal timing for adoption within the framework of real options theory. We propose that the competing situation between two incompatible technologies follows the general Wiener Process. When company chose to defer the investment we use the expectations of the decision maker and the competing situation between two technologies to decide the optimal investment timing. The result of this thesis suggests that a technology adopter should defer its investment until one technology¡¦s probability to win out in the market place and achieve critical mass reaches a critical threshold. This research only provides a way to show the decision maker when and which to adopt but not guarantee that the technology being chose will dominate the market in the future.

There is a persistent problem of poor agricultural production which leads to household food insecurity problems for farmers in Ghana. Studies show that the adoption of improved agricultural practices and technology may help stabilize production, and lessen food insecurity problems. There, however, is a missing link between food insecurity and adoption of soil improving practices in the literature. The missing link is addressed by investigation whether the food insecurity group differs in adopting the use of soil improving practices. Conversely, the adoption of soil improving practices may influence a household’s food security position. With this in mind, the objectives of study are to determine the 1) likelihood of adopting the soil improving practices of Ghanaian households; and 2) determine if and how food insecure agricultural households differ from food secure agricultural households in terms of agricultural practices, household characteristics, and technologies adopted. A conditional logit model, based on random utility theory, is estimated to determine which factors affect adoption of soil improving practices; whereas, a multinomial logit model is used to examine factors influencing a household’s food insecurity position. Positions considered are chronic, seasonal, vulnerable food insecure groups and a food secure group. The positions are differentiated by the length of time a household went without sufficient food. Characteristics of operating under seasonal lease, being a food secure household, and households farming medium quality soil increase the probability of adopting soil improving practices. Application of chemical fertilizers, commercial seeds, and pesticides, along with operating under a seasonal lease tenure and adoption of improved soil practices are likely to improve the household food security position. Households with medium quality soil have a larger probability of not being a chronic food insecure household. Given the high priority that the government of Ghana has placed on food security, policies that encourage households to adopt soil improving practices may be beneficial to food insecure households. Household characteristics such as income, age, education level, and household size are not significant in determining the likelihood of a household being in one of food insecurity group. The insignificance may be attributed to the homogeneity of the surveyed household characteristics.

The forest sector is traditionally viewed as stagnant and non-innovative in comparison to higher-value added industries. The sector is being challenged by environmental, market and consumer changes at home and internationally. To combat these challenges, forestry firms must undergo a transformation in their activities, including their production methods by producing innovative and sustainable products and materials. This involves investing in innovation, advanced technologies and new products. The purpose of this study is to understand the impact of adoption of advanced manufacturing technologies on firm performance in the Canadian forest sector. The study is based on data from the 2007 Survey of Advanced Technology and interviews with technology adopters. The differences between technology adopters and non-adopters in terms of capital investment, R&D, training, management practices and innovation were analyzed. The findings suggest that the adoption of advanced technologies is important for the realizations of innovations. Firms which were both innovative and adopted technology were most likely to report improvements in performance post-adoption.

This thesis explores how, and to what extent, farm businesses are responding to changing demands on agriculture in terms of resource efficiency, entrepreneurship and understanding the role of soft technology in supporting these strategies. This is in response to a changing business environment which is challenging farming income streams and profitability. The research questions in this thesis are resolved by adopting a multi-method research strategy. This includes a survey of 738 Welsh Upland hill farmers from a population of 7,500, 10 semi-structured interviews and action research in the design, development and implementation of decision support systems. Together the methods address the issues of strategic stance, and technology adoption in agriculture. The study findings are intended to be useful for farm decision-makers, support and advisory bodies, and for informing policy in terms of farming approaches, technology infrastructure and farm resource management. The research outcomes presented in the main chapters provide, individually and in synthesis, a better understanding of farming strategies and the role of technology in assisting such strategies. Collectively, the multi-phased approach to the research topic identifies many important farm responses to the economic and political tensions facing agriculture. Farmers can decide on entrepreneurial and efficiency driven strategies whilst making the best use of resources and technology. The findings also show that the strategic objectives of farm decision makers are far more influential in technology adoption than the technology itself and therefore leadership and market maturity are key factors that must be considered as influencing the degree of technology adoption. Additionally, insights are provided regarding wider issues of ICT adoption amongst farmers with particular regard to barriers to technology adoption.

