Knowledge that Transforms

Total volume of sale of the alcohol beverages in the retail sale sector on the territory of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, in the period 1965-95, was relatively dynamic and uneven, considering the volume of sale and as well as its structure. Sale trends of the alcohol beverages on the total and on the individual bases by product, have been shaped as two and two and a half trade cycles, with a smaller characteristic differences. The end of the observed period, has been marked up by a tendency of a sale stabilization of the analyzed sale merchandise. In the total volume of sale of the alcohol beverages, beer is participating with over 70%, wine with more than 17%, of natural plum brandies of around 6.5%, and the rest alcohol beverages with around 5.5%. Volume and dynamics of the total sale of alcohol beverages is strongly determined by the participation of beer and wine. At the same time, in the total consumption of alcohol beverages (domestically consumed and traded on the market) the participation of beer and of strong alcohol drinks is increased, while the participation of wine and natural brandies is decreased.

The paper points out to the importance and significance of selection and implementation of the appropriate strategies for gaining comparative advantage of Post and telecommunications, taking into account all the external environment factors as well as the internal environment elements. The strategy must be based on harmonization and synergy of all the activities with the purpose of implementation of the mission and goals with adaptation to the conditions of the environment. As public operators, Post and telecommunications may acquire their competitive advantage by development and implementation of a successful business operation strategy that is based on synergetic basis of the appropriate competitive attributes.

An overview of three phases of the process of implementation and development of the Internet in Yugoslavia with the numeric facts on Internet users in Yugoslavia with a comparison to the same facts on countries in transition is given in the first part of this paper. Results of a market survey of Internet users, carried out in September and October 1997 in Belgrade is presented in the second part of this paper. In the third part, an overview of the marketing and promotional aspect of the Internet in Yugoslavia and in the developed countries is presented.

The biggest reason why the industry is embracing optimizers now is because it needs them to manage the number of options available for a typical media plan. In 1980, when a national TV advertising plan was constructed from a base of about 20 viable national TV outlets, a media planner could do a reasonable job of sorting through the potential combinations to come up with an optimal plan. That year media planner had about 1,024 viable combinations to consider. But in 1998, with 100 national TV outlets that same media planner would need to process 1.125 quadrillion different combinations to arrive at the optimum mix for a given plan. That is simply too many variables for a human being to process and is the greatest argument for the development of optimizers. Optimizer is a tool that allow us to achieve communications objectives in a reasonably efficient manner. Optimizers are not going to replace the inherent skill of a good media planner. What they're going to do is let him go through a number of options quickly and then pick one that's quickly and then pick one that's best suited for his communications objectives.

Batsell and Polking (1985) developed one of the important choice models that address the problem of independence from irrelevant alternatives. In this note, we propose an estimation method that directly estimates Batsell and Polking's model. Compared to the indirect estimation method suggested by Batsell and Polking, the direct method is simpler, making the BP model more accessible to potential users.

Reflection of the editor-in-chief of Marketing Science about the complexity of the editorial and reviewing process.

Consumers now purchase several offerings from direct sellers, including catalog and Internet marketers. These direct channels exist in parallel with the conventional retail stores. The availability...

We applaud the advances in this colloquy and the areas of convergence that are emerging. However, this reply points out that the purported benefits of “bait and switch” found in Hess and Gerstner (1998) are predicated upon (i) only a single component (availability) within the broader domain of bait and switch; (ii) the assumption that one of the parameters in the consumer utility function differs with the availability of advertised brands; and (iii) a further assumption that no other parameters in the model will change when the availability condition changes. After assessing these developments, we conclude that (i) the legal status of bait-and-switch schemes is fine as it stands; (ii) when understood in their true complexity, parameters in the consumer utility functions likely will not differ with regard to availability, thus obviating the finding of increased consumer welfare; and (iii) even if it is believed that utility functions would differ, effects on other model parameters clearly suggest that consumers will be worse off with bait and switch. Despite these differences, however, we are pleased with the developments the dialogue has produced.