O presente trabalho analisa a importância da determinação de preços para a competitividade do varejo supermercadista. Após uma revisão da literatura sobre as diversas definições de preços e as formas de estabelecê-los, são analisadas as seis etapas propostas por especialistas de marketing para o apreçamento estratégico de produtos. Nessas seis etapas são discutidas a influência da demanda e a importância dos custos, os métodos de estabelecimento mais utilizados, descrevendo-se suas características e limitações, as técnicas de adequação à diversas situações, bem como a seleção do preço final. Os passos adotados pelos varejistas são também abordados, assim como outras variáveis que têm impacto na estratégia escolhida para se fixar os preços nos supermercados, além da demanda, dos custos e dos concorrentes. Por fim, as estratégias de apreçamento são estudadas empiricamente, por meio de entrevistas em profundidade com gerentes de três redes de varejo de grande porte que atuam no mercado nacional, onde é verificada a utilização das técnicas de apreçamento, como instrumento de auxílio na tomada de decisões relacionadas aos programas de preço da empresa. Em conclusão, verifica-se que à medida que os especialistas em varejo buscam mais bases científicas e confiáveis para auxiliar na tomada de decisões quanto à definição de políticas de preços, é essencial que possuam uma compreensão clara dos conceitos e das variáveis da que influenciam na determinação dos preços dos produtos que comercializam, assim como o conhecimento das diversas técnicas de apreçamento, além do mark-up. / The present paper analyses the importance of pricing for the competitiveness of the retail sector (supermarkets). After a bibliographic survey on the several definitions concerning price and how it is determinate, six steps, proposed by marketing experts, to products strategic pricing are analyzed. In these steps, the demand influence, the costs importance and the most important pricing methods are discussed, describing their characteristics and limitations, the techniques to adequate it to different situations, as so as the final price selection. The steps that are adopted by supermarket retail are also outlined, thus as the variables that have some influence on its chosen pricing strategy. Demand and competitors costs are also analyzed. Finally, pricing strategies are empirically studied through multicases study on three large retail chains. In this part, the use by these companies of pricing methods as a tool to assist decision making related to the long-run pricing programs is verified. In conclusion, it is seen that, while retail specialists seek more scientific and reliable bases for aiding the decisions regarding the price strategies, it is essential that they posses a clear comprehension of the concepts and the variables that have influence on products price determination that are commercialized by themselves, as well as the technical skills to pricing, besides the mark-up method.

This thesis seeks to examine the status of retail investors’ protection in the Hellenic legal order, under the light of EU law; focusing on investment firm failure as a result of tort, it investigates whether the EU and Hellenic normative systems aim at and achieve effective protection of retail investors. It explores in particular the issue of ex lege liability of compensation schemes and the issue of non-contractual liability of supervisory authorities. In case of intermediary failure the minimum protection is awarded by EU law in the form of ex lege compensation does not establish a coherent system, and the legal status of retail investors vis-à-vis depositors remains uncertain in many respects. The ECJ has denied application of the acquis on individual protection to depositors in Peter Paul, with regard to non-contractual liability of supervisors, but the application of its reasoning in the area of investment services is doubtful. The new EU finance law and architecture does not fundamentally affect these conclusions. On the other hand, retail investor protection may validly be considered as an autonomous aim of finance law in the Hellenic legal order. Despite inefficiencies connected also to the structure of relevant EU rules transposed, and despite the incoherence of the various national rules on the liquidation of financial intermediaries and the operation of compensation schemes –in particular with regard to claim verification– yet effective protection of retail investors may a priori be achieved through the existing national judicial mechanism. This dynamic is demonstrated by recent case-law on protection of retail investors in the context of ex lege compensation; yet it seems to lessen in the area of non-contractual liability of supervisors. Even though ex lege immunity of supervisors has been denied by case-law, the effectiveness of protection has been mitigated by the strict substantive criteria formulated.

