Deriving Customer Value Using Conjoint Analysis: A Case Study of a B2B Market LeaderChew Chin Hui Andrew
Doctor of Business Administration, Graduation Year: 2023
B2B (business to business) companies often tend to price sub optimally and fail to capture the true value of their offering because they do not fully understand their customers’ preferences for products or services. Such insights can be gained from formal price research such as conjoint analysis. A case study is conducted with a leading energy management company to prove that willingness to pay can be sought. It also investigates what attributes and how much customers are willing to pay for each attribute. The results illuminate surprising insights on the most valued attribute, debunking internal marketers’ long held assumptions and opens the possibility to launch an alternative product that could potentially win a high level of market share. This research shed light on how systematic research can be applied to improve B2B firms’ pricing practices to impact profitability.
Examining the Intention of Adopting AI in B2B Marketing through the TOE FrameworkLow Wai Lup (Liu Weili)
Doctor of Business Administration, Graduation Year: 2023
Artificial intelligence (AI) has been recognized as one of the most disruptive technologies for marketing management. Many enterprises recognizing AI’s potential have tried adopting AI as a strategic differentiator. However, evidence from industry and academia showed that adoption had been primarily in business-to-consumer (B2C) organizations. Very few studies have looked into the adoption of AI for marketing in business-to-business (B2B) organizations. This research aims to identify the factors affecting B2B marketers’ intention to adopt AI for marketing. We interviewed experienced B2B marketers and AI subject matter experts for their insights. Drawing upon the analysis and theories on the process and context of the TOE framework, we present a structural equation model for assessing AI adoption intent in B2B marketing. We hypothesize that four themes from our analysis impact the intention to adopt AI for B2B marketing. Survey data shows that the Maturity of Technology and Technology Support Infrastructure themes influence B2B marketers’ intention to adopt AI for marketing, which presents significant and consequential implications for stakeholders in the ecosystem. We explain why some factors in existing literature may not be applicable for B2B marketing AI adoption. Our results also show that there might be some truth in the saying “AI is the new shiny toy,” with B2B marketers not considering pertinent factors when forming the intention to adopt marketing AI.
Impact and Challenges of Virtual Reality Applications for User-Adoption of a Robo-Advisory SystemYow Su Chin
Doctor of Business Administration, Graduation Year: 2023
This research studies the use of Virtual Reality Applications for user adoption of a Robo-Advisory system. The study is set against the backdrop of innovation in financial services and the increasing adoption of digital platforms, known as Robo-Advisory platforms, to perform such services. RAs enable all classes of investors to participate in financial markets at lower cost, by automating their investment decisions, thus enabling more financial inclusion. However, the adoption of RA seems to be only at the “early adopter” stage. As a new technology, they follow the typical technological diffusion process. Regulators are also cautious. Early adopters tend to be young, financially literate, and technologically literate. However, would this imply that other demographic groups would be more resistant to such adoption? The key to understanding adoption, is to understand “trust”. Cultural and demographic differences aside, the user must trust the technology. RAs must therefore be designed to build trust in people. This study approaches the question using a Systems Design approach and adds some innovative Virtual Reality elements to an existing Robo-Advisory system, to examine whether it can improve adoption. Findings are that such features improve the attitudes of trust amongst users and encourage user sign-ups. The implications are that Robo-Advisory platforms can explore introducing VR elements and other aspects of Web3.0 into their platforms. Extending the reach of such platforms to otherwise disadvantaged groups can further encourage financial inclusion.
