Kundenpräferenzen für leistungsrelevante Attribute von Stromprodukten

This article addresses whether standard electricity products in Switzerland meet the preferences of private customers. To determine customers’ preferred electricity product we conducted an online survey with choice experiments implying 9420 choice decisions by 628 respondents in Switzerland. Using hierarchical Bayes estimation we determined customer preferences and the importance of individual product attributes in product choice. This procedure makes it possible to calculate part worth utilities for product attributes and to derive customers’ implicit willingness to pay. The “electricity mix” had the most important influence on choice decisions, followed by “monthly electricity costs” and the “location of the electricity generation”. The current Swiss electricity mix which consists of mainly nuclear and hydro power was only rated second to last in a comparison of five alternative mixes. Customers clearly prefer electricity mixes containing green energy. Findings of this study reveal strategic options for product design, positioning, and marketing for a liberalized electricity market.     

Why Customers Value Self‐Designed Products: The Importance of Process Effort and Enjoyment*

This study analyzes which factors prompt customers to attribute value to products they design themselves using mass‐customization (MC) toolkits. The assumption that self‐design delivers superior customer value is fundamental to the concept of MC toolkits and can be found in almost any conceptual work in this field. However, spectacular failures reinforce the practical relevance of developing a deeper understanding of why and when MC toolkits generate value for customers—and when they do not. Research to date has assumed that the closer fit between the self‐designed product's characteristics and the preferences of the customer is the dominant source of value. In this research, it is asked whether the enjoyment and perceived effort of the self‐design process have an additional impact on the perceived value of self‐designed products. This question is interesting because one could argue that a rational actor would hardly be willing to pay ex post for an economic good already consumed. The hypotheses are tested on 186 participants designing their own scarves with an MC toolkit. After completing the process, they submitted binding bids for “their” products in Vickrey auctions. Therefore, real buying behavior, not merely stated intentions, is observed. The present study finds that the subjective value of a self‐designed product (i.e., one's bid in the course of the auction) is indeed impacted not only by the preference fit the customer expects it to deliver but also by (1) the process enjoyment the customer reports, (2) the interaction of preference fit and process enjoyment, and (3) the interaction of preference fit and perceived process effort. In addition to its main effect, preference fit can be interpreted as a moderator of the value‐generating effect of process evaluation: in cases where the outcome of the process is perceived as positive (high preference fit), the customer also interprets process effort as a positive accomplishment, and this positive effect adds (further) value to the product. It appears that the perception of the self‐design process as a good or bad experience is partly constructed on the basis of the outcome of the process. In the opposite case (low preference fit), effort creates a negative effect that further reduces the subjective value of the product. Likewise, process enjoyment is amplified by preference fit, although enjoyment also has a significant main effect, which means that regardless of the outcome, customers attribute higher value to a self‐designed product if they enjoy the process. In a way, this effect resembles of the classic story of Tom Sawyer and the fence, in which Tom manages to “frame” the tedious chore of whitewashing a fence as a rare opportunity—thus persuading his friends to pay him for letting them work. Manufacturers designing an MC system therefore are advised to designing MC toolkits in a way that they elicit positive affective reactions that make their customers value their work.     

The Value of Crowdsourcing: Can Users Really Compete with Professionals in Generating New Product Ideas?

Generating ideas for new products used to be the exclusive domain of marketers, engineers, and/or designers. Users have only recently been recognized as an alternative source of new product ideas. Whereas some have attributed great potential to outsourcing idea generation to the “crowd” of users (“crowdsourcing”), others have clearly been more skeptical. The authors join this debate by presenting a real‐world comparison of ideas actually generated by a firm's professionals with those generated by users in the course of an idea generation contest. Both professionals and users provided ideas to solve an effective and relevant problem in the consumer goods market for baby products. Executives from the underlying company evaluated all ideas (blind to their source) in terms of key quality dimensions including novelty, customer benefit, and feasibility. The study reveals that the crowdsourcing process generated user ideas that score significantly higher in terms of novelty and customer benefit, and somewhat lower in terms of feasibility. However, the average values for feasibility—in sharp contrast to novelty and customer benefit—tended to be relatively high overall, meaning that feasibility did not constitute a narrow bottleneck in this study. Even more interestingly, it is found that user ideas are placed more frequently than expected among the very best in terms of novelty and customer benefit. These findings, which are quite counterintuitive from the perspective of classic new product development (NPD) literature, suggest that, at least under certain conditions, crowdsourcing might constitute a promising method to gather user ideas that can complement those of a firm's professionals at the idea generation stage in NPD.     

Communicative skills that support value creation: A study of B2B interactions between customers and customer service representatives

Although interaction has been acknowledged as central in value creation there is still a lack of empirical studies on how value creation is accomplished in practice, and in particular how communicative skills support customers' value creation. The purpose of this paper is therefore to generate a deeper understanding of how customer service representatives' communicative skills in conversations with customers support customers' value creation. We argue that value creating processes correspond to customers' roles as “feelers”, “thinkers” and “doers”. Accordingly, value creation involves three interdependent elements, an emotional, a cognitive and a behavioral. Based on a qualitative research design, drawing on an empirical study of 80 telephone conversations between customers and customer service representatives in a business-to-business context, the paper demonstrates three communicative skills that are essential in supporting customers' value creation: attentiveness, perceptiveness and responsiveness. The findings show how employees, by means of these communicative skills support customers' value creation. Attentiveness supports cognitive elements of the customers' value creating processes, whereas perceptiveness supports value creation in terms of cognitive, behavioral and emotional aspects. Finally, responsiveness supports the customer's cognitive as well as behavioral value creation.     

