ITAB Shop Concept Nässjö AB is a major actor in the shop interior decoration market. ITAB has during several years, seen their inventory levels increase and has experienced efficiency problems in their purchasing. Part of ITAB's problems is their customers’ very unsteady demand and their inability to give ITAB good information on when and where they will open or refurbish their stores. In ITAB’s efforts to improve their purchasing they have decided to move from a system where they exchange single orders with their suppliers, with a given, fixed delivery time, to a system of sending block orders and exchange forecasts. The block order system means that ITAB places an order for the full amount of an article needed during a set period. The suppliers will then deliver the amount needed by ITAB at several occasions specified by ITAB. Delivery schedules and forecast will give the supplier the information as to how much and when to deliver. However, this change has yet to be implemented. The purpose of this study is thus to analyse what effects such a change might have on ITAB and their suppliers. The study made is based on a qualitative approach. The information used to analyse the problem was acquired through several semi-structured interviews with different managers within ITAB as well as two people within each of the supplier organisations. Five of ITAB’s suppliers were interviewed. The people interviewed in the supplier organisations all belonged to sales, or order department or production planning or vice president. Mapping was used to illustrate the current order flow, purchasing flow, and production flow within ITAB as well as the order flow in the supplier organisations. The outcome of the interviews was that several of the suppliers showed a very positive attitude to the implementation of the block order system. The cooperation between them and ITAB seemed, according to both parties, to be working well. A good relationship is a good basis to introduce new routines and deepen the relationship. The suppliers believed that a forecast would give them the possibility to improve their production planning as well as their capacity use. However, each supplier set terms for its implementation. One being that the information sharing between the two companies must improve. ITAB also have to take the responsibility as well as ownership of everything they purchase. If this is the case, most suppliers aired a certain promise to be able to store ITAB’s products before delivering and to be able to implement the block order system. However, there need to be further negotiations between ITAB and the suppliers to discuss and settle the exact terms of contract. It is the authors’ belief that some prerequisites must be fulfilled before ITAB implements the block order system. The information sharing between the two companies must improve. If the forecast shall give the suppliers some benefits, they need to be as accurate as possible. The communication about orders has to be timelier and fit the suppliers lead times better. Today, the suppliers often receive order information from ITAB too late, which causes difficulties. If the suppliers are to trust the forecasts, they must be as accurate as possible. It is the author’s belief that if this is not so the suppliers will increase their inventory costs as well as continue to have difficulties delivering. It is also the author’s belief that the communication between sales and purchasing in ITAB needs to improve so that the forecast can be updated in a timely fashion as well as correctly. More involvement of suppliers as well as purchasing and production within ITAB’s product development phase could help them prepare for changes, and prevent mishaps.

Two of the most important internal functions within a company, which have gained increased importance, are purchasing and logistics. Purchasing and logistics both contribute to the competitiveness of an organisation by conducting different value adding activities separately. There is also a huge potential for increased benefits if a high degree of integration exists between the two functions. Although there is evidence that purchasing and logistics have been working closely together historically, the operational focus of logistics and the commercial focus of purchasing have created a tension between the two functions. It has been shown that some purchasing managers mostly have been committed to reducing the price. The logistics function has as a cause of this sometimes been forced to deal with late deliveries and inferior quality from suppliers. To manage the interface activities between the functions is crucial in order to able to achieve integration. Purchasing and logistics functions are of major importance within wholesaling companies because they are considered as core internal functions. This study has been conducted at the wholesaling companies The Body Shop, Hälsokostcentralen (HKC), Mekonomen, Elgiganten and ICA. Research questions: § What activities exist within the purchasing and logistics function at the specific wholesaling companies and which of these activities are integrated? § What are the factors that influence the integration between the purchasing and logistics functions and how do these factors hinder or enable the integration? Purpose: Initially this thesis aims to identify what activities that exist and which of them that are integrated between the purchasing and logistics functions within the wholesaling companies The Body Shop, HKC, Mekonomen, Elgiganten and ICA. Furthermore the purpose is to identify what factors that influence the integration between the purchasing and logistics function in these companies and also explain how these factors hinder and enable the integration.

The rising globalisation, supported by rapid technology innovations has changed our current business environment within the last years. As a result, especially SMEs have to cope with a higher pressure of maximising their efficiency and competitiveness in order to survive on the market. Nevertheless, many managers recognised the great potential of outsourcing to utilise the enormous benefits of external suppliers to solve this problem. For instance, it enables the SMEs to concentrate on their core capabilities combined with exploiting synergy affects of the supplier cooperation as costs savings, access to R&D knowledge etc. But the outsourcing dimension changed as well, due to the increased globalisation, companies are not hesitating anymore to step over their country boundaries and offshore to high promising emerging countries like China. However, offshoring cannot perform miracles, more it presents one of the most strategic and complex decisions affecting the whole company. Based on these facts, this Master Thesis investigates how an SME should outsource to China. The basis of the outsourcing decision is examined to make the right strategic decision, which is illustrated with a developed model. More, the supplier selection and maintenance are explained, followed by the description of the facts which have to be considered when offshoring to China. Particularly due to the focus on offshoring to China, this thesis will further look into the affects of the Chinese culture on the companies’ networks. The research is based on a case study, which is further used to derive general conclusions for other SMEs. The result of the investigation is that SMEs should decide which parts to outsource from a strategic point of view. Further to cope with the lack of resources and the Chinese cultural issues the cooperation with an intermediary is recommended.

