A THREE‐STAGE IMPLEMENTATION MODEL FOR SUPPLY CHAIN COLLABORATION

Leading companies know that collaboration and creativity in supply chain (SC) relationships are critical to future competitiveness. Yet, many companies struggle to collaborate effectively. This reality raises the question: “How can managers overcome the cultural and structural impediments to SC collaboration?” Through a series of in-depth, semi-structured interviews, we identify core practices and key requirements to successful SC collaboration. Contingency and force field theories help transform our field study findings into a three-stage model for improving SC collaboration. The constant challenge of persuading other managers and companies to pursue SC collaboration highlights the need for a proven-path approach to SC collaboration.     

DEVELOPING SOCIAL IDENTITY AND SOCIAL CAPITAL FOR SUPPLY CHAIN MANAGEMENT

Competition involves not firm against firm but rather supply chain against supply chain, but few studies explain theoretically the subsistence of a supply chain as a social entity or the operating mechanisms through which firms socialize to obtain better business performance. On the bases of social identity theory and social capital theory, the authors suggest that the salience of supply chain identity accumulates social capital in a supply chain, which then facilitates supply chain management and improves business performance.     

基于价值的供应链结构分析

本文从股东价值出发,研究了构成供应链价值增值的结构性因素,即供应链库存、运输与配送、设施、信息和组织形式,并进一步分析了这些价值驱动要素在实现供应链目标中的管理杠杆作用,为供应链设计、运营和管理提供了一个基本框架。     

Book essay on Flemming Hansen and Sverre Riis Christensen (2007), Emotions, advertising and consumer choice

Hansen and Christensen discuss a wide range of current issues regarding the role of emotions in consumer behavior as well as measures of advertising effectiveness. The central theme of the book is the elaboration and application of a new tool to measure the emotional constructions that consumers develop for branded fast moving consumer goods. The authors call this measure NERS, which stands for Net Emotional Response Strength. The book appeals to both intermediate and advanced academic readers due to the comprehensiveness of its literature review and the depth of its theoretical developments. The present essay critically comments the contents of the book and then, based on the context provided by the book, discusses in further detail some salient aspects of the role of emotions in consumer choice that deserve special attention. In particular, it is pointed out how some findings from behavioral decision research could improve the conceptualizations offered by Hansen and Christensen.     

Joint service,pricing and advertising strategies with tourists’ green tourism experience in a tourism supply chain

We consider the supply chain in the tourism industry, in which tourists are susceptible to the tourists' green tourism experience when they make purchase decisions for a green tourism product. Our research considers a green tourism supply chain (GTSC) consisting of one scenic spot (SS) and one travel agency (TA), and studies the joint green tourism service, pricing and advertising problem of the SS and the TA. We establish Stackelberg differential game models between the SS and the TA in the centralized, decentralized and revenue-sharing scenarios, and apply Pontryagin's maximum principle to obtain the dynamic equilibrium solutions of the GTSC members. Based on the three different scenarios, we analyze influences of the tourists' green tourism experience concern level, the wholesale ticket price and the sharing ratio on the optimal decisions and performances of the GTSC. This paper is the first quantitative research to study the green tourism service effort, pricing and advertising strategies of the GTSC members and design GTSC improvement contract with considering the green tourism experience. Our results provide management insights for the SS and the TA to manage GTSC under the green tourism preferences and the green tourism experience of tourists.     

Effects of pricing and promotion on consumer perceptions: it depends on how you frame it

This research examined the extent to which different promotional frames increased perceptions of deal value. Price discounts dominate the sales promotions employed by marketers. The framing literature suggests discounts have robust positive effects on consumer perceptions of deal value. However, the current research showed that negative quality inferences moderated discount framing effects and undermined deal value, particularly when no assurance of product quality was provided. Every-day-low-price offers were also vulnerable to negative quality inferences, while free gift frames maintained quality perceptions and increased deal value. Product trial acted to further magnify promotional framing effects, according to a confirmation bias. These findings were consistent with an attribute framing mechanism.     

A comparison of parents' and children's knowledge of brands and advertising slogans in the United States: implications for consumer socialization

Research in the area of consumer socialization suggests that parents act in an agent–learner relationship with their preadolescent children and have the greatest influence on their young children's purchase behaviour. The present study examines this assumption in light of changes in family roles and composition, media exposure and marketing efforts aimed at children. A cognitive recognition test of advertising slogans drawn from recent television commercials is used to determine knowledge levels of a sample of preadolescent children and their parents. Results suggest that children, beginning at age nine, have as much knowledge of advertising slogans as do their parents, even in product categories targeted at adults.     

