Stackelberg leadership with demand uncertainty

We consider a simple Stackelberg model with demand uncertainty only for the first mover in order to compare the advantages of leadership and flexibility, and use an example to provide some discussion about the endogenous order of moves in the presence of demand uncertainty. We find that only when the realized demand is in an intermediate zone does the first mover preserve its advantage; when the realized demand is far from its expected value, the second mover obtains higher profit than the leading firm, as the leadership advantage is dominated by the benefit of flexibility when demand fluctuation is significant. Even with this risk of losing flexibility under significant demand variation, for some parameter values in our model the first firm still has incentive to choose Stackelberg rather than Cournot competition. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Sequential product positioning in the presence of an asymmetric network externality intensity

In this study, we analyze the sequential decisions on product positioning of two firms in the presence of network externalities. One commonly accepted phenomena in a market where a network externality arises is the first‐mover advantage, in which the first entrant into a market can earn a higher profit than later entrants. However, in some recent online services markets, we see that the second mover earns a higher profit than the first mover. This occurs because the second mover strengthens its variety of available functions and services markedly, thereby facilitating consumers' work and communication with its main product, which we call network externality intensity. Based on this observation, we analyze sequential positioning in Hotelling's framework by incorporating an asymmetric network externality intensity between firms. We show that unlike the results of previous related studies, both first‐ and second‐mover advantages can appear in the equilibrium depending on the relationship of the network externality intensity between firms; further, they do not change monotonically with the level of network externality intensity.     

市场需求变化条件下短生命周期产品的订货策略

在短生命周期产品供应链的管理中有一个突出问题，即制造商如何制订有效的订货条件以及零售商如何利用这些订货条件进行合理订货.在市场需求变化条件下，短生命周期的产品订货分为两个阶段：第一阶段初从供应商那里订货一次．第一阶段末第二阶段初，根据市场需求变化再订货一次：本文研究了在一个产品生命周期中，在市场需求变化下，零售商和供应商如何制定有利于双方的第二次订货时间，以及考虑库存成本的零售商在两次订货中怎样采用最优的策略.     

基于信息共享的供应链双源渠道Stackelberg博弈分析

对于双源渠道供应链系统中零售商和制造商的信息共享问题,引入市场需求不确定信息作为信息共享的重要影响因素,利用Stackelberg主从对策,构建了四个考虑信息共享的双源渠道供应链Stackelberg博弈模型,分析了零售商和制造商在是否分享市场不确定信息和是否运用于商务活动的博弈过程。研究结果显示:零售商和制造商都会尽可能去获取市场需求不确定信息,并且制造商会把此信息充分运用到电子商务市场来提高自己以及供应链整体利益。     

产品生命周期对配送网络设计的影响

为了在当今竞争激烈的市场环境中持续保有较大竞争优势,供应链中企业的配送网络设计必须考虑产品特征与顾客需求的关系.当产品经历整个生命周期不同阶段时,其市场需求的变化往往具有较大不确定性,因此,企业的配送网络必须动态地与产品需求特征进行匹配,才能具有最大的竞争力.本文讨论了配送网络的不同选择以及这些配送网络适合的产品类型,分析了在产品生命周期的不同阶段,如何设计合适的配送网络.最后,以制药业为例来具体分析产品生命周期不同阶段对配送网络设计的影响.     

Environmental management beyond the boundaries of the firm: definitions and constraints

When firms look outward and consider how issues related to the natural environment are likely to affect them directly they can distinguish two main forms of influence. One is environmental and related regulation which comes in a variety of forms. The other partly overlapping form is market influences. As firms try to adapt to these influences, either they can take an internally focused approach or they can accept that environmental impacts are related to all the stages of life a product passes through and take the inter‐organizational consequences in terms of required co‐operation. Pursuing inter‐organizational environmental management, however, involves a choice of approaches, which are likely to vary greatly in terms of the degree of physical exchange and the cost of arranging and maintaining inter‐organizational relations. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Production quality and pricing strategy for substitutable products under comparison effects

