Huawei was China's largest telecommunication equipment provider. It boasted annual revenue of US$6.7 billion in 2005, 60% of which came from international sales. Globally, Huawei had a strong position in the market for low-end routers and switches, offering products that were 40% cheaper than its competitors. However, unlike the threat from most Chinese companies, Huawei's threat came not from low-cost manufacturing but from low-cost engineering. Can Huawei leverage its strengths to climb up the technology value chain, replicating its success with low-end telecom networking in high-technology products and services? Can it build a global brand?

In addition to spas, theme parks, and palm beaches, health care tourism is emerging as a growing source of revenue in tourist destinations in Asia. Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and India have identified health care tourism as one of the fastest growing segments in their respective tourist markets and are launching aggressive marketing plans for the next few years. The target markets are customers from developed countries, mostly from Europe, North America, and Japan, with over-crowded and expensive medical services at home. As part of the health care package, customers receive the bonus of vacationing and sightseeing in a foreign country and an exotic culture. Provides a survey of the development of health care tourism in select Asian countries. Emphasizes the marketing efforts employed by the various countries in positioning their services and developing this promising market segment. Compares and contrasts the respective roles of the public and private sectors and highlights issues and challenges for other countries in their destination marketing efforts.

The global apparel industry is known to be a buyer-driven industry, led by retailers, marketers, and branded manufacturers. In the United States, in particular, a handful of giant retailers (Wal-Mart, Sears, Kmart, Dayton Hudson, JC Penney), which account for over two-thirds of all apparel sales, dominate the industry. In recent years, these companies have increasingly deployed information technologies to gain market knowledge, streamline their value chains, and manage their extensive global sourcing networks. In response to market demand, TAL Apparel Ltd. (TAL), a no-name Hong Kong-based garment manufacturer, has developed a sophisticated information management system to manage the supply chain for its retailer customers, thus solidifying its position in the apparel value chain. By taking ownership of the customer ordering, inventory management, and shipment dispatch functions, the manufacturer has gained valuable access to real-time market information, allowing it to venture into the design and test marketing business. Explores how a traditionally weak member in the apparel industry uses IT to gain competitive advantage in the intensely competitive global marketplace.

The "eInstant Bonus" was an interactive advertising concept designed internally by the Mass Transit Railway Corp. Ltd. (MTR) in Hong Kong. Under this scheme, special discount offers from merchants/advertisers were displayed on a 42-inch Plasma TV in the form of a 10-second static slide or a 30-second TV commercial. Passengers could select items on the touch-screen monitor and a discount coupon would be issued. The discount coupon could then be redeemed for products or services purchased at the merchant's premises. For each coupon issued, a transaction fee of $1.00 would be deducted from the passenger's Octopus Card. This case illustrates the use of information technology by a large corporation for strategic alignment and value creation. Multimedia kiosks are a new phenomenon of the 1990s to provide personalized and interactive customer service on-site. Discussion is provided on the concepts and applications of kiosks for a customer service organization. The MTR eInstant Bonus project is considered a successful innovation by various measures. Also provides an understanding of innovation adoption and diffusion, specifically, how the attributes of the innovation relate to its rate of adoption and diffusion.

On March 22, 2001, Microsoft Corp. warned computer users that an individual posing electronically as a company representative had fooled VeriSign, Inc., the leading digital certificate authority, into issuing two fraudulent digital certificates in Microsoft's name. The certificates could be used by malicious attackers to trick computer users into running unsafe software programs. Despite the discovery of the fraud and the follow-up investigation by the FBI, the person who registered the certificates could not be found. The Microsoft case was the world's first reported case of digital certificate fraud. It raised serious questions about the sophistication of digital certificates and signatures and the rules governing the conduct of issuers and users in the electronic marketplace. The accident also revealed that a simple identity certificate/signature comes with complex and nonstandard policies and procedures that are vulnerable to regulatory and security flaws.

The Electronic Tendering System (ETS) was a flagship project under the Hong Kong Special Administration Region's (HKSAR's) e-government strategy to lead by example in the adoption of electronic means for government transactions with the public and businesses. With the success of the initial launch in April 2000, HKSAR planned to extend the ETS to all other government procurements, with a goal of transferring 80% of all procurement tenders online by the end of 2003. Also under consideration was an electronic marketplace system (EMS) for the small value purchases and to integrate the two systems for a total procurement solution.