Thesis. 1975. M.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Alfred P. Sloan School of Management. / Bibliography: leaves 134-138. / by Robert L. Klimm and James J. Montgomery. / M.S.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of country of origin (COO) on the UK fashion industry, with specific reference to retail and wholesale brands. In this study, the fashion industry encompasses both manufacturing and branding perspectives. This qualitative study comprised 23 in-depth interviews with key informants from large-scale retailers, manufacturers and textile consultancy companies, thereby analysing the issues from an industry, rather than consumer, perspective. The key informants were chosen using a judgmental sampling approach, and the data obtained were analysed using a thematic approach. The notion of country of origin is deemed important because the existing literature suggests that COO, has been considered as an effective branding device with which consumers associate when evaluating the quality of the product and when making purchasing decisions. However, no research has examined country of origin from an industry perspective, and the findings in the UK context are limited in the existing literature. Consequently, this study contributes to the body of knowledge about the importance of COO, and its implication on retail and wholesale brands in the UK fashion industry. The findings of this research also have practical implications for manufacturers and retailers, informing the debate on the value of the 'Made in [...]' epithet, and how country of origin can be used as a branding strategy. This study demonstrates that country of origin is considered important in the UK fashion industry in terms of its strategic importance to organisations. Moreover, COO is manifested in different ways, depending on brand positioning, long-term strategic plan, expertise, brand history and values. Another finding that emerged as a key theme is the blurring of retail and wholesale brands. Thus, the study has found that retailers are becoming wholesale-oriented businesses by selling own label products through third party retailers, including online via pure-play retailers (e.g. ASOS), and concessions within department stores. This is being done to expose brands internationally, to develop a global recognition, as well as improve the brand image. Furthermore, wholesale brands are becoming retail-oriented in order to enjoy superior profit margins, to have control over the product merchandise and to increase customer loyalty. Finally, the study developed a typology of strategic action and implications of country of origin to include the blurring of differences whereby, for instance, brand name is used to promote country of brand origin by both retail and wholesale brands, however, how this manifests itself differs in the sense that retailers promote via sub-brand name, and wholesales have associations with company's name.

In this thesis, we corroborate that the optimality in discounted profit setting is attained by a threshold policy which consists of base stock level and price switch thresholds. And we prove that the optimality and the structured properties of the optimal policy are inherit to the average profit setting. Furthermore, we find that the optimal policy in average profit setting is a piece-wise constant, left continuous and increasing function of the contractual sales rate, and the optimal average profit is a concave function about the contractual sales rate. More importantly, we evaluate the long-term contract with average profit criterion and provide an optimal supply curve, which is a strictly increasing function of contractual sales price. Manufacturer can use the curve as a baseline to negotiate a contract with contractual customer, who may present a demand curve. In addition, we extend the main results to an emergent supply mode, and we find that the optimal average profit is not only a concave function of contractual sales rate, but also an increasing concave function of the sales rate when the contractual purchase price is postulated to be higher than the additional penalty cost. / Keywords. Make-to-stock production mode, Capacity allocation, Production control, Retailing system, Demand process management, Dynamic pricing, Contract evaluation, Finished goods inventory management, Demand curve, Supply curve, Poisson process. / This thesis investigates a situation in which a manufacturing system produces a single item in make-to-stock mode with controllable production capability and sells the product through two independent marketing channels: a long-term contractual sales channel with constant prices and sales rate pre-specified by primary negotiation, and another retail market with dynamic prices specified by the manufacturer. In this setting, maximizing the long run average (or total) profit not only depends on joint management of the finished goods inventory and demand processes, but more importantly, depends on capacity allocation between these two sales channels. / Chen Liuxin. / "August 2006." / Adviser: Yonyi Feng. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-03, Section: B, page: 1909. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 110-117). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [200-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / School code: 1307.

