Background Many of public hospitals in Japan have had a deficit for a long time. Japanese local governments have been encouraging public hospitals to use group purchasing of drugs to benefit from the economies of scale, and increase their bargaining power for obtaining discounts in drug purchasing, thus improving their financial situation. In this study, we empirically investigate whether or no...

We find direct evidence that institutions increase round-trip stock trades, increase average commissions per share, and pay unusually high commissions on some trades in order to send abnormally high commissions to the lead underwriters of profitable initial public offerings (IPOs). These excess commission payments are a particularly effective way for transient investors to receive lucrative IPO...

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This study examined the relationship between the neighborhood food environment and the food purchasing behaviors among adolescents. Grade 7 and 8 students (n = 810) at 21 elementary schools in London, Ontario, Canada completed a questionnaire assessing their food purchasing behaviors. Parents of participants also completed a brief questionnaire providing residential address and demographic info...

Today advertisement plays an important role in persuading customers to purchase products and services. On the other hand the expenses of advertisement in comparisons of other activities in most companies are very remarkable. Marketing studies showed that traditional advertisement strategies based on massive ads bombarding over a generic audience are not very effective and, in some cases, are at...

With the growing population of online shopping, people pay more attention to online consumer reviews which influence consumer purchasing decisions. Consumer reviews are increasingly available online for a wide rage of products and services. This paper studies the impact of online reviews on the consumer purchasing decisions towards management response from four dimensions of online reviews numb...

Purpose – Strategic alignment is a theory-based state that is considered as crucial for organizations in order to realize performance gains from information technology (IT) investments and deployments. Within the domain of purchasing and supply chain management there has been a growing interest on how purchasing strategy can be effectively aligned with IT and what conditions facilitate this sta...