Environmental, Social and Governance in Investing (“ESG investing”) in SingaporeTan Teck Keong Patrick
Doctor of Business Administration, Graduation Year: 2023
Empirical studies have found that for companies that show a lack of ESG activities, investors expect to be compensated for the risk premium over and above firm-specific size, value and momentum-based risks. Thus, firms that do good by adopting sustainable corporate policies reduce downside risks which in turn enhance the firms’ stability. Companies with strong ESG characteristics typically have above-average risk control and compliance standards, and suffer less frequently from severe incidents such as fraud, embezzlement, corruption, or litigation cases. Consequently, ESG companies have less stock-specific downside or tail risk in the company’s stock price. This research seeks to understand why, given the evidence, there is a lack of pull or push factors for ESG investing in Singapore. Overall, this research contributes to the literature and practice by explaining the level of ESG awareness and actual ESG investing in Singapore. This research creates an awakening call for regulators and market participants to engender long-term developments in the Singapore fund management industry in five ways. First, an increase in government support, industry consultations and regulatory clarity to promote and accelerate ESG investing. Second, a proliferation of ESG education and accreditation for market participants which include fund managers, institutional and retail investors, issuers and analysts to equip them with the knowledge and skills for ESG implementation. Third, a more focused marketing strategy by fund management firms to promote ESG funds and socialise the benefits of ESG investing. Fourth, a new mission for NGOs/NPOs to further their ESG agenda by promoting ESG investing. Finally, the emergence of donors’ voice in support of societal good via ESG investing. Going forward, it is envisaged that the Singapore Government will study the gaps in the ESG investing ecosystem in Singapore to provide more support, incentives and ESG-friendly regulations. Furthermore, the fund managers operating in Singapore can expect an increase in ESG investing as a result of targeted marketing strategy and more co-ordinated ESG activities by NGOs/NPOs through fund managers, investors and donors.
Leadership in Digital Transformation & DigitalisationTay Kok Choon
Doctor of Business Administration, Graduation Year: 2023
In the contemporary digital landscape, companies must prioritize two key strategies to flourish: (1) digitalisation – the integration of digital technologies into existing processes for enhanced efficiency; and (2) digital transformation – comprehensive organisational change in response to industry trends. This research study addresses a gap in the literature by utilizing a case study methodology to investigate the influence of leadership on digital transformation and digitalisation in two organisations in Singapore: DBS Bank Limited (DBS) and Hotel Jen Tanglin Singapore (HJTS). Specifically, the study examines how leadership orchestrates digital transformation and digitalisation in these organisations. The findings underscore the divergent approaches to digital transformation adopted by DBS and HJTS. DBS's leadership emphasized a comprehensive, organisation-wide transformation, accentuating vision, culture, and stakeholder engagement. This approach galvanized teams to surpass expectations, necessitating substantial investment in human resources and organisational culture. Conversely, HJTS's leadership targeted digitalisation to address specific operational challenges, such as labour shortages. By employing autonomous robots and optimising processes, HJTS sought to enhance operational efficiency and guest satisfaction while preserving the significance of human interaction. Nonetheless, HJTS's approach exhibited a limited focus on wider business model innovation. Drawing on the study's findings, insights and guidance are drawn for corporate executives and policymakers wishing to promote and implement digital transformation and digitalisation.
Emergence of new web3 companies and the 4Es principlesLiu Hon Yi
Doctor of Business Administration, Graduation Year: 2023
The new Web3.0 economy is currently at the forefront of technology adoption and integration to achieve unprecedented high growth. Given the inherent nature of the new Web3.0 economy, business is radically different from conventional business models, and the factors of consideration and valuation framework that investors used before may no longer be comprehensive and exhaustive. This paper proposes a strategic valuation framework for new Web3.0 economy companies that recognizes their unique features and capabilities. The 4E Principle, comprising Economies of Scale, Economies of Scope, Economies of Integration, and Economies of Convergence, defines four essential attributes of the new Web3.0 economy business framework that can help companies achieve sustainable social business for the future. The paper argues that conventional valuation frameworks are insufficient to encapsulate all the factors of consideration for new economy companies due to factors such as negative or unpredictable cash flows and rapidly pivoting business models. The proposed framework provides a dynamic and relative measurement that can be used to analyse and compare Web3.0 companies. It can supplement or modify traditional valuation models and provide insights into their potential value, which may remain unreflective in conventional models. The paper studied two case studies Alibaba Group and Lufax Holding Ltd with their historical events and the corresponding market valuations to demonstrate that the framework can complement traditional financial data in explaining the market valuation. The paper further applies this framework to Grab Holdings, cryptocurrencies, Coinbase, and five digital banks in Singapore, predicting which bank will have better comparative advantages. The paper concludes that as the industry continues to evolve, new approaches and frameworks must be developed to keep up with the pace of change. Further research is needed on the impact of social causes, governance, and industry regulations on the sustained success of a firm beyond this paper's scope.