Comparison effects have been studied extensively in many fields. In particular, existing operations management articles have discussed the impact of comparison effects on enterprises' production and pricing decisions. Research has also shown that consumers' purchasing decisions are primarily determined by three factors: product quality, selling price, and comparison effects. The current study introduces the concepts of social and temporal comparison effects to examine how comparison effects influence a monopolist’s production quality and pricing strategy for substitutable products. Results reveal the following: (1) Setting different prices for even two types of substitutable products with negligible quality differences can divide customers into three groups under the influence of social comparison effects in a single-stage model. (2) The monopolist should avoid using a price discrimination strategy in which products with a short market life cycle have the same quality but different prices. (3) When the market life cycle of products is sufficiently long in the single-product market and the market with two substitutable products, the monopolist’s optimal choice in the second stage is to keep production quality constant and increase the selling price. Consequently, the number of buyers does not decrease because of temporal comparison effects. Therefore, the firm increases its revenue. (4) For the market with two substitutable products with quality differences, one approximate optimal strategy for the enterprise in the second stage is to keep the selling price constant with the assumption that product quality cannot be adjusted after the first period. At this point, the consumption situation in the market is the same as that in the first stage. Therefore, when no external constraints exist, the monopolist firm can obtain more benefits in the second stage than in the first stage by exploiting the temporal comparison effects of consumers in the second stage. (5) When consumer identity information can be confirmed in the market, social comparison effects, similar to temporal comparison effects, could help the enterprise increase its price and profit while maintaining product quality. These social and temporal comparison effects constrain consumers. Thus, the number of people who continue to buy products does not decrease.     

Factor market effects upon product market equilibrium

Conventional duopoly models typically assume agents possess specific conjectures concerning other agents’ behavior. In this paper equilibrium conjectures are endogenous and are a result of a joint factor market and product market equilibrium. Factor markets affect product markets since potential managers or owners of firms engage in product market competition and compete for corporate control in labor or capital markets. The resulting factor and product market joint equilibrium (FPE) endogenizes conjectures and can thus potentially endogenize market structure. This approach provides economic rationales for both Stackelberg and consistent conjectural equilibria. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Real options game models of R&D competition between asymmetric firms with spillovers

Using real options game models, we consider the characterization of strategic equilibria associated with an asymmetric Research and Development (R&D) race between an incumbent firm and an entrant firm in the development of a new innovative product under market and technological uncertainties. The random arrival time of the discovery of the patent protected innovative product is modeled as a Poisson process. Input spillovers on the R&D effort are modeled by the change in the leader’s hazard rate of success of innovation upon the follower’s entry into the R&D race. Asymmetry between the two competing firms include sunk costs of investment, stochastic revenue flow rates generated from the product, and hazard rates of arrival of success of R&D efforts of the two firms. Under asymmetric duopoly, we obtain the complete characterization of the three types of Markov perfect equilibria (sequential leader–follower, preemption and simultaneous entry) of the firms’ optimal R&D entry decisions with respect to various sets of model parameters. Our model shows that under positive input spillover, preemptive equilibrium does not occur in the R&D race due to the presence of dominant second mover advantage. The two firms choose optimally to enter simultaneously if the sunk cost asymmetry is relatively small; otherwise, sequential equilibrium would occur. When the initial hazard rate is low relative to the level of input spillover, simultaneous entry would occur as an optimal decision, signifying another scenario of dominant second mover advantage. On the other hand, when the initial hazard rate is sufficiently high so that the first mover advantage becomes more significant, simultaneous equilibrium does not occur even under high level of positive input spillover.     

Oligopoly, Financial Structure, and Resolution of Uncertainty

We characterize equilibria of a multistage game in which competing duopolists may acquire and share information in advance of choosing their financial structure which, in turn, precedes production. Given sufficient uncertainty, equilibria exist in which the efficiency and, possibly, coordination gains to acquiring and sharing perfect information are sufficient to break Brander and Lewis's (1986) result wherein both firms issue debt to their mutual disadvantage. However, more interesting may be the robustness of that result when uncertainty is low or when information is imperfect. The key insight is that the consequences of issuing debt are invariant to the level of uncertainty, given that firms can recalibrate the terms of debt to achieve the Stackelberg solution.     