Purchasing power parity (PPP) is considered as an important theory of explaining how exchange rate varies in the long run. Most of empirical studies in the past adapted linear cointegration method to test the purchasing power parity. However, there are papers point out that exchange rate exists non-linear cointegration and unexplainable bias might exist in testing the purchase power parity theory while using linear cointegration test. The methodology of this study is based on an application of ESTR ECM proposed by Kapetaniosetet al. to enhance the inadequate of linear cointegration test. We analyze the dynamic adjusting behavior of short-term nominal exchange rate with ESTR ECM model while the non-linear cointegratoin exists. The empirical result indicates that the purchase power parity between Taiwan and its major trading countries is confirmed. Among the trading countries, American, Japan and Hong Kong are suitable for using linear error correction model and non-linear error correction model for Singapore and Korea.

Group insurance could be regarded as a part of employee¡¦s welfare, typically in the study objectives, cross straits have the same culture and race; and a vast of Taiwanese businessmen over there in the recent years, will this fashion transfer from Taiwan and affect with Mainland China--this is one of the study motives. The study objectives are as follows: 1. Using the questionnaires investigation, it examines the affecting factors of management analyses for the group insurance and the demographic variables effects of group insurance purchasing and renewal. 2. Using interview approach, it links with cross straits of managers engaging on group insurance in the practical management frequently meeting difficulties and their related of cooping strategies. 3. Combining the research conclusions and results, it offers the management systems in the application as the suggestions in the cross straits of group insurance industries. The research results are as follows: 1. For the reliability, Taiwan and China¡¦s group insurance of purchasing and renewal consideration factors are more than 0.78. 2. For the validity, the questionnaires refer Huang (2006) and Kuo (2007) or similar contents and aim at the research case company¡¦s characters and modifications so as to fits the content validity. 3. For the correlations, all aspects between cross straits of group insurance purchasing and renewal factors are attained 99% significantly and positively levels. 4. For the differences of group insurance purchasing and renewal, the genders have no significantly different. The monthly incomes exhibit significantly different. The numbers of employees show very significantly different. As for the company¡¦s capital amounts, Taiwan is very significantly different, but China is significantly different.

At May 2003, Taiwan¡¦s Internet auction market has been rising by one of eBay¡¦s advertisement ¡§ Mrs. Tang¡¦s favor Pan-Long vast is broken by her husband.¡¨ And that brings Taiwan¡¦s Internet auction market into the Warring States era. You can see that from the number of Yahoo auction¡¦s volume of merchandise trade, which grew suddenly from 2000 deals at September 2001 to 18 million deals at May 2003. it¡¦s growth rate is 900 times, and the sum of merchandise trade money is more than NT 100 billions. There are a lot of chances to make money in this burgeoning market. The consumer can save a lot of time and money from shopping on Internet auction, but this high technology benefit also creates various Internet cheating behavior. That¡¦s the reason why people love this new transaction way, but are afraid to get hut from it at the same time. So, this research is focus on the consumer purchasing motivation and perceptive risk, attempting to realize the consumer¡¦s demand and the behavior of avoiding perceptive risk by analyze how purchasing motivation and perceptive risk will effect the purchasing willing. And from analyzing the characteristics of the consumer, hope that we can provide suitable improving advises to the manager. This research has received 210 valid questionnaires. We use two level cluster analysis and discriminant analysis to separate our sample data into three clusters by purchasing motivation and perceptive risk: The sample data is separate into high-demand motivation cluster, middle-demand motivation cluster and low-demand motivation cluster. About the variable of perceptive risk, the data is separated into financial-performance risk cluster, security risk cluster and physical-time risk cluster. And then,£q2 analysis, one-way ANOVA, factor analysis, canonical correlation analysis and Pearson correlation analysis are used for deeper analysis and discussion. The following list is our research result and finding: 1. On the Internet auction, the consumer¡¦s purchasing motivation will effect their purchasing willing. When you have stronger motivation to purchase on Internet auction, your purchasing willing will be higher. 2. Perceptive risk will effect the consumer¡¦s willing to purchase on the Internet auction. When you have stronger perceptive risk to purchase on Internet auction, your purchasing willing will be lower. 3. Perceptive risk will effect the consumer¡¦s motivation to purchase on the Internet auction. When you have stronger perceptive risk to purchase on Internet auction, your motivation will be lower. 4. Perceptive risk, purchase motivation and purchase willing would be influenced by personal attribute. But the effect of demographic statistics variables, some of personal attributes, is not strong. In the contract, the effect of the other personal attributes, Internet behavior, make the perceptive risk, purchasing motivation and purchasing willing obviously different.

