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The competition in market penetration between the traditional and online channels has been intensified. The purpose of this paper is to assess predictors of business‐to‐consumer (B2C) channel preference and investigate the consumers' attitudes towards different shopping channels.

An analytical hierarchy process (AHP) is applied to assess factors influencing consumers' channel attitudes based on an empirical survey which focuses on three different product types: books/CDs, electronics, and fashion products.

The results reveal that price, product variety, and accessibility, respectively, are the dominant predictors of B2C channel preference. It is found that consumers' utility value of buying online decreases in the online quality uncertainty level.

The sample focuses on the age group of 20‐40. Since this group of people are generally more skilled and confident on internet technology, it is unclear whether the insights obtained could extend to a more unbiased sample.

This paper provides insights into the relative importance of factors affecting consumers' channel preference, which are helpful for practitioners in terms of coming up with more effective channel improvement plans and strategies under limited resources.

This is the first study that applies AHP to assess consumers' channel preference. This approach, which does not require restrictive assumptions, takes into account the difficulty of giving precise judgments by allowing respondents to be inconsistent to some extent.

The US real estate investment trust (REIT) market experienced a structural change in the early 1990s. This paper aims to examine the following two issues: is the equity REIT market movement positively linked with the stock market movement in the long‐run? If so, how does the long‐run relation between the two markets change after the early 1990s?

This paper examines the long‐run relation between REIT prices and common stock prices within a four‐price system, i.e., REIT prices, common stock prices, bond prices, and private real estate prices, for two sub‐periods: 1978‐1993 and 1994‐2008. This study uses the more advanced Johansen procedure, which is more robust than the Engle‐Granger procedure, to test the co‐integrated relation.

The results show that REITs behave like common stocks during the earlier 1978‐1993 sub‐period. In contrast, REITs become less like common stock and more like private real estate after the early 1990s structural change. These results are at odds with the conclusion of Glascock et al., who examine the relationship between REITs and common stocks within a bi‐variate system with the Engle‐Granger procedure.

The paper, as far as the authors are aware, is the first study focusing on the long‐run relation between REIT prices and other asset prices within a multi‐price system. With a more complete price system and a more robust estimation method, this study is the first to document formally that the impressive growth and maturation of the REIT market since the early 1990s has made REITs less like common stocks and more like private real estate in the long‐run. The immediate implication is that REITs are capable of providing investors, such as immature defined benefit pension plans, real estate exposures in the long‐run.

To study the perception of dividends by the professional investor, for whom mutual fund managers are a proxy. The main line of research in dividends is based on using market data that are fit, ex post, to a cherished hypothesis. It is believed, however, that such data cannot measure motivation which is the underlying force behind generating market data. An understanding of motivation will give us more insight into the dividend paradox (why shareholders love dividends) than just the surface reality one can glean from market data.

Using a survey instrument, the method of analysis (not methodology) is factor analysis and hierarchical grouping that uncovers three distinct groups of professional investors re their attitude towards dividend. This categorization clearly shows that the dividends are perceived differently by the groups found here. Thus, research in dividends cannot follow a traditional route in which the phenomenon is treated as universal, or something similar to a natural occurrence.

Three groups from the more traditional: the more growth‐oriented, aggressive; and a middle‐of‐the‐road group are posited. Although there are some uniformly accepted tenets across the groups, nevertheless, the more traditional group attributes far more importance to dividends than the growth‐oriented group. The latter group perceives dividends as something needed to pacify the shareholder. It is also concluded that none of the academic hypotheses contrived to explain dividend behavior can be supported by empirical evidence. The interesting result is, nevertheless, that the ex post group performance is not significantly different between each possible pairing of the three groups.

As all empirical research goes, results cannot be all‐conclusive, because of time and participation in the sample. This fact alone should not grind to a halt all empirical work. This work is part of a segment of three different studies examining the perception of dividends by corporate managers, and across countries. The next logical step is obviously studying the perception of dividends by the non‐professional investor.

This kind of work was almost never done. This is a first, because unfortunately traditional research that dominates most finance journals does not believe that motivation counts. First, because it satisfies one's desire to better understand the dividend puzzle. But it should be of interest to all who want to study the dividend decision in the firm, and why shareholders love dividends, something entirely not rational as far as economic rationality goes.

During the height of the financial/credit crisis of 2008, the US Internal Revenue Service issued temporary guidance that permits REITs (real estate investment trusts) to retain cash and pay “effective stock dividends” through 2009 to meet their income distribution requirement. The purpose of this study is to investigate the policy implications of this guidance on shareholders' wealth and the intra‐industry effects for non‐event, rival REITs when event REITs announced elective stock dividends.

