Demanding behaviour

Customer orientation and initial solution-free formulation of customers wishes, as an orientation for product development, appear to be promising approaches for innovations with regard to the application safety of chemicals-based products. However, the initiative for this is not mainly due to substance manufacturers, but rather to the chemicals users being close to the consumers. To what extent the commercial/industrial chemicals end-users (users of production auxiliary materials that are not included in the product) also transform the latent desire for application-safe products into effective demand behaviour, depends on other constellations of motives than those of private end-consumers. The employers liabihty insurance, chambers of commerce and industry, branch associations, trade unions and management boards of large-scale companies play a key role in making quality and competition effective as drivers for innovation here too. 

These are obviously extreme examples, most products behave much more closely to what is termed unit elasticity— which is defined as being when a 1% reduction in price will cause a 1 % increase in demand (sales). The equihbrium price can then be defined as the price at which supply=demand (Figure 13.9 b and c). Of course the actual price will vary with the grade of product made and thus its end use, examples include pharmaceutical or technical grade chemicals, or potable or fuel alcohols. Obviously the price-demand behaviour of inelastic products demonstrates their vital importance to some consumers, especially when unchallenged by other producer companies or competing products. This class of products is obviously attractive, not least because of the relative ease with which high R D costs can be recovered. The demand, or lack of demand for products and also other considerations, such as brand loyalty on the part of the consumer and restrictions in supply due to companies exploitation of their patents tend to distort precise descriptions of market behaviour. 

Introduction and Commercial Application The reservoir and well behaviour under dynamic conditions are key parameters in determining what fraction of the hydrocarbons initially in place will be produced to surface over the lifetime of the field, at what rates they will be produced, and which unwanted fluids such as water are also produced. This behaviour will therefore dictate the revenue stream which the development will generate through sales of the hydrocarbons. The reservoir and well performance are linked to the surface development plan, and cannot be considered in isolation different subsurface development plans will demand different surface facilities. The prediction of reservoir and well behaviour are therefore crucial components of field development planning, as well as playing a major role in reservoir management during production. 

The technological importance of thin films in snch areas as semicondnctor devices and sensors has led to a demand for mechanical property infonnation for these systems. Measuring the elastic modnlns for thin films is mnch harder than the corresponding measurement for bnlk samples, since the results obtained by traditional indentation methods are strongly perturbed by the properties of the substrate material. Additionally, the behaviour of the film under conditions of low load, which is necessary for the measnrement of thin-film properties, is strongly inflnenced by surface forces [75]. Since the force microscope is both sensitive to surface forces and has extremely high depth resolntion, it shows considerable promise as a teclnhqne for the mechanical characterization of thin films. 

There is a lot of confusion over the meaning of the terms theoretical chemistry, computational chemistry and molecular modelling. Indeed, many practitioners use all three labels to describe aspects of their research, as the occasion demands "Theoretical chemistry is often considered synonymous with quantum mechanics, whereas computational chemistry encompasses not only quantum mechanics but also molecular mechaiucs, minimisation, simulations, conformational analysis and other computer-based methods for understanding and predicting the behaviour of molecular systems. Molecular modellers use all of these methods and so we shall not concern ourselves with semantics but rather shall consider any theoretical or computational tecluiique that provides insight into the behaviour of molecular systems to be an example of molecular modelling. If a distinction has to be... 

It is in its behaviour to caustic alkalis that zirconium shows itself to be superior to those other elements of Groups IV and V whose resistance to corrosion results primarily from an ability to form surface films. Thus, in contrast to tantalum, niobium and titanium, zirconium is virtually completely resistant to concentrated caustic solutions at high temperatures, and it is only slightly attacked in fused alkalis. Resistance to liquid sodium is good. Zirconium is thus an excellent material of construction for sections of chemical plant demanding alternate contact with hot strong acids and hot strong alkalis—a unique and valuable attribute. 

A second objective is to produce behavioural changes in animals that are analogous to depression so that the model can be used to discover its neurobiological cause(s). This is a far more demanding problem and its success rests on satisfying at least three criteria (see Willner 1984) face validity (i.e. the behaviour looks like depression), construct validity (i.e. the causes and consequences of the behavioural change are the same as in depression) and predictive validity (i.e. the behaviour is reliably prevented only by drugs which have antidepressant effects in humans). 

The very special demands on the pectins used in yoghurt fruit preparations show the usefulness of rheological measurements. Figure 4 and 5 explain the difference in rheological behaviour of fruit preparations made from... 

The behaviour of the company will consist in applying price increases to products with a faster-growing and more inelastic demand (new products) and price cuts to products with a decreasing and more elastic demand owing to increasing competition or obsolescence. 

RP has been introduced in countries where the monopsony power is considerable yet not by any means the only instrument used to influence the pharmaceutical market. In most countries, RP has been accompanied by a wide range of reforms affecting both the demand side and the supply side. Given this situation, it is very difficult to attribute the changes observed in pharmaceutical expenditure and prices solely to the strategy of RP. Studies that compare expenditure, consumption and prices before and after the introduction of RP, which constitute most of the empirical literature on this mechanism, do not allow us to separate the influence of RP from that of other economic and social factors on the behaviour of the dependent variable.6... 

Danzon and Liu22 show that the short-term effect of RP is to produce a kink in the demand curve at the point corresponding to the RP, assuming that all doctors have perfect information on prices. The kinked demand model put forward by these authors to explain the behaviour of prices subject to RP predicts that it will never be optimal to fix a price below RP, the optimal pricing response being EFP = RP (see box above). 

More recently, large databases have been used to estimate the effect of drug co-payment in the USA under different insurance schemes.10 The conclusion reached is that there is a significant interaction effect between the behaviour of demand and prescriber incentives. Thus, larger prescription drug copayments are associated with lower expenditure when the doctor does not share the financial risk of the cost of the drugs (that is, practises in an independent practice association) but this effect is barely perceived in managed care models in which the doctor has incentives for cost containment. 

In summary, it is clear that a substantial part of the increase in consumption of organic products has been demand led, the consequence of a positive shift in consumer attitudes to organically produced food. But part has also been supply driven, with consumer reaction to more competitive prices and increasing availability the main vehicle for increasing consumption. It is to these two features of organic consumer behaviour that we now turn. 

It is nearly 20 years ago that the unacceptable fire behaviour of "modern" upholstered furniture became highlighted in the UK by Fire Brigade reports of domestic fires. This poor performance was blamed on the use of flexible polyurethane (PU) foam upholstery and demands were made to ban PU foam or at least to insist on the use of flame retarded PU foam. 

A substantial divergence from the behaviour described up to now occurs with the 2,6-(V,(V-tetramethyl anilines (Table 7). The effect of the para substituent is no longer systematic, and no good correlation with substituent electronic properties is displayed. Evidently, the extent of nitrogen lone-pair delocalization in these compounds reflects a balance between electronic demand for, and steric inhibition of, delocalization that varies with the individual compounds. Nitrogen chemical shifts are a sensitive probe for these effects. 

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