中国浙江省三市的外国高端人才政策研究
A Study of High-level Foreign Talent Policies In Three Cities of Zhejiang ProvinceWang Xiao Sheng
Doctor of Business Administration, Graduation Year: 2022
人才驱动模式给中国带来新的发展动力,中国逐渐把人才的重要性提升到战略高度。各地都认为那些稀缺的“人才金字塔”最顶端的顶尖人才是引领推动城市科技创新、转型发展的关键力量,成为了现阶段中国城市间人才竞争中争夺最激烈的部分。为了创造城市引才品牌,吸引潜在的人才,近几年地方政府出台了很多吸引外国高端人才相关的政策,提升和保持城市竞争力。本研究将聚焦在A类外国高端人才,深入了解浙江省杭州、宁波、嘉兴三个城市引进海外高端人才的基本政策和实施现状。杭州、宁波、嘉兴三地吸引外国高端人才的政策,基本代表了中国现阶段城市吸引外国高端人才的现状、趋势和发展。 本研究通过文献查阅,比较分析、问卷采访等形式,运用定性分析法,分析三地引进海外高端人才的政策举措以及阻碍政策效应的问题,审视政府在应对人才政策迭代及加码过程中的“治理”视角,并提出相应对策建议。城市的能级与城市对人才的吸引力正相关,在全球顶尖人才分布不均的情况下,要吸引这些风毛菱角的顶尖人才,人才政策的战略重点应该放在与区域经济相匹配的一流的大事业平台和大产业生态上。人才政策同质化竞争只会带来恶性竞争和大量的投机与寻租行为,人才政策取向应该遵循城市的定位、资源禀赋、经济地理优势等错位发展。
The talent-driven model has introduced new development momentum to China, and China has gradually raised the importance of talent to a strategic height. All local governments believe that the top talents are the key forces promoting technological innovation, transformation and development. It has become the most intense part of the talent competition among Chinese cities. Local governments in China have introduced policies to attract top foreign talents in recent years to maintain and enhance competitiveness. This study explores policies and implementation status regarding measures that are designed to attract Class A top foreign talents in the cities of Hangzhou, Ningbo, and Jiaxing in Zhejiang Province. The policy making and implementation of Hangzhou, Ningbo, and Jiaxing represent the current status, trend and future development of talent policies among cites in China. Using literature review, comparative analysis and online survey, this study adopts a qualitative perspective to analyse policies regarding the recruitment of top foreign talents among three cities, as well as issues that would hinder their effectiveness. This study also examines the government’s perspective in dealing with replacements and enhancement of foreign talent policies, and ultimately proposes suggestions for policy making. The main conclusion of this study is that the capacity of a city is positively correlated with the city’s attractiveness to talents. Given the uneven distribution of the world’s top talents, the talent policy should focus on facilitating the building of business platform and industrial ecology that match the unique regional economy. Homogeneous talent policies will only encourage ineffective competitions, speculations, and rent-seeking behaviours. The general direction of the talent policy should follow the city's strategic position, resource endowment, and economic and geographic advantages.
