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Online retailing boasts two major advantages: convenience of home shopping and easy access to information. In this paper, I argue that these two features have important implications for retailers' channel and advertising decisions. Two major questions are addressed: When should a conventional bricks-and-mortar retailer adopt a multichannel strategy? When should a multichannel retailer use its website to advertise offline prices? Analysis shows that the answers hinge on the nature of the product, the retailer's costs, and the competitors' strategies as well as the competitiveness of the market. Multichannel retailing is not necessarily the best strategy for all retailers; no adoption, asymmetric adoption, and symmetric adoption of the strategy are all possible equilibria. Advertising the in-store prices online is not always optimal. Price advertising in multichannel retailing has a different effect when compared with conventional single-channel retailing. It helps coordinate the channels by shifting the sales from online to offline, which is particularly useful when margins online are relatively low. The finding that multichannel retailers can benefit from drawing consumers back to physical stores highlights the risk of boosting online sales without considering the adverse effect on the offline channel and indicates a shifting role of the Web in retailers' businesses.multichannel retailing, Internet, price advertising, distribution channel, channel coordination, game theory

Several studies have reported that elevated red blood cell distribution width (RDW) was associated with the poor prognosis of different kinds of cancers. The aim of this study was to investigate the prognostic role of RDW in patients undergoing resection for nonmetastatic rectal cancer.We retrospectively reviewed a database of 625 consecutive patients who underwent curative resection for nonmetastatic rectal cancer at our institution from January 2009 to December 2014. The cutoff value of RDW was calculated by receiver-operating characteristic curve.The results demonstrated that patients in high RDW-cv group had a lower overall survival (OS) (P = .018) and disease-free survival (P = .004). We also observed that patients in high RDW-sd group were associated with significantly lower OS (P = .033), whereas the disease-free survival (DFS) was not significantly different (P = .179).In multivariate analysis, we found elevated RDW-cv was associated poor DFS (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.56, P = .010) and RDW-sd can predict a worse OS (HR = 1.70, P = .009).We confirmed that elevated RDW can be an independently prognostic factor in patients undergoing resection for nonmetastatic rectal cancer. So more intervention or surveillance might be paid to the patients with nonmetastatic rectal cancer and elevated RDW values in the future.

A service plan is a type of optional warranty beyond manufacturers' base warranties that retailers offer to consumers. In this paper, we examine how a service plan affects the role played by a manufacturer's base warranty. Analysis shows that when consumers can assess product quality (i.e., the probability of product failure), the manufacturer's warranty is negatively affected by the presence of a service plan. In the presence of such a plan, a base warranty is offered only when the manufacturer is very cost-efficient in providing a warranty relative to the retailer. In this case, although the double-marginalization problem is aggravated, offering a (limited) base warranty reduces the total warranty cost in the channel and provokes the retailer into enlarging the service plan coverage. When consumers cannot assess product quality, a high-quality manufacturer is motivated to offer a base warranty to signal its quality. In the presence of a service plan, however, a very cost-efficient manufacturer is discouraged from doing so. This paper was accepted by Preyas Desai, marketing.service plans, warranty, signaling, distribution channels, game theory

Background: It remains unclear whether or not preservation of the left colic artery (LCA) for colorectal cancer surgery. The objective of this updated systematic review and meta-analysis is to evaluate the current scientific evidence of LCA non-preservation versus LCA preservation in colorectal cancer surgery. Methods: A systematic search was conducted in the Medline, Embase, PubMed, Cochrane Library, ClinicalTrials, Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure and Chinese BioMedical Literature Database, and reference without limits. Quality of studies was evaluated by using the Newcastle–Ottawa scale and the Cochrane Collaboration's tool for assessing the risk of bias. Effective sizes were pooled under a random- or fixed-effects model. The funnel plot was used to assess the publication bias. The outcomes of interest were oncologic consideration including the number of apical lymph nodes, overall recurrence, 5-years overall survival, and 5-years disease-free survival (DFS); safety consideration including overall 30-day postoperative morbidity and overall 30-day postoperative mortality; anatomic consideration including anastomotic circulation, anastomotic leakage, urogenital, and defaecatory dysfunction. Results: Twenty-four studies including 4 randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and 20 cohort studies with a total of 8456 patients (4058 patients underwent LCA non-preservation surgery vs 4398 patients underwent LCA preservation surgery) were enrolled in this meta-analysis. The preservation of LCA was associated with significantly less anastomotic leakage (odds ratio 1.23, 95% confidence interval 1.02–1.48, P = .03). In term of sexual dysfunction, urinary retention, the number of apical lymph nodes, and long-term oncologic outcomes, there were no significant differences between the LCA non-preservation and LCA preservation group. It was hard to draw definitive conclusions on other outcomes including operation time, blood loss, the first postoperative exhaust time, and perioperative morbidity and mortality for insufficient data and highly significant heterogeneity among studies. Conclusions: The pooled data provided evidence to support the LCA preservation preferred over LCA non-preservation in anastomotic leakage. Future more large-volume, well-designed RCTs with extensive follow-up are needed to draw a definitive conclusion on this dilemma.

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This article examines the impact of manufacturers' adoption of a relationship marketing orientation (RMO) on the exercise of power, operationalized as the exercise of coercive and noncoercive power, and relational governance, operationalized as joint planning and joint problem solving, in distribution channels. The empirical analysis of the data from 139 Chinese manufacturers shows that RMO has a positive effect on the exercise of noncoercive power by manufacturers over their distributors and a negative moderating effect on the positive relationship between power and the exercise of coercive power. Although RMO positively affects joint problem solving among channel members, it is found to have a negative impact on joint planning. The authors attribute the last surprising effect to the unique channel environment in China.

This research examines vertically differentiated retailers' incentives to offer price-matching guarantees. It suggests that offering and not offering a price-matching guarantee are both signals of a retailer's service-price profile, a way of branding the retailer to uninformed consumers. The signals are made credible and costless by the presence of informed consumers. The authors show that when the service differentiation is large enough, only low-service retailers offer price-matching guarantees. Data from a sample of Canadian retail chains support this prediction. In addition, larger retail chains are more likely to offer price-matching guarantees than smaller chains, and competition has an interactive effect with service. As the intensity of competition a chain faces increases, lowerservice retailers are even more likely to use a guarantee, and higherservice retailers are less likely to do so, suggesting that price-matching guarantees are competitive tools, not collusive tools, as the literature has often implied.Price Matching by Vertically Differentiated Retailers: Theory and Evidence1 We are referring to advertised price-matching guarantees (e.g., Sears's "price-match plus" policy advertised on its Web page) that are offered as part of a retailer's marketing strategy. Sometimes, retailers agree to price match on a one-off basis if a customer asks for it, but such secret deals do not constitute a marketing strategy.2 This is the strict definition of "price-matching guarantee" and the one we use in our theoretical modeling. In common usage, however, the term "price-matching guarantee" refers generically to both price-matching and price-beating guarantees. For example, on Staples's Web site, it describes its policy as "we 110% price-match guarantee it." In the empirical part of the article, given this more expansive use of the term, we examine both price-matching and price-beating guarantees under the rubric of "low-price guarantees."