Vertical merger: monopolization for downstream quasi‐rents

This paper provides a welfare analysis of vertical merger between an input monopolist and downstream firms that compete perfectly in a homogeneous product market. The distinguishing feature of the present model is that the downstream firms face capacity constraints. As a result of downstream quasi‐rents, vertical merger—the extent of merger is gauged by the capacity share of the acquired downstream firm—may either raise or lower final output. An analytical criterion for distinguishing pro‐ and anti‐competitive mergers is derived, which relies entirely on pre‐merger market quantities and the capacity share of the downstream target. A common result is that vertical merger is output‐increasing even when unaffiliated downstream rivals are completely foreclosed. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Delegation and strategic incentives for managers in contests

Owners usually want their managers to maximize profits. As the literature on strategic delegation has shown it may be beneficial to owners to put a positive weight on sales in the optimal linear incentive scheme for managers to make them behave more aggressively in the market. This paper shows that if the competition between the managers can be characterized as a contest, owners may induce their managers to maximize sales. Moreover, there is a first‐mover advantage for owners when choosing their incentive schemes. If delegation is endogenous the type of contest will determine whether all owners delegate their decisions to managers or not. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Value and risk dynamics over the innovation cycle

This paper studies investment in intellectual capital and corresponding value and risk dynamics over the innovation cycle. We assume that the innovation cycle consists of three phases, R&D, trial, and market introduction phases. We use a real option investment model to characterize firm value and risk dynamics over the innovation cycle and find that firm value is the sum of the value of assets in place and non-linear option values related to breakthrough, exit, and market introduction options. Firm risk over the innovation cycle is highly non-linear and quite distinct in different phases. During the R&D phase risk is high as the firm faces high operating leverage originating from R&D fixed costs together with technological uncertainty. During the trial phase risk is significantly lower and dominated by option risk to launch the product in the market while after the introduction of the product in the market risk is equivalent to the asset risk of the company. Our model is consistent with the view that positive excess returns of R&D intensive firms are a compensation for risk. Based on this insight we derive several testable predictions.     

Responsiveness of industry to eco‐efficiency improvements in the product chain: the case of Akzo Nobel11

Increasingly, arguments are being made concerning the benefits of a marriage between ecology and economy in life cycle management. This article provides insights into the business conditions under which market opportunities and eco‐efficiency improvements in the product chain can indeed go hand in hand. The study focuses on the differences in responsiveness of six different sub‐business units within the chemical company of Akzo Nobel to eco‐efficiency improvements in the product chain and how these differences can be explained. The comparative analysis shows the importance of the following three criteria: (i) the level of environmental pressure; (ii) the room for manoeuvre and (iii) the degree to which the environment can be used to obtain a competitive advantage. These criteria may also be valid for other companies. However, research needs to investigate whether additional factors (e.g. the culture of the company, its technological capabilities and market strength) also influence corporate environmental response. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

From Hot Cakes to Cold Feet: A Contingent Perspective on the Relationship between Market Uncertainty and Status Homophily in the Formation of Alliances

In this study, we reconsider the classical positive association between the level of market uncertainty and an organization's propensity to form ties with organizations of similar status. Although prior research argues that the greater the uncertainty, the higher the level of status homophily, we suggest that this relationship is contingent upon framing that affects positive or negative valence towards uncertainty. In an up market, organizations tend to frame uncertainty as upside risk, and thus will subsequently favour explorative uncertainty‐mitigation devices; whereas, in a down market, organizations primarily frame uncertainty as downward risk, and thus will rely on more conservative uncertainty‐mitigation mechanisms. We therefore predict that a greater number of status‐heterophilous ties will be formed in an up market than in a down market. We discuss the implications of our results for status theory and more broadly for research on strategic decision making under uncertainty.     

