Malay society is rooted on the Islamic concept. That Islam influenced every corner of that Malay society which had ever been an edge of the civilizations of the Indus and Ganges. Once the letters of that Hindu religion namely Sanscrit was adopted to this Malay society for the purpose of getting the Malay language, that is, Bahasa Melayu down to the practical literation but in vain. The Sanscrit was too complicated for Malay society to imitate and put it into practice in everyday life because it was totally different type of letters which has many of the similar allographs for a sound. In the end Malay society gave it up and just used the Malay language without using any letters for herself. After a few centuries Islam entered this Malay society with taking Arabic letters. It was not merely influencing Malay cultures, but to the religious life according to wide spread of that Islam. Finally Arabic letters was to the very means that Malay language was written by. It means that Arabic letters had been used for Arabic language in former times, but it became a similar form of letters for a new language which was named as Malay language. This Arabic letters for Arabic language has no problems whereas Arabic letters for Malay language has some of it. Naturally speaking, arabic letters was not designed for any other language but just for Arabic language itself. On account of this, there occurred a few problems in writing Malay consonants, just like p, ng, g, c, ny and v. These 6 letters could never be written down in Arabic letters. Those 6 ones were never known before in trying to pronounce by Arab people. Therefore, Malay society had only to modify a few new forms of letters for these 6 letters which had frequently been found in their own Malay sounds. As a result, pa was derived from fa, nga was derived from ain, ga was derived from kaf, ca was derived from jim, nya was derived from tha or ba, and va was derived from wau itself. Where must these 6 newly modified letters be put on this Arabic keyboard? This is the very core of this working paper. As a matter of course, these 6 letters were put on the place where 6 Arabic signs which were scarecely written in Malay language. Those 6 are found when they are used only in the 'shift-key-using-letters.' These newly designed 6 letters were put instead of the original places of fatha, kasra, damma, sukun, tanween and so on. The main differences between the 2 set of 6 letters are this: 6 in Arabic orginal keyboard are only signs for Arabic letters, on the other hand 6 Malay's are real letters. In others words, 6 newly modified Malay letters were substituted for unused 6 Arabic signs in Malay keyboard. This type of newly designed Malay Jawi Script keyboard is still used in Malaysia, Brunei and some other Malay countries. But this sort of keyboard also needs to go forward to find out another way of keyboard system which is in accordance with the alphabetically ordered keyboard system. It means that alif is going to be typed for A key, and zai shall be typed when Z key is pressed. This keyboard system is called 'Malay Jawi-English Rumi matching keyboard system', even though this system should probably be inconvenient for Malay Jawi experts who are good at Arabic 'alif-ba-ta'order.
Internet commerce has been growing at a rapid pace for the last decade. Many firms try to reach wider consumer markets by adding the Internet channel to the existing traditional channels. Despite the various benefits of the Internet channel, a significant number of firms failed in managing the new type of channel. Previous studies could not cleary explain these conflicting results associated with the Internet channel. One of the major reasons is most of the previous studies conducted analyses under a specific market condition and claimed that as the impact of Internet channel introduction. Therefore, their results are strongly influenced by the specific market settings. However, firms face various market conditions in the real worlddensity and disutility of using the Internet. The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of various market environments on a firm's optimal channel strategy by employing a flexible game theory model. We capture various market conditions with consumer density and disutility of using the Internet.
shows the channel structures analyzed in this study. Before the Internet channel is introduced, a monopoly manufacturer sells its products through an independent physical store. From this structure, the manufacturer could introduce its own Internet channel (MI). The independent physical store could also introduce its own Internet channel and coordinate it with the existing physical store (RI). An independent Internet retailer such as Amazon could enter this market (II). In this case, two types of independent retailers compete with each other. In this model, consumers are uniformly distributed on the two dimensional space. Consumer heterogeneity is captured by a consumer's geographical location (ci) and his disutility of using the Internet channel (${\delta}_{N_i}$).
shows various market conditions captured by the two consumer heterogeneities.
(a) illustrates a market with symmetric consumer distributions. The model captures explicitly the asymmetric distributions of consumer disutility in a market as well. In a market like that is represented in
(c), the average consumer disutility of using an Internet store is relatively smaller than that of using a physical store. For example, this case represents the market in which 1) the product is suitable for Internet transactions (e.g., books) or 2) the level of E-Commerce readiness is high such as in Denmark or Finland. On the other hand, the average consumer disutility when using an Internet store is relatively greater than that of using a physical store in a market like (b). Countries like Ukraine and Bulgaria, or the market for "experience goods" such as shoes, could be examples of this market condition.
summarizes the various scenarios of consumer distributions analyzed in this study. The range for disutility of using the Internet (${\delta}_{N_i}$) is held constant, while the range of consumer distribution (${\chi}_i$) varies from -25 to 25, from -50 to 50, from -100 to 100, from -150 to 150, and from -200 to 200.
summarizes the analysis results. As the average travel cost in a market decreases while the average disutility of Internet use remains the same, average retail price, total quantity sold, physical store profit, monopoly manufacturer profit, and thus, total channel profit increase. On the other hand, the quantity sold through the Internet and the profit of the Internet store decrease with a decreasing average travel cost relative to the average disutility of Internet use. We find that a channel that has an advantage over the other kind of channel serves a larger portion of the market. In a market with a high average travel cost, in which the Internet store has a relative advantage over the physical store, for example, the Internet store becomes a mass-retailer serving a larger portion of the market. This result implies that the Internet becomes a more significant distribution channel in those markets characterized by greater geographical dispersion of buyers, or as consumers become more proficient in Internet usage. The results indicate that the degree of price discrimination also varies depending on the distribution of consumer disutility in a market. The manufacturer in a market in which the average travel cost is higher than the average disutility of using the Internet has a stronger incentive for price discrimination than the manufacturer in a market where the average travel cost is relatively lower. We also find that the manufacturer has a stronger incentive to maintain a high price level when the average travel cost in a market is relatively low. Additionally, the retail competition effect due to Internet channel introduction strengthens as average travel cost in a market decreases. This result indicates that a manufacturer's channel power relative to that of the independent physical retailer becomes stronger with a decreasing average travel cost. This implication is counter-intuitive, because it is widely believed that the negative impact of Internet channel introduction on a competing physical retailer is more significant in a market like Russia, where consumers are more geographically dispersed, than in a market like Hong Kong, that has a condensed geographic distribution of consumers.