This study identified the announcements of the Revenue Procedures 2008‐68 and 2009‐15 and subsequent six equity REITs announcing the distribution of effective stock dividends in the first quarter of 2009. To assess their implications, this study adopted the event study methodology and multivariate regressions to examine the REIT price reactions and their distribution to the Revenue Procedure announcements and to the elective stock dividend announcements, respectively.

The Revenue Procedure announcements have positive wealth effects on the entire REIT market and REITs with higher leverage enjoy larger abnormal returns. During firm stock dividend announcement windows, non‐event, rival REITs have higher positive price reactions when the event firm and the non‐event firm are not alike and their returns have a low correlation coefficient, when the event firm has a large negative abnormal price reaction, and when the event firm pays cash/stock dividends in the mixture of 40 percent:60 percent, instead of 10 percent:90percent.

The results will help REIT investors to make better decisions. This study produces important implications for investors to pick REITs which are likely to experience higher returns at periods of turmoil when announcements about dividend policy changes are expected.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first study looking into intra‐industry effects of REIT dividend announcements and the policy implications of the elective REIT stock dividends permitted by the US Internal Revenue Service. The results of this study show that the informational signals associated with these announcement events are rich and have intra‐industry implications on REIT share prices.

US real estate investment trusts (REITs) typically distribute more dividends than required by tax regulations. This paper aims to focus on discretionary dividends, and examines the impact of information asymmetry on this excess component of dividends.

This paper considers a set of US REITs with reported taxable income figures over the 2000‐2007 period, and employs regression analysis to examine the influence of information asymmetry on the excess component of dividends. The explained variable is specified as excess dividends scaled by total assets. Excess dividends are dividends paid over the mandatory dividend payments calculated with taxable income, instead before‐tax net income. Following the REIT studies of Hardin and Hill and Han, this study employs Tobin Q as the proxy for asymmetric information.

Contrary to Hardin and Hill's conclusion, but consistent with dividend signaling theory as well as agency cost explanations, the results indicate that REITs with higher level of asymmetric information pay out significantly more excess dividends. Nevertheless, in contrast to Deshmukh's study on manufacturing firms, the REIT results are against the prediction of the pecking order theory.

The paper is one of the few studies that explicitly examine the factors influencing REIT decision on discretionary dividends. Contrast to previous studies, this study is able to obtain taxable income and compute the discretionary dividends more accurately. Furthermore this paper is able to provide evidence against the pecking order theory, which is not investigated in the existing REIT dividend studies.

Existing studies provide conflicting results regarding whether real estate investment trusts (REITs) effectively optimize and diversify institutional portfolios. Based on the style analysis of Sharpe, we extend Liang and McIntosh’s study with a more complete set of asset classes over a longer sample period. We provide additional evidence suggesting that practicing analysts should include REITs as an asset class to optimize their portfolios. Specifically, our results show that the price behavior of REITs is unique and cannot be satisfactorily duplicated by combining equity, fixed‐income securities, and unsecuritized real estate. The time series of the styles on REITs indicates that it is difficult to ex ante produce returns on REITs without diversifying into REITs.

The objective of this work is to develop a model that can be used for simulation of different parameters including price, subjected to different control strategies.

The entire supply chain can be modelled by combining the transfer function into a closed loop system. The transfer function of each entity in the supply chain can be obtained by using the control theory tools. The model can be approximated as a linear discrete system with various operating constants, like lead time, price, order policy and supply.

The continuous replenishment ordering policy for a distribution node in a supply chain was analyzed using the z-transform. Characteristic equations of the closed loop transfer function are obtained. The bullwhip (BW) effect is analyzed. Study proves that the BW effect is in evitable if the standard heuristic ordering policy is employed with demand forecasting; also the paper analysed price supply trade-off for dynamic demand and supply. Simulation results show that BW is less in PI and simple p-only with cascade control. Robust control and PD, PID control results are not shown in this literature, and it is subject to further research.

Research is original, it can be applicable in today's dynamic world, due to globalization, it is necessary to have a automated machine that can handle most of supply chain decision.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the interaction of two topics: supply chain management (SCM) and the internet. Merging these two fields is a key area of concern for contemporary managers and researchers. They have realised that the internet can enhance SCM by making real time information available and enabling collaboration between trading partners.

A literature review in prestigious academic journals in Operations Management and Logistics has been conducted for the period 1995‐2005. The objective is to collect, organise and synthesise existing knowledge relating to SCM and the internet.

The paper describes the impact that the internet has on the different processes that SCM embrace. The literature review undertaken on the topic has shown that e‐SCM has been acknowledged as an outstanding topic in the supply chain literature in the most prestigious operations management and logistics journals, especially after year 2000. The main topics have been e‐procurement, e‐fulfilment and information flows.

The value of this paper is to define e‐SCM, to analyse how research in this area has evolved during the period 1995‐2005 and to identify some lines of further research.