The impact of inference generation on belief formation

This study investigates the effects of generating inferences (or failure thereof) with incomplete advertising messages on consumer's belief formation. A factorial design is used to systematically investigate the roles of product knowledge, message structure, and inference prompting in this process. The results show that inference generation or failure affects not only the belief per se, but also the confidence in the belief and that strength of learned beliefs about the product tends to be congruent. Specifically, high knowledge consumers' inferred beliefs are stronger, held with higher confidence, and more congruent with their existing beliefs than those of low knowledge consumers. Interaction effects are also observed between product knowledge and message structure for low knowledge consumers. High knowledge consumers are not affected by message structure or inference prompting condition. Implications of these findings for inference-persuasion research, advertising effectiveness, and future research are discussed.     

The Dilemma of Pull and Push-Price Promotions

Should manufacturers of products such as automobiles and household appliances offer cash rebates to all consumers at the time of purchase, or offer trade deals to retailers? The authors conduct an analytical inquiry that shows that choosing between these two types of price promotion critically depends on the consumer sensitivity to both regular and promotional prices. More specifically, when consumers are more (less) sensitive to promotions than to regular prices, manufacturers are better (worse) off offering trade deals (consumer rebates) rather than consumer rebates (trade deals). Consistent with traditional predictions found in the economic literature, either of the two promotions can be offered indiscriminately if consumers make no difference between promotional offers and regular-price reductions. The theoretical and managerial implications of these findings are discussed.     

Advertising budgets in competitive environments

Firms can approach advertising competition either by setting advertising budgets (as in the percentage of sales method) or target sales levels (as in the objective and task approach). We study firms’ incentives to adopt one or the other posture using a two-stage model of duopolistic competition. In the first stage, each firm chooses to commit either to an advertising budget, letting its sales follow from the market response function, or to a desired sales level, promising to adjust its advertising spending accordingly. In the second stage, firms choose the actual levels of their advertising budget or sales target. When prices are exogenous, we show that, due to strategic effects, if a firm benefits from its rival’s advertising (as when advertising increases awareness of the product category) then setting an advertising budget dominates setting a sales target. On the other hand, if a firm is harmed by its rival’s advertising (as when advertising increases the firm’s share of a fixed market), then committing to a sales level dominates. We extend these results in several directions and show that when firms engage in price competition as well as advertising the nature of advertising and product-market competition interact to determine whether setting an advertising budget or sales target dominates.

Category management,product assortment,and consumer welfare

In this article, we endogenize product assortment decisions under a category management (CM) framework in a channel setup. We find that (1) product assortment is polarized more under CM than under a non-CM regime; (2) the price of a high-end (low-end) product in an assortment increases (decreases) under CM than under a non-CM regime; and (3) a high-quality manufacturer makes more profit than a low-quality manufacturer. In our model, the manufacturer’s choice of quality and its polarization is driven by the existence and the decisions of the retailer (CM or non-CM). Finally, we have an interesting result on consumer welfare. We find that the total consumer welfare, as measured by consumer surplus, worsens under CM only when there is sufficient heterogeneity in consumers’ tastes.     

It’s only words: idiom processing,language knowledge and consumer memory of Chinese print advertisements

This study investigated the effects of employing Chinese idioms in headlines on consumer memory. The results indicated that, as hypothesized, the use of idiomatic headlines in print advertisements produced superior aided recall of headlines and recognition of brand names than employing non-idiomatic headlines. High language knowledge individuals also had greater aided headline recall and brand name recognition. However, this knowledge advantage was only observed for advertisements with idiomatic headlines. Aided headline recall generally mediated brand name recognition. Finally, the language knowledge results were robust across different knowledge measures.     