去中心化金融:构建个体主权新金融体系
Decentralized Finance : Building a New Individual Sovereignty Financial SystemLi Wang Jian
Doctor of Business Administration, Graduation Year: 2022
自中本聪发布比特币白皮书以来,数字货币市值和区块链去中心化应用生态都呈现急剧增长态势,特别是以以太坊为标志的区块链2.0出现后,区块链和去中心化应用范围不断扩展,商业模式、技术研究也不断创新。时至今日,去中心化领域已经完全成为一个不可忽视的产业和生态,并原生出顽强的生命力和创造力,持续超多元化、规模化方向发展。当前,去中心化金融总体规模已经达到千亿美元规模,但总体发展还处于指数曲线攀升阶段,以区块链为代表的分布式技术以其去中心化、不可篡改可追溯、多方协作自治等特点,具备在金融领域广泛运用的技术基础,且已经经过市场初步验证,能够解决目前金融领域存在的诸多瓶颈。 区块链、去中心化技术源自最早小众人群对新金融体系的探索,其本质也是金融科技的创新,到目前为止,去中心化世界最有创新性、最具传播能量的就是其金融应用,以至于去中心化金融已经完全成为当前世界范围内金融体系所不可或缺的组成部分,给下一代新金融体系的自成长提供了极大的助力,然而由于去中心化金融技术复杂度、地区间监管政策不一致性等因素的限制,导致去中心金融领域仍然存在诸多信息亟待解决的问题,制约着去中心化金融普及和新金融体系的深化发展。总体来说,去中心化金融发展仍然处于早期阶段,本身存在认知深度和广度限制,业界普遍还缺乏技术理论基础以及应用方法论。因此,积极探索去中心化金融的应用现状、分析和思考其未来具有重要的现实意义。 本文基于当前去中心化金融业务发展现状、去中心化技术应用现状、综合外部环境等,从去中心化金融体系现状构成、应用价值及解决的问题、未来演进趋势方向三个方面综合立体阐述了去中心化金融内容,对从业者关心的为什么需要去中心化金融、当前如何参与去中心化金融、去中心化金融未来如何发展三个核心问题作出了明确回答。
Since Nakamoto released the Bitcoin white paper, the market value of digital currency and the application ecology of blockchain decentralization have shown a sharp growth trend. Especially after the emergence of blockchain 2.0 marked by Ethereum, the application scope of blockchain and decentralization has been continuously expanded, and the business model and technical research have been continuously innovated. Today, the field of decentralization has evolved into an industry and ecology that cannot be ignored. It has demonstrated tenacious vitality and creativity and continues to develop in the direction of super diversification and scale. The overall capitalisation of decentralized finance has reached US $100 billion, and it is still undergoing exponential growth. The distributed technology represented by blockchain has the potential to be widely adopted in the financial field due to its characteristics of decentralization, tamper proof and traceability, multi-party cooperation and autonomy, and there has been preliminary evidence in the market that it can be utilised to solve existing bottleneck problems in finance. Blockchain and decentralized technology originated from the earliest exploration of a new financial system by a small group of people. Its essence is also the innovation of financial technology. So far, the most innovative and powerful applications in the decentralized world are the financial applications, and decentralized finance has become an indispensable part of the current global financial system, empowering the self-growth of the next generation of new financial system. However, due to the limitations caused by the complexity of decentralized financial technology and the regulatory inconsistencies across regions, etc., there are still many obstacles remained to be overcome in the field of decentralized finance, which otherwise restricts the mass adoption of decentralized finance and the in-depth development of the new financial system. In summary, the development of decentralized finance is still in its early stage and the technical theories and systematic methodologies of implementation are still lacking in practice. It is of great importance therefore to further investigate the development trends of decentralized finance and to improve the theoretical framework, so as to provide guidance and applicable tool and methodologies to practitioners. This paper examines extensively and thoroughly the current development of decentralized finance, the applications implemented, and the conventional financial bottleneck problems solved. It then analyses the developmental trends of decentralized finance and offers recommendations for its future development. I also try to answer in this paper three key questions that matter the most to practitioners: why is decentralized finance needed, how to participate, and what is the future of decentralized finance.
