During the past few years, there have been growing competition among business owners and they mostly have no choice but to decrease their prices in an attempt to survive on the market. In some cases, suppliers offer goods and services for less than the cost of production to gain more market share. In this paper, we study different factors influencing pricing strategy in food industry. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale consists of 36 questions, distributes it among 311 Iranian experts in food industry and analyzes it based on principal component analysis. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.86 and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and Approx. Chi-Square are 0.72 and 3614, respectively. Based on the results of our survey, we have derived seven factors including supply management, environmental factors, product management, distribution structure, standardization strategies, market leadership and market organization.

Information technology plays an important role on the success of different organizations. In today’s competitive environment, there is a need to reduce the cost of products by increasing productivity and quality of products and services. Bullwhip effect is one of the most important issues influencing production planning reducing the efficiency of production planning by increasing unwanted materials, etc. Bullwhip effect occurs for many reasons such as lack of good demand estimation, poor communication between vendors and suppliers, etc. In this paper, we present an empirical investigation based on DEMATEL technique to find the effect of information technology on reducing the bad consequences of bullwhip effect. The study first uses systems dynamic to build a cause-and- effect relationship between different factors influencing bullwhip effect and then using fuzzy DEMATEL, the effect of information technology on bullwhip effect has been confirmed.

Information plays an important role on having crystal clear image about market. A good awareness about products, vendors, new rivals, etc. always helps us offer better prices and reach better agreements. This paper presents an investigation on the role of industrial market information on the success of negotiations. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale consists of 22 questions, distributes it among 228 Iranian experts and analyzes it based on principal component analysis. During the survey, the numbers of questions are reduced to 17. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.86 and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and Approx. Chi-Square are 0.773 and 745.8, respectively. Based on the results of our survey, we have derived six factors including human resource management, integrated strategy, organizational software packages, communication factors, penetration factors, past perception and assessment process.

During the past few years, electronic marketing has gained significant portion of market share in the world. People become familiar with various products and services through the magic of internet and they could make their purchase with an ease of a click of a button. This paper presents an investigation on important factors influencing e-marketing in banking industry in city of Tehran, Iran. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale consists of 19 questions, distributes it among 250 Iranian experts and analyzes it based on principal component analysis. During the survey, the number of questions are reduced to 16. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.90 and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and Approx. Chi-Square are 0.939 and 2938, respectively. Based on the results of our survey, we have derived two factors including environmental factors as well as information technology.

This paper presents an investigation on the role of human resource management on enterprise resource planning in one of higher educational systems in city of Tehran, Iran. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale consists of 30 questions, distributes it among some Iranian experts and analyzes it based on principal component analysis. During the survey, the number of questions are reduced to 20. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.86 and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and Approx. Chi-Square are 0.716 and 1169, respectively. Based on the results of our survey, we have derived five factors including environment analysis, infrastructure components, managerial decisions, integrated information systems and control components.

In today & apos; s world, many planning problems include a hierarchical decision structure with independent and often conflicting objectives. Therefore, the optimization of supply chains with hierarchical structure is essential. In this paper, we investigate a fuzzy multi-objective multi-products supply chain optimization problem in a bi-level structure with one level corresponding to a manufacturer planning problem, while the other to K distribution centers problem. In our model, customer demand and supply chain costs are considered uncertain and will be modeled with use of fuzzy sets. We first describe how different kinds of problems can be modeled as bi-level programming problems. Then, this fuzzy model is first converted into an equivalent crisp model by using ?-cut method in each level, and then by applying extended Kuhn–Tucker approach, we have a linear multi-objective programming problem. Fuzzy goal programming technique is applied to solve the multi-objective linear programming problem to obtain a set of Pareto-optimal solutions. Finally, a numerical example is illustrated to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.

This paper studies the issue of channel coordination for a decentralized supply chain consisting of one vendor and one buyer in multi-period setting. Considering the allowance of the backorder at the buyer side distinguishes this work in the literature. The credit option contract as an incentive scheme is pursued to encourage the buyer to participate in the coordination model. Order quantity, credit time and backordered demand in each period as decision variables are determined jointly in order to encourage the chain’s member to participate in the coordinating contract. The proposed model shows that the credit option contract for the case of backorder allowance is able to realize the channel coordination in the studied supply chain. A wide range of numerical examples are studied to analyze the sensitivity of the contract efficiency to the inventory system’s parameters such as order cost, holding cost and shortage cost.

Cultural heritage and properties in collections are the most important organizational resources of museums, which can be deteriorated under improper environmental conditions. Identifying the climate deteriorating agents, and assessing and prioritizing their risk levels are among the most recent issues studied by museum conservators and researchers. Creating risk management programs leads to enhancing service life of cultural properties. Temperature and relative humidity are two important factors related directly to objects permanence; Thus, using methods which combine and quantify the conservation effects of temperature and relative humidity, could yield to useful and reliable insights for proposition of effective preventive conservation solutions. This research tries to explain the role and importance of risk management programs in the museums -as one of the main pillars of the country & apos; s cultural heritage; therefore, by using a multidisciplinary approach and existing experiments, proposes a method to examine and assess risks of temperature and relative humidity on museum objects. Such quantitative analysis could help estimate objects & apos; service life and provide solutions in order to enhance it. In order to examine the proposed research method, temperature and relative humidity data were gathered from textile storage room of the Cultural Institute of Bonyad Museums in a period of 18 months.

During the past few years, new methods of advertisements such as internet, email services, etc. have created new opportunities to promote products and services. The cost of an email message is normally negligible but the outcome could be significant. This paper presents an empirical investigation to find the effect of new advertisement techniques on export based product development in a case study of mobile devices. The proposed study designs a questionnaire in Likert scale consists of 29 questions, distributes it among 150 exporters of mobile devices in Iran. Cronbach alpha is calculated as 0.826. In addition, Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy and Approx. Chi-Square are 0.790 and 1023.3, respectively. Based on the results of our survey, we have derived five factors including emotional effects, brand promises, pricing strategy, modern advertisements and detected promotions.

Reverse Logistics has become buzzword in today’s industrial word and big differentiating factor in quest of success for any organization word wide. Whole world is suffering from scarcity of resources and we have finite area available for the waste disposal. One of the sustainable solutions is to design product in such a way so that we can maximize its reuse through reverse logistics. Reverse logistics is fast becoming industrial design standard for majority of organizations worldwide. Reverse logistics has become a need of an hour. Some of the organization do it voluntarily and some because of the environmental rules and legislations. In order to achieve total customer satisfaction, one has to take care of product for its entire life cycle through activities of reverse logistics. In this research I tried to investigate the factors affecting performance of reverse logistics in relation to customer satisfaction. I have used interpretive structural modelling technique to understand the complex pattern of contextual relationship amongst the most important factors through diagraph, which explain performance of reverse logistics in relation to customer satisfaction. I have also used MICMAC analysis to classify these factors according to their driving power and dependency power. MICMAC analysis facilitate in identification of most important factors in explaining performance of reverse logistics in relation to customer satisfaction. Further this research may helpful in reverse logistics design process planning, driven by customer requirement.