Time‐to‐market,window of opportunity,and salvageability of a new product development

The time‐to‐market in the presence of a window of opportunity is analyzed using ;a probabilistic model, i.e. a model where the completion time of new product development is a random variable characterized by a gamma distribution. Two cases are considered: the first, a case where the discounted return‐on‐investment exceeds the return expected from a conservative investment—e.g. investment in bonds—termed ‘the profitable case’; and the second, a case where the discounted return‐on‐investment just balances the cost of new product development, termed ‘the salvageable case’. The model constructed is focused on the financial aspects of new product development. It allows a decision‐maker to monitor, as well as terminate, a project based on its expected value (at any time prior to completion) by computing the mean time‐to‐market that provides profit, investment salvage, or loss. The mean time‐to‐market computed by the model may be compared with that estimated by the technology development team for decision‐making purposes. Finally, in the presence of a window of opportunity and for the specific cases analyzed, we recommend to always keep the expenditure rate lower than the expected return rate. This will provide the decision‐maker a salvageable exit opportunity if project termination is decided. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Business strategy for sustainable development: Impact of life cycle inventory and life cycle impact assessment steps in supply chain design and planning

Sustainability reporting has become a central instrument in displaying a company's strategy and engagement with a more sustainable society. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is an important tool in this context as it is aimed to analyze the entire life cycle of the product/service, instead of focusing on one focal firm. However, the lack of standardized guidelines in its application raises questions regarding the usefulness and validity of results. This study contributes to the improvement of sustainability reporting through the identification of the uncertainty sources in life cycle methodologies that have the biggest impact in the definition of business and environmental strategies, exploring a supply chain‐oriented analysis. The focus is on life cycle inventory (LCI) and life cycle impact assessment (LCIA). A multiobjective optimization‐based methodology is applied to a supply chain case study in the pulp and paper industry. Environmental and economic objectives are considered. Results show that different LCIA methods and different normalization data sets result in significantly different business and environmental strategies. However, different system models and cultural perspectives at the LCI step and variations in the characterization factors tend to lead to the same decisions. Important insights are gained regarding the impact of nonstandardized analysis of the application of LCA in supply chain design and planning decisions and consequently on business strategy definition and sustainability reporting. Furthermore, the importance of operations research methods to improve LCA‐based studies and of bridging the gap between LCA and supply chain management bodies of knowledge is highlighted in this work.     

A contingent theory of supplier management initiatives: Effects of competitive intensity and product life cycle

Direct investments in supplier development and close relationship building are the two major collaborative supplier management strategies for developing and accessing superior supplier capability. The impact of these two strategies, however, has not been uniform across firms, calling for a deeper examination of their relative effectiveness. Utilizing multiple theoretical frameworks, this study examines the relevance and effectiveness of the two collaborative strategies across the growth and maturity stages of the product life cycle (PLC). Specifically, the study analyzes the influence of competitive intensity as an antecedent to supplier development and relational initiatives, and the role of product life cycle as a moderator of the inter-relationships among competitive intensity, supplier development, relational initiatives, and supplier capability. Based on primary survey data, and discussion with practicing managers, the study finds that the individual and integrative effectiveness of supplier development investments (SDI) and relational orientation (RO) can be influenced differently by competitive intensity and PLC stage. In particular, RO can have a foundational role in motivating SDI for superior supplier capability, as also in safeguarding against supplier opportunism in the standardized product market context of the maturity stage. The managerial and theoretical implications of varied emphasis on the two collaborative supplier management strategies across the PLC stages are discussed.     

基于生命周期的企业价值评估方法研究

随着中国市场经济结构不断完善和企业优化竞争速率的激增,企业价值评估的重要作用日渐凸显,企业价值评估方法封市场定价和企业价值观有着重要的导向作用。不同生命周期阶段,影响企业创造价值的因素不同,企业价值评估方法也应不同。本文依据企业生命周期理论,以现金流量模型为基础,结合企业所处的生命周期阶段,补充现金流量模型在评估企业价值时的不足之处,为企业寻找更加合理的价值评估方法。