Network Industry and Business Models: Competition and Economic EfficiencyTan Chee Meng William
Doctor of Business Administration, Graduation Year: 2022
This study examines the Singapore Open Electricity Market (OEM) which had 21 Electricity Retailers when it was launched in 2019. This number of retailers appeared to be large compared with other network industries with similar market size, but a smaller number of market participants. The study explores how these Electricity Retailers interact and compete with each other for customers, given the relative differences in market shares and market power. Two approaches are employed to analyse how Electricity Retailers compete – the structural model approach and non-structural market approach. The structural approach takes two measures, concentration ratios and Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) while the non-structural approach takes the Lerner Index that measures the degree of monopoly power. The Electricity Retail market is benchmarked against three other network industries of similar characteristics – the products or services are necessities that are frequently consumed and purchased, the choice of retailers is often invisible to others making the purchase decision a fairly low involvement decision and there is a state or quasi-state body involved in the industry. The three network industries are the Mobile Telco, Grocery and Taxi industries. The Mobile Telco and Taxi industries appear to be very highly concentrated while the Electricity Retail and Grocery industries appear to be less concentrated. The high Lerner Index for the Mobile Network Operators of the Mobile Telco and the Taxi industries suggest these industries act like a monopoly. Pricing is not used much as a competitive tool for the four network industries in Singapore and market participants appear to follow the pricing set by market leaders, with market participants in the Mobile Telco and Taxi industries acting as implicit cartels to maintain prices. The inverse of HHI presents an effective number of market participants in each network industry that could replicate the level of competition and concentration at each industry, which appears to be eight, three, seven and four for the Electricity Retail, Mobile Telco, Grocery and Taxi industries, respectively. These estimates are confirmed by the respective concentration ratios of each industry.
Past Sovereign Defaults, the Predictability of Future Defaults and the Usefulness of Sovereign RatingsWong Keng Siong
Doctor of Business Administration, Graduation Year: 2022
Serial defaults by some countries have been said to be a common phenomenon, even though credit defaults by sovereign borrowers are known as “low default probability” events. This study therefore sets out to validate the perception that some countries are more predisposed to sovereign defaults than others. Recent sovereign defaults have also revived the debate about the roles and relevance of credit rating agencies. This study then looks at usefulness of ratings issued by rating agencies in providing advance warnings of sovereign defaults. Finally, this study seeks to find commonalities amongst countries that has defaulted so that metrics can be developed to identify future defaulters. Probit tests using panel data dating back to 1975 support the view that sovereign borrowers are likely to default in the first seven years following a credit default. Tests of the sample means of the notch differences of the ratings issued by the Big Three rating agencies in the periods before a sovereign default suggest that credit ratings are not predictive of imminent sovereign default. Subsequently, multinomial probit regression has identified the Worldwide Governance Indicators and the Human Development Index to be statistically significant drivers of sovereign defaults.
Environmental Sustainability and Coal Mining in China: Espoused Theory and Institutional LogicToh Meng Sung Christopher
Doctor of Business Administration, Graduation Year: 2022
This study aims to prove the hypothesis that the Chinese Coal industry will prosper if Chinese Coal companies adopt environmentally sustainable practices. First, this study identifies the forces and hurdles that are preventing Chinese Coal miners from adopting environmentally sustainable practices. Second, it proposes solutions for the Chinese coal miners to practice in an environmentally sustainable and profitable manner, namely environmental management and organizational change. A qualitative approach is employed to investigate the hypothesis, namely document review and analysis of company website materials, an online qualitative questionnaire, face-to-face interviews with selected people at some of the Chinese Coal companies and experts’ views. Espoused theory and institutional logic confirm the applicability of theories in the context of the Chinese Coal industry. The findings of the thesis demonstrate that the development of the Coal industry in China can be reconciled with the strengthening of environmental regulations, together with the adoption of environmentally sustainable practices, and on this base, suggests the Coal industry has a promising future.