Ingeniera Civil Industrial / En los últimos años, el mercado chileno de mejoramiento del hogar se ha desarrollado con gran rapidez en comparación al continente, generando una alta competencia entre las empresas participantes. De acuerdo a esta situación, es esencial que las compañías cuenten herramientas que apoyen su estrategia de expansión, como métodos que le permitan pronosticar las ventas de locales potenciales, donde resulta fundamental que aprovechen las oportunidades que se les presentan tomando decisiones acertadas. De este modo, este trabajo tiene como objetivo crear un modelo de pronóstico de ventas, para apoyar la decisión de apertura de nuevas tiendas de una cadena de mejoramiento del hogar a lo largo de Chile. Para lograr lo planteado, se caracteriza el método que actualmente utiliza la empresa, se revisan modelos y estudios vinculados con la descripción y estimación de demanda en el comercio minorista. En la actualidad existen varios modelos de estimación de ventas, que reúnen diversas características de los productos, mercado y población. Luego, se seleccionan las variables que podrían influir en la predicción y que se considerarán. Para estimar los modelos, se consideran las variables de superficie del local, distancia a la competencia, ubicación compartida, sector en que se ubican los locales, población en las zonas de influencia, caracterización de los hogares, barreras físicas y PIB. Adicionalmente, se determina su forma funcional con las ventas de los locales, usando gráficos de dispersión y análisis de regresión. Se estiman modelos mediante regresiones, utilizando el método de mínimos cuadrados y LASSO, considerando el valor promedio de las variables seleccionadas y los datos desagregados por local y año. Se compara el desempeño de estimación de los modelos realizados mediante los indicadores R2, AIC, BIC y MAPE. El modelo seleccionado se estima con el método de mínimos cuadrados, tiene un coeficiente de determinación, R2, de 73% y un error de pronóstico del 14%. El ajuste de este modelo podría ser mejorado en el tiempo con la recopilación de nuevos registros para las variables utilizadas.

Lei, Tian. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-97). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.i / Acknowledgement --- p.v / Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Background and Motivation --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Objectives and Contribution --- p.5 / Chapter 1.3 --- Thesis Organization --- p.6 / Chapter 2 --- Literature Review --- p.8 / Chapter 3 --- Mathematical Model --- p.15 / Chapter 3.1 --- Stock-out Based Substitution --- p.15 / Chapter 3.1.1 --- Customer Response to Stock-out --- p.15 / Chapter 3.1.2 --- Patterns of Substitution --- p.17 / Chapter 3.1.3 --- Demand Models under Substitution --- p.18 / Chapter 3.2 --- Model Description and Formulation --- p.23 / Chapter 3.2.1 --- Model Description --- p.23 / Chapter 3.2.2 --- Customer Demand Model --- p.25 / Chapter 3.2.3 --- Substitution Model Formulation --- p.27 / Chapter 3.3 --- Information Availability --- p.29 / Chapter 3.4 --- Summary and Discussion --- p.32 / Chapter 4 --- Parameter Estimation --- p.36 / Chapter 4.1 --- Preliminaries --- p.36 / Chapter 4.2 --- Estimation of Initial Probabilities --- p.38 / Chapter 4.3 --- Estimation of Substitution Probabilities --- p.41 / Chapter 4.3.1 --- Case I: Only One Product Unavailable --- p.41 / Chapter 4.3.2 --- Case II: Two Products Unavailable --- p.44 / Chapter 4.3.3 --- Case III: More than Two Products Unavailable --- p.47 / Chapter 4.4 --- Summary --- p.51 / Chapter 5 --- Numerical Examples --- p.53 / Chapter 5.1 --- Examples Based on Simulated Data --- p.54 / Chapter 5.1.1 --- Preliminary Numerical Example --- p.54 / Chapter 5.1.2 --- Performance under Different Substitution Forms --- p.63 / Chapter 5.1.3 --- Effects of Service Level --- p.67 / Chapter 5.1.4 --- Effects of Data Volume --- p.70 / Chapter 5.2 --- Real Case from Retail Industry --- p.72 / Chapter 5.2.1 --- Data --- p.72 / Chapter 5.2.2 --- Estimation Results and Further Discussion .. --- p.74 / Chapter 6 --- Concluding Remarks --- p.79 / Chapter Appendix A --- Data Sets for the Retail Market Example --- p.83 / Chapter Appendix B --- Conference Presentations --- p.90 / References --- p.91