An extensive amount of research has been conducted on Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) in the context of logistics, supply chain and manufacturing. Additionally, marketing opportunities related to RFID usage have been argued to exist. Despite this, limited research has focused on RFID in a marketing context which constitutes the research gap for this study.  A literature review on the subject area yielded an overview of the existing literature within the field. The literature review identified a research gap that constitutes the purpose of this study. The purpose is to investigate the factors influencing the adoption of Radio Frequency IDentification technology and whether it enhances retailers’ marketing opportunities. The study was of a qualitative nature and was conducted through a multiple case study. Data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with four companies. An archival analysis was performed in addition to the interviews. The interview data reveals that RFID technology adoption still has barriers to overcome, especially in regards to the identified marketing opportunities. Based on the conclusions of this study recommendations for managerial implications were formed. The findings of the study were able to support previous research stating that the main challenge for RFID adoption is the cost of the equipment. However, the previously identified marketing opportunities were not fully supported by the interviewed companies, thus, this area of research needs to be developed further.

This dissertation consists of three chapters on the economics of the Internet. The first chapter begins with presenting the advertising spending patterns of US local restaurants that have different ratings on Yelp.com. Rating information on Yelp includes display ratings and review distributions. The Yelp's rounding algorithm creates a discontinuity in display ratings. Therefore, I use a regression discontinuity design to identify the effect of a higher display rating on local restaurants' advertising spendings. I find a significantly negative effect of display rating for highly-rated restaurants on advertising. However, when the display rating is constant between two steps, the relationship between local restaurant advertising spending and average rating is significantly positive. The second chapter uses a game-theoretic model to analyze competing firms' advertising and pricing decisions. Here customer reviews are available and firms may build up loyal customer bases. I find that highly-rated firms are more likely to advertise more, i.e., online reviews complement advertising. Comparative static results can explain the results found in the first chapter. Intuitively, when the capacity of a local business becomes limited, a jump in the display rating will reduce the complementary effect of online reviews on advertising. I also analyze an extension of the model, where an entrant and an incumbent interact. I find that customer reviews undo the "fat-cat" effect of a large incumbent with lots of loyal customers. The third chapter proposes a new explanation for adoption failure or delay in markets with network effects. In the model, consumers and software providers play a dynamic adoption game. Each group of players choose between two incompatible technologies. Consumers may wait, but firms may not. Although efficiency requires one technology to be adopted by all consumers and firms right away, there is a "market split and adoption delay" equilibrium. In this equilibrium some consumers choose to wait at first and firms split between the two technologies. The model is motivated by the 56K modem market, in which competition between two technologies appears to have led to adoption failure, until an industry standard setting organization coordinated the market on an alternative standard.

This thesis deals with different forms of strategic complementarities in industrial organization problems. Chapter 2 is an attempt to develop a unified approach to endogenous heterogeneity by constructing a general class of two-player symmetric games that possess only asymmetric pure-strategy Nash equilibria. These classes of games are characterized in some abstract sense by two general properties: payoff non-concavities and some form of strategic substitutability. While the second characteristic allows to show the existence of pure strategy Nash equilibria, the second precludes these equilibria to be symmetric. Other two classes of games that always possess asymmetric, but never symmetric, pure-strategy equilibria, although they are not of strategic substitutes are also studied. This chapter also generalizes a number of models dealing with two-stage games, with long term investment decisions in the first stage and product market competition in the second stage. Chapter 3 investigates the effects of forward looking behaviour in technology adoption. The setup is an overlapping generations model where agents choose between two alternative networks taking into consideration both the installed base and the expected base. The latter element is the distinctive feature of the approach. It is shown that a unique equilibrium exists, on which agents coordinate their expectations. While exhibiting hysteresis, the equilibrium adoption path does not comply with technologies locking in. Network choices are characterized both in terms of their long run properties and the expected time of adoption. Chapter 4 studies the problem of a monopolist who produces a good with network externalities and faces the possibility of selling a new higher quality. Within the vertical product differentiation it identifies the necessary and sufficient conditions for quality improvement to take place when a good, produced by a monopolist, exhibits positive network externalities. When network effects are not very strong, the monopolist produces both the high and the low quality and thus quality improvement takes place. In this case, he will use an introductory pricing strategy for the quality that benefits from network externalities, not maximizing however the network size. As the network effect becomes more important, the monopolist will have an incentive to practise introductory pricing and produce both qualities. Finally, if the network externality is higher than the intrinsic quality differential, quality improvement does not take place. Chapter 5 deals with the problem of an incumbent producing a low quality good with network externalities that faces the threat of entry by a higher quality good. In the framework of a vertical product differentiation model, it is identified a necessary and sufficient condition under which quality improvements are spontaneously adopted along, in spite of the existence of network effects. This condition says that the intensity of network effects on consumers' preferences should not exceed twice the differential of intrinsic qualities existing between the two variants. Finally, chapter 6 is concerned with the optimal path of prices of a monopolist who operates in a network industry for a finite horizon. Agents obtain intrinsic utility from the good and from the fact that in the past there have been other consumers using it. It is observed that the monopolist has an incentive to introduce the good at initially low prices and to increase the price as the time goes by. This chapter concludes with a necessary and sufficient condition under which the initial price, and only the initial one is zero. This condition is related both with the intensity of the preferences for the network and with the time horizon of the monopolist.