The studies of exchange rate theory in international finance are divided into several schools. Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) is one important hypothesis in both the Monetary Exchange Rate theory and the main theory in the Open Macroeconomics Model. Although many models are found upon the existence of PPP, but it still has not been proved empirically. That is why it¡¦s important to examine the existence of PPP. In the past, the statistic analyzing processes are all made directly under the models since all variables have been assumed stationary. However, regressing two non-stationary variables may result in Spurious Regression. The Unit Roots Test and Cointegration Test are developed in order to avoid the problem of spurious regression. Therefore, Unit Roots Test and Cointegration Test should be applied to the variables before estimating during regression analyses. Concerning the power deficiency of Unit Roots Test and Cointegration Test, many researches have adopted the combination time-series and cross-section Panel Data Model in order to improve the power and limitation of small samples. The Panel-Unit Root Test and Panel-Cointegration Test have therefore been developed to avoid Spurious Regression. However, Panel-Unit Root Test and Panel-Cointegration Test are applied with long time-series and large cross-section. Nevertheless, obtaining the data has always been the toughest difficulty during empirical researches, let alone the need for long period and large unit data. These Panel Data Models can only be applied to studies for long period, but not to the short periods. In order to avoid these problems; Binder, Hsiao and Pesaran (2004) have developed the Short Panel Vector Autoregressions (sPVAR) Model, a Panel Data Model developed with short time-series and large cross-section. Therefore, this paper will focus on Purchasing Power Parity under the sPVAR Model with the examination of PPP for the 30 countries since the introduction of Euro (1998 to 2004).

Purchase is an important link in business management. Practically, it covers the applications of various theories such as psychology, financial management, international trade, the science of law and other social sciences. However, owing to the relative conservative nature of purchase and the environment under which the ordinary enterprises lay particular stress on sales performance, the real effect of purchase is usually overlooked by enterprises when they receive good profits. In terms of the purposes of business growth and acquirement of market competitive advantages, no matter whether the core competitive power of a company is service, sale or production, or whether a company is of profit-making or non profit-making nature, a purchasing system with economic effect is an indispensable and basic appeal for the operation and management of the company. The primary purpose of this study is to carry out academic study on the differences between theories and practices in the purchasing system and its implementation. The study tries to prove that the excellent ¡§system¡¨ highly praised by the society is not only constructed on a single basis of ¡§formal rules¡¨ with the theory of new institutional economics. It is believed that there are still other factors affecting the result of implementing the system. Through researches, analysis, and comparison between the system and its practical implementation, this thesis finds that the study results are consistent with the three aspects of the new institutional economics: ¡§informal limits¡¨, ¡§formal rules¡¨ and ¡§institutional changes¡¨. That means all drawbacks come from the failure of ¡§informal limits¡¨ such as people¡¦s code of conduct, norms of conduct, customs, culture, habits, etc. and loopholes found in the ¡§formal rules¡¨ under limited norms. Meanwhile, if the root causes of such system failure can¡¦t be found from the informal limits, even though we impose more restrictive conditions on the purchasing system and force it to produce an institutional change, the formal rules after such change are still insufficient to become the main tool for eliminating all drawbacks or an effective method for solving the corrupt practices.

With the development of the Internet, people can communicate with each other much more easily. Consumers with similar needs can conduct a collective purchase with potential suppliers by the Internet. Currently, there are many web sites providing collective purchasing for consumers. However, these collective purchasing functions have not fully taken the advantages of the Internet for either consumers or suppliers.Therefore, the first purpose of this research is to explore the possible online collective purchasing models. Based on the number of suppliers and the number of products, six collective purchasing models and related algorithms have been proposed. Further, a comprehensive cybermediary system architecture for collective purchasing was described. Finally, a prototype is built to demonstrate how these collective purchasing models work.

Traditionally, group buying is a way to lower down the price due to the group based collective bargaining power. In the Internet age, because the Internet provides more efficient communication tools, it is much easier to recruit more participants to join the group buying to increase the bargaining power and then to lower down the buying price. Hence, in 1998, Mercata proposed an innovative website using group buying as its business model. Since then, there is more and more group buying websites with different group buying models. For single product group buying, there are two most often used models, price acceptance model and free pricing model. The purpose of this thesis is to probe the performance of these two models. First, whether there is difference between the final transaction volumes of these two models and how the difference will be intervened by different price level of product are explored. The next concern is to find what kinds of personal factors of participants will affect their choice of group buying model. The result is that the performance and participants¡¦ satisfaction of free pricing model are better than those of price acceptance model. In addition, the choice of group buying models will be influenced by the ideal price, group size expected by the participants and their motivations.