Market Sensing Today

$21.99

The concept and framework of market sensing was introduced by George Day more than 20 years ago into the strategic marketing literature – especially the philosophy of the market-driven organization. Market sensing can be considered an expression of a company’s capabilities to scan the external environment. It does this by using real time data and intelligence to understand business or uncertain changes, to meet the current and future needs of the market, increase customer value, and outperform competitors. Market sensing enables managers to resist complacency, as well as to exploit opportunities and to design appropriate competitive strategies in order to remain successful in today’s uncertain, rapidly changing, and hypercompetitive market. Market Sensing Today is essential reading in the marketing discipline, given the rapidly escalating innovative developments in market sensing techniques. This book of essays by acknowledged experts in the field fills an important knowledge gap and provides a realistic basis for strategy. It is replete with real-life examples of market sensing that illustrate actionable ideas for immediate impact that will improve organizational learning and accelerate growth.

Launching New Products: Best Marketing and Sales Practices

$21.99

So, why this book? New product launches can be more effective! What is the ultimate measure of effectiveness? Sales dollars, profit dollars and growth rates are excellent measures. But how do you know that the launch is the best it can be? There is no endorsed standard that is used to evaluate the actions leading up to the launch, and corrective actions used during the product launch. As a result, business leaders make their own judgments and never truly know how much more successful they could have been.

The goals of this book are to discuss critical topics in launching new products, and to distill successful approaches from hundreds of publications and experience from launching over 50 new products into a checklist for marketing leaders, CEOs, and board members. The function of this checklist is to force consideration and completion of tasks that drive a successful product launch.

How Strong Is Your Firm’s Competitive Advantage, Second Edition

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Perhaps the most confounding characteristic of the competitive marketplace is that everyone wants a piece of the action. If a firm successfully enters a new market, creates a new product, or designs new innovations for an existing product, it’s just a matter of time before competitors follow suit. And the influx of competition inevitably places downward pressure on both price and profitability.
Whether you’re an economics student or a manager with absolutely no background in economics, this book will help you make better decisions and learn more about the Five Forces Model, (first published in 1979 by Harvard economist Michael Porter) which identifies the characteristics that can help insulate a firm from competitive forces.
This book brings microeconomic theory into the world of the business manager rather than the other way around. The author expounds on microeconomic theory, enabling economists to take the knowledge back to the office and apply it.

The Agile Edge: Managing Projects Effectively Using Agile Scrum

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This book is intended to provide new members of an Agile Scrum team a concise, highly organized and cogent description of what Agile Scrum is and how it works. Then, it expands its scope to address key topics in Agile, that virtually all Agile participants will eventually want to deal with: how to drive to success more often, common issues in Agile utilization and recommended solutions, increasing the business value of key Agile meetings (called Ceremonies), and a path to Agile adoption will also be shared. A fundamental of business is constant change. The Agile methodology embraces change, this is why dozens of Fortune 500s are adopting Agile. Agile also has a process by which the most important work gets done first; possibly providing value to the business well before the project is completed. And, another key facet of Agile is work is shared with the paying client (called a Project Owner) regularly; meaning that the team will never be too far out of line with expectations. However, Agile teams are very tight (close-knit), this means that one needs every advantage to be accepted by the team quickly, this is why the foundations of Agile are addressed in this book, along with a personal onboarding strategy.

All Services, All the Time: How Business Services Serve Your Business

$21.99

This book takes the position that organizations, such as businesses, government agencies, etc. form a special class of living system. As such they come into being, live through lifecycle stages, and can experience organizational health and various forms of organizational illness along the way. If the latter is frequent or extended, such organizations often die an untimely death. A services perspective can go a long way to combat this outcome and assist in maintaining organizational health. Allowing this perspective to permeate an organization induces a consideration of its genuine value and leads to a greater understanding of the breadth of stakeholders who are the beneficiaries of it. Productivity and services in an organization are symbiotic—and must be so in order to achieve the balance that is key to the health of each organization. A services perspective illuminates as well the pivotal role that business-to-business service providers play in ensuring that balance is achieved and maintained. This book explores these factors from the point of view of the business leader and anyone concerned with the health of any organization.

Cents of Mission: Using Cost Management and Control to Accomplish Your Goal

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This book outlines practical advice useful to any individual, government agency, or business interested in improving its mission effectiveness. It shows how simple, but often elusive, cost management and control techniques can improve the conversion of often limited financial resources into mission accomplishment. It will help achieve success regardless of whether the mission is getting out of personal debt, improving national security, or making a profit.

Service Design and Delivery: How Design Thinking Can Innovate Business and Add Value to Society

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Service Design and Delivery has been broadly discussed and explored by various players, including the practitioners who deliver services, scholarly professionals who evaluate it, and laymen who are the recipients of service. In this book, we will examine two specific approaches to this task: Design Thinking and Societal Consideration. In other words, we will look at Service Design and Delivery from the innovator’s viewpoint as well as from the viewpoint of the social entrepreneur.
Consequently, it is important to design services not only for profit maximization but also for social value. Innovation is not a static thing; it evolves dynamically; and every innovation needs to start from new place. Our society is changing in very subtle ways, and our customers today are different from our customers of yesterday. Because of this dynamism adopting a design thinking approach to organizational improvement is critical for both business and society.

Innovative Pricing Strategies to Increase Profits, Second Edition

$21.99

According to the economic theory of the firm, businesses strive to determine the single price that maximizes profits. In fact, many firms can extract more revenue and increase profits with pricing strategies that are far more innovative than the single-price strategy. However, in the world of pricing, there is no “one size fits all” strategy.
Some pricing strategies are better suited to some situations than others. Sam’s Club, owned by Walmart Stores, Inc., for example, charge a membership fee for the right to purchase the store’s inventory whereas Walmart Supercenters do not. If Suddenlink Communications bundles Internet, cable, and phone service to increase profits, why does it also sell the same items separately? Is it true that passengers seated next to each other on the same flight might pay dramatically different fares?
Inside you’ll learn how various pricing strategies, including price discrimination, two-part tariffs, bundling, peak-load pricing, and dynamic pricing need specific and necessary ingredients in order to succeed. The authors show you how to use microeconomic theory to determine which pricing strategies will succeed, and under what conditions.

Redefining Shareholder Value: Demystifying the Valuation Myth

$21.99

Measuring shareholder value has become crucial in the current economic environment, especially following the consistent pressure from institutional shareholders on companies to create shareholder value in an adverse economic environment. Maximizing the company’s value will make the company less appealing to hostile takeovers. Takeovers are a capital market mechanism designed to control the conflicts of interest between shareholders and managers of the company.
In this study, we will examine the best methods used in measuring shareholder value, and furthermore explore the process of shareholder value creation in the years prior and following the creeping takeover of Ivanhoe Mines by Rio Tinto Plc. We have based our study on data and ratio analytics from ThomsonONE (Reuters), information that is publicly available through press releases, analyst coverage, and financial news. Our study includes an in-depth analysis of the creeping takeover of Ivanhoe Mines by Rio Tinto Plc.