There has been little understanding of how consumers adopt and use the mobile Internet. This dissertation seeks to bridge this gap in prior literature by focusing on consumers’ cross-platform consumption behavior on mobile devices. The first study of this dissertation addresses how the adoption of mobile applications influences the use of corresponding mobile websites. Pseudo-panel analysis based on repeated cross-sectional data suggests that the introduction of a mobile app by a major national media company leads to a significant increase in demand at the corresponding mobile news website. In addition, it reports that this effect is greater for consumers with higher appreciation for concentrated news content, with stronger propensity for a particular political viewpoint, and with fewer time constraints. The results are consistent with the interpretation that adoption of a provider’s news app stimulates corresponding mobile news website visits. The second study of this dissertation examines whether the quality of local fixed-line Internet service influences mobile Internet adoption and usage. An empirical analysis shows that local fixed-line Internet speed relates negatively to mobile Internet adoption and usage; if the local fixed-line connection is insufficient, consumers tend to get online through their mobile phones. Further, better local mobile Internet speed increases the likelihood of adopting and using the mobile Internet. Neither fixed-line nor mobile Internet speed has significant impacts on mobile-specific offline services such as taking photos or videos. In some circumstances, competition between the two platforms is stronger, such as among younger consumers and those living in areas with lower fixed-line Internet speeds.

Although many organizations strive to employ the latest technologies, the adoption and diffusion of these technologies might not happen as anticipated. The growth of small-to-medium businesses can have a detrimental impact on the efficiency of the employees in executing internal business processes. In many cases, particularly in this scenario, technology was called upon to remedy the situation. Through a canonical action research project, we investigated and analysed the technology adoption and diffusion issues that the professional construction management team of a small-to-medium-sized construction company was experiencing. During this action research project, literature suggested that technology adoption issues were confirmed. In addition new issues were identified and analysed. By means of a conceptualized figure, the changes in the understanding and relationships among mobile computing adoption and diffusion issues experienced in this construction company were illustrated. This study concludes by providing a theoretical framework that illustrates the mobile computing adoption and diffusion issues, as well as an explanation of significant issues that should be considered in the endeavour of successful mobile computing adoption and diffusion within a small-to-medium-sized construction company, based in Gauteng, South Africa. / Dissertation (MIT)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Informatics / unrestricted

Growing concerns about greenhouse gas emissions as well as electricity prices have led to more serious efforts by the state and federal government to provide promote renewable energy at affordable costs. I examine the effect of policies and incentives on added commercial solar PV capacity while controlling for pro-environmental preferences, energy prices, geographic controls, and demographic controls. I use county-level data that spans twelve northeastern states and the District of Columbia from 2005 through 2013. I utilize the Tobit estimator to account for a mass point of solar PV capacity at zero kilowatts. The results suggest that loans, performance-based incentives, rebates, sales tax waivers, and net metering standards increase the amount of added solar PV capacity. Solar Renewable Energy credits have a small impact on PV capacity growth, while interconnection standard and renewable portfolio standards are not statistically significant. If policy administrators aim to increase the amount of commercial solar PV, then they should consider loans, rebates, and performance-based incentives as the most effective policies.