The expanding role of the Internet in consumer purchasing activities has created substantial new opportunities accessing to end-consumers. More and more manufacturers are beginning to sell products to potential consumers directly online while continuing to sell through the traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, a phenomenon leading to intense channel competition and conflicts. Using game theory, this research examines the effect of market segments, consumer choice and the acceptance of direct online channels on firm performance and the whole system's profit. The analysis indicates that the addition of direct online channel does not necessarily harm the incumbent retailers. A win-win zone is proposed, in which both the manufacturer and the retailer benefit from the encroachment.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of product substitutability on sales performance of integrated and decentralised supply chains. The authors model supply chain performance effects by applying a Cournot equation to a combination of different industry configurations. The study aims to extend existing equilibria models in different supply chains by including the effects of product substitutability on supply chain performance. By extending existing equilibria models, the authors explore the relationship between the degree of product substitutability, chain structure and chain performance when some actors of the supply chain behave as Stackelberg leaders in a duopoly. Design/methodology/approach -The paper models a supply chain performance by applying a Cournot equation to different supply chain structures in a duopoly. Findings -The findings indicate that, for each specific-supply chain structures in different market configurations, when product substitutability reaches a certain threshold decentralised supply chains outperform integrated chains, in disagreement with common belief in current existing literature.Research limitations/implications -The study is limited to the application of differential equations in a competitive market configured as a duopoly. Future studies might extend the same model to a competitive market characterised by more than two actors. The findings imply that current tendency of lean implementations through integrated supply chains does not always favour supply chain performance. Practical implications -The paper includes implications for the development of a stronger differentiation strategy based on consumer value when markets are characterised by high-product substitutability. Originality/value -These findings highlight the importance of differentiation and consumer-value generation in markets that follow Nash equilibria as opposed to the current focus on price competition.The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at

China's commercial banks are confronted with fierce competition from advanced big commercial banks abroad, which have much better performance in non-performing loans (NPLs) than China's commercial banks. In this case, efficiency rating and ranking of China's commercial banks are of great importance. We treat the rate of non-performing loans (NPLs) as an undesirable output from the operating process of commercial bank and utilize cross efficiency of DEA (Data Envelopment Analysis) to evaluate and rank China's commercial banks between 2006 and 2008 horizontally and vertically. In the end we will propose our conclusion.

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Hotel companies are increasingly using their websites for online promotion and sales. Integrating the websites into business operation is critical for the survival of hotels. However, the efficiency performance of the hotel industry has mostly investigated financial efficiency, ignoring network marketing efficiency. This study evaluates the performance of 21 four-and five-plum international tourist hotels (ITH) in Taipei using data envelopment analysis (DEA) to combined financial data and web metrics. Two outputs (revenue and unique visitors) are taking into considered, since hotel companies have two primary objectives: to obtain revenues and to gain market share. In addition to overall efficiency, both revenue oriented efficiency and network marketing efficiency are investigated. The practical significance of this study is discussed.