V České republice došlo v posledních letech k silné konsolidaci maloobchodu. Zahraniční řetězce provádějí intenzivní expanzi do menších měst a obcí, které byly donedávna posledním útočištěm nezávislých domácích obchodníků. Ti jsou nuceni bojovat o přežití na vysoce konkurenčním trhu. Je otázkou, zda to může být boj úspěšný. Má analýza zjišťuje, zda má vybraný podnik Jednota Jindřichův Hradec šanci obstát v konkurenci zahraničních řetězců a udržet se na trhu, případně zvýšit svůj tržní podíl či výnosnost.

A retail market in the Czech Republic has registred in last twenty years an unusual growth. A lot of retail companies were established here in our country and very significantly changed current sales network and a Czech shopping behaviour. This thesis is divided into three parts. First part describes elementary concept regarding to trade and retail marketing. Furthermore there is a description of historical evolution of retail in the Czech Republic and discount stores development in foreign countries. Second part is devoted to a Czech retail market and to an analysis in chosen retail chain stores, their marketing activities and key economic indicators. Third part includes a questionnaire research and a survey of in-store communication in a pastry area of retail units in Pribram. The thesis is ended up by a conclusion, results and observation.

O presente trabalho analisa a importância da determinação de preços para a competitividade do varejo supermercadista. Após uma revisão da literatura sobre as diversas definições de preços e as formas de estabelecê-los, são analisadas as seis etapas propostas por especialistas de marketing para o apreçamento estratégico de produtos. Nessas seis etapas são discutidas a influência da demanda e a importância dos custos, os métodos de estabelecimento mais utilizados, descrevendo-se suas características e limitações, as técnicas de adequação à diversas situações, bem como a seleção do preço final. Os passos adotados pelos varejistas são também abordados, assim como outras variáveis que têm impacto na estratégia escolhida para se fixar os preços nos supermercados, além da demanda, dos custos e dos concorrentes. Por fim, as estratégias de apreçamento são estudadas empiricamente, por meio de entrevistas em profundidade com gerentes de três redes de varejo de grande porte que atuam no mercado nacional, onde é verificada a utilização das técnicas de apreçamento, como instrumento de auxílio na tomada de decisões relacionadas aos programas de preço da empresa. Em conclusão, verifica-se que à medida que os especialistas em varejo buscam mais bases científicas e confiáveis para auxiliar na tomada de decisões quanto à definição de políticas de preços, é essencial que possuam uma compreensão clara dos conceitos e das variáveis da que influenciam na determinação dos preços dos produtos que comercializam, assim como o conhecimento das diversas técnicas de apreçamento, além do mark-up. / The present paper analyses the importance of pricing for the competitiveness of the retail sector (supermarkets). After a bibliographic survey on the several definitions concerning price and how it is determinate, six steps, proposed by marketing experts, to products strategic pricing are analyzed. In these steps, the demand influence, the costs importance and the most important pricing methods are discussed, describing their characteristics and limitations, the techniques to adequate it to different situations, as so as the final price selection. The steps that are adopted by supermarket retail are also outlined, thus as the variables that have some influence on its chosen pricing strategy. Demand and competitors costs are also analyzed. Finally, pricing strategies are empirically studied through multicases study on three large retail chains. In this part, the use by these companies of pricing methods as a tool to assist decision making related to the long-run pricing programs is verified. In conclusion, it is seen that, while retail specialists seek more scientific and reliable bases for aiding the decisions regarding the price strategies, it is essential that they posses a clear comprehension of the concepts and the variables that have influence on products price determination that are commercialized by themselves, as well as the technical skills to pricing, besides the mark-up method.