Small medium enterprises represent the largest share of revenues in the apparel and fashion business, compared to larger integrated companies. Small companies however often have to rely on larger suppliers in order to efficiently produce their products. These larger suppliers however will often prioritize companies that place larger orders. In the impossibility to deliver larger orders, how can these buyers make sure that a producer complies with their requests? In this paper we try to answer this question by applying concepts from the marketing channels literature to the specific context of fashion buying. We conclude that despite that the peculiarities of the fashion business do not foster the formation of long-term commitment, dependent companies can develop sources of power based on knowledge and reputation, but also based on applying non-mediated ways to manage the buyer-seller relationship. Examples of possible power sources for a buyer are: establishing a strong brand that a business partner will use in promoting its proposition, forcing suppliers to make transaction specific investments (which are not redeploy able), specializing in new products and technologies that a supplier will want to understand and use, developing knowledge that can be exchanged in the form of specialized personnel, investing in standardization of communication before the relationship starts in order to reduce administrative costs for both parties. Power sources are most effective when non-mediated, i.e. informal and based on reciprocity; ‘hard’ contracts with punishments (coercive power sources) in case of non-compliance will diminish the willingness to collaborate.
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The sharing economy holds promise for the way we consume, work, and interact. However, consuming in the sharing economy is not without risk, as institutional trust measures (e.g. contracts, regulations, guarantees) are often absent. Trust between sellers and buyers is therefore crucial to complete transactions successfully. From a buyer ́s perspective, a seller ́s profile is an important source of information for judging trustworthiness, because it contains multiple trust cues such as a reputation score, a profile picture, and a textual self-description. The effect of a seller’s self-description on perceived trustworthiness is still poorly understood. We examine how the linguistic features of a seller’s self-description predict perceived trustworthiness. To determine the perceived trustworthiness of 259 profiles, 189 real buyers on a Dutch sharing platform rated their trustworthiness. The results show that profiles were perceived as more trustworthy if they contained more words (which could be an indicator of uncertainty reduction), more words related to cooking (indicator of expertise), and more words related to positive emotions (indicator of enthusiasm). Also, a profile’s perceived trustworthiness score correlated positively with the seller’s actual sales performance. These findings indicate that a seller’s self-description is a relevant signal to buyers, eventhough it is cheap talk (i.e. easy to produce). The results can guide sellers on how to self-present themselves on sharing platforms and inform platform owners on how to design their platform so that it enhances trust between platform users.
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ABSTRACT: Local homebuyers in the Groningen earthquake regionIr. Hieke T. van der KloetHanze University of Applied Sciences GroningenResearch Centre for Built Environment NoorderRuimteh.t.van.der.kloet@pl.hanze.nl0031-50-595-2015The earthquakes after the natural gas extraction in the Groningen region of the Netherlands have a significant impact on the housing market and sustainability of the communities in this region. Since the strongest earthquake around the community of Huizinge in August 2012, with an magnitude of 3.6 on the Richter scale, it became clear there is a relation between natural gas extraction and earthquakes due to soil subsidence. As a consequence houses in the region get damaged and after research it gets obvious housing prices decline and the region will become unattractive to potential buyers of houses, damaged or not. Therefore the Dutch Petroleum Company (NAM) since April 29th 2014 offers a compensation for the loss of the housing price before and after the earthquake of Huizinge to property owners who want to sell their home. They only get the compensation after a sales deal and only if they agree with the proposed compensation. Since the compensation for the decrease in house prices has been introduced, the number of participants of the regulation is lacking behind the actual sales of houses. Our study aims to contribute to the research on the consequences of earthquakes by natural gas mining on the real estate market in the northern part of the Netherlands, especially the Groningen region. First of all we want to declare why relatively a large part of the property owners (about 60% until 2015) don’t request for the compensation regulation. Our second question concerns the buyers of the (damaged) houses in the earthquake area. Why would they buy a home in a region full of risks? Who are these buyers? We use a mixed-method approach for data collection which leads to an analysis of a unique dataset on notarial deeds of house sales in nine municipalities in the Groningen earthquake region according to The Land Registry of the Netherlands during the period 2013 until the end of 2015 as well as discovering common patterns of interview results with residents and experts. First results show that the majority of the homebuyers originate from the local earthquake area in the Province of Groningen. Reasons why property sellers after the house sale don’t opt for the compensation regulation concerns the complexity of the regulation, the used valuation model and the expected long control time afterwards.From the first results we conclude that the Groningen earthquake region still has its attractiveness for local residents and buyers. Otherwise the regulation for compensation doesn’t reach enough property sellers in the nine municipalities of the Groningen earthquake region. Advise to the Dutch government should be to generously compensate the residents of the Groningen earthquake regions for the loss of value of their dwellings, damaged or not. This will help to improve the regional development and attractiveness of areas that are effected by earthquakes.
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