The impact of advertising on consumer price sensitivity in experience goods markets

In this paper we use Nielsen scanner panel data on four categories of consumer goods to examine how TV advertising and other marketing activities affect the demand curve facing a brand. Advertising can affect consumer demand in many different ways. Becker and Murphy (Quarterly Journal of Economics 108:941–964, 1993) have argued that the “presumptive case” should be that advertising works by raising marginal consumers’ willingness to pay for a brand. This has the effect of flattening the demand curve, thus increasing the equilibrium price elasticity of demand and the lowering the equilibrium price. Thus, “advertising is profitable not because it lowers the elasticity of demand for the advertised good, but because it raises the level of demand.” Our empirical results support this conjecture on how advertising shifts the demand curve for 17 of the 18 brands we examine. There have been many prior studies of how advertising affects two equilibrium quantities: the price elasticity of demand and/or the price level. Our work is differentiated from previous work primarily by our focus on how advertising shifts demand curves as a whole. As Becker and Murphy pointed out, a focus on equilibrium prices or elasticities alone can be quite misleading. Indeed, in many instances, the observation that advertising causes prices to fall and/or demand elasticities to increase, has misled authors into concluding that consumer “price sensitivity” must have increased, meaning the number of consumers’ willing to pay any particular price for a brand was reduced—perhaps because advertising makes consumers more aware of substitutes. But, in fact, a decrease in the equilibrium price is perfectly consistent with a scenario where advertising actually raises each individual consumer’s willingness to pay for a brand. Thus, we argue that to understand how advertising affects consumer price sensitivity one needs to estimate how it shifts the whole distribution of willingness to pay in the population. This means estimating how it shifts the shape of the demand curve as a whole, which in turn means estimating a complete demand system for all brands in a category—as we do here. We estimate demand systems for toothpaste, toothbrushes, detergent and ketchup. Across these categories, we find one important exception to conjecture that advertising should primarily increase the willingness to pay of marginal consumers. The exception is the case of Heinz ketchup. Heinz advertising has a greater positive effect on the WTP of infra-marginal consumers. This is not surprising, because Heinz advertising focuses on differentiating the brand on the “thickness” dimension. This is a horizontal dimension that may be highly valued by some consumers and not others. The consumers who most value this dimension have the highest WTP for Heinz, and, by focusing on this dimension; Heinz advertising raises the WTP of these infra-marginal consumers further. In such a case, advertising is profitable because it reduces the market share loss that the brand would suffer from any given price increase. In contrast, in the other categories we examine, advertising tends to focus more on vertical attributes.

An integrated approach to managing extended supply chain networks

In an effort to improve their competitive position in a rapidly changing marketplace, many companies have replaced their traditional supply chains with extended supply chain networks built on a foundation of supply chain collaboration. These extended networks require the use of decision support tools and technologies to improve both operating efficiencies and customer service, but many companies have struggled to realize the expected benefits of these tools and the increased collaboration. This article recommends that companies adopt an integrated strategy of people, processes, and technology to achieve their competitive supply chain goals. Our recommendation is backed by the results of a survey we conducted of senior-level practitioners concerning the importance and challenges of supply chain collaboration. The article concludes with a set of managerial recommendations to improve a company’s collaborative efforts within its supply chain.     

An improved method for managing catastrophic supply chain disruptions

This article analyzes the differences between frequent and rare risks for supply chain disruptions, and proposes a new, improved risk measurement and prioritization method to account for the characteristics of rare risks. The varying idiosyncrasies of decision makers are integrated into this method such that risk management can be brought into alignment with an individual manager's preferences. Also woven into this tapestry is the notion of detection, which is familiar to those who have applied failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA), but novel in the arena of supply chain risk management. Rare risks in the supply chain are, by their nature, unsettling: unforeseen disruptions are always present, probability estimates are imprecise, and comprehensive data collection is impossible. These difficulties are taken into account by the presented risk management framework. While the proposed ordinal scales are perhaps unsettling to many who desire greater precision, measurement methods must fit the precision that is possible. By considering rare risks along with frequent risks, managers can be better positioned to deal with the unforeseen.     

Blockchain technology for enhancing supply chain resilience

With the soaring value of bitcoin and frenzy over cryptocurrency, the blockchain technology that sparked the bitcoin revolution has received heightened attention from both practitioners and academics. Blockchain technology often causes controversies surrounding its application potential and business ramifications. The blockchain is a peer-to-peer network of information technology that keeps records of digital asset transactions using distributed ledgers that are free from control by intermediaries such as banks and governments. Thus, it can mitigate risks associated with intermediaries’ interventions, including hacking, compromised privacy, vulnerability to political turmoil, costly compliance with government rules and regulation, instability of financial institutions, and contractual disputes. This article unlocks the mystique of blockchain technology and discusses ways to leverage blockchain technology to enhance supply chain resilience in times of increased risks and uncertainty.