Neo‐Rawlsian Fringes: A New Approach to Market Segmentation and New Product Development*

Prior research into the link between new product development and market segmentation has focused on two main approaches: (1) design, segment, and do limited competitive evaluation; and (2) segment first, design second. This paper proposes a third approach, which is to simultaneously design, perform segmentation according to benefit and to evaluate against competitive designs. This research uses a benefit segmentation technique based on conjoint analysis (or other techniques that relate product attributes to consumer utility) in which the segments emerge simultaneously with the design based on certain design principles or “strategies.” Herein a method is proposed to narrow down the many possible feasible designs (combinations of attributes) to a finite set and to examine the appeal of each design. Five distinct design strategies are proposed for modeling and studying competitive reaction. These include “traditional” ones such as differentiation and new ones whose fringe customers have high utility. The paper shows that these five strategies are adequate for modeling competitive reaction using simulation. Another contribution of the paper is the way competitive reaction is modeled. In generating and evaluating a design the desire herein is also to assess the defensibility of the design and include it in the evaluation criteria. These issues are addressed by decomposing the solution procedure into two phases. In the first phase, different optimal designs are created based on predefined product development strategies. In the second, these optimal designs are compared against one another with regard to market share and potential to secure market leadership. This work shows that the nature of competition as well as the variability of customer preferences are critical to how a strategy performs. This process uncovers a surprisingly robust design strategy—developing attributes such that a “lower fringe” is most satisfied—that even achieves market dominance under certain conditions. This methodology is also applied to partworth data on refrigerators, which provides a concrete example of the concepts and demonstrates results consistent with the propositions developed earlier in the paper.     

考虑损失厌恶的物流服务供应链质量承诺决策分析

在物流服务供应链系统中，服务质量承诺能够有效降低客户的感知风险，是物流服务顺利交付的重要保证。本文考虑了客户的损失厌恶这种心理机制，以物流服务供应链整体效用最大化为目标构建集成商的质量承诺决策模型，并分析了质量监控成本、质量补偿成本、客户感知质量均值、客户收益敏感度以及客户损失厌恶程度对最优的质量承诺的影响。分析结果表明，集成商在考虑客户损失厌恶偏好情景下的质量承诺水平要高于仅考虑质量成本的情景。同时，客户损失厌恶程度和收益敏感度对质量承诺决策产生积极的作用，其中客户收益敏感度影响更大。     

Can customer loyalty to a salesperson be harmful? Examining customer perceptions of salesperson emotional labor strategies post ethical transgressions

Past research suggests that customer loyalty is a critical component in successful business-to-business sales relationships. Challenging this view, this study suggests that customer loyalty may actually have an unexpected “dark side” to it. Specifically, grounded in Emotions as Social Information (EASI) theory, this research investigates the role that customer loyalty (to a salesperson) has on customer coping behavior post salesperson ethical transgressions. We take the often-underrepresented customer perspective in selling relationships to test our theoretical model using a field study that consists of 239 professional procurement specialists. Our results indicate that when customers believe that a salesperson is more genuine in displaying emotions, after an ethical transgression, customers are more likely to forgive, and less likely to seek revenge against or avoid the salesperson. On the other hand, when customers believe that a salesperson is “faking” emotions, customers are more likely to cope with ethical transgressions by avoiding and seeking revenge against the salesperson. Our study also finds that when an ethical transgression occurs, a “love becomes hate” effect occurs, where customer loyalty undermines a salesperson's efforts and does not always favor the salesperson.     

Dominant designs,innovation shocks,and the follower's dilemma

A dominant design is thought to usher in a period of intense competition based on cost, causing an often‐fierce industry shakeout. We aim to challenge the foundations of the dominant design literature, and develop new insights about the evolution of competition. We argue that strategic repositioning and elevated exit rates are often observed long before the emergence of a dominant design, and that a key cause is the introduction of a particular product for which demand is unexpectedly high (an “innovation shock”). This introduction creates a dilemma for followers, which we suggest is resolved based on followers' comparative adjustment costs. We test implications of these ideas on data from the early U.S. auto industry, treating Ford's Model T as the innovation shock. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Formation of Tie Strength in a Strategic Alliance's First New Product Development Project: The Influence of Project and Partners' Characteristics

This paper draws on theories of interorganizational learning, social networks, and transaction cost economics to investigate the formation of tie strength between first‐time alliance partners. It focuses on a strategic alliance's first new product development (NPD) project, which is characterized by a lack of prior experience and insufficient trust between partners and explores how the interaction between (1) interorganizational learning (the “degree” [amount of knowledge shared] and “type” [tacit or explicit nature of the knowledge]); (2) the required communication (“frequency level” and “degree of media‐richness”) to transfer and exchange knowledge; and (3) economic transaction considerations (reducing cost and avoiding opportunism), in highly uncertain and dynamic environments, and, in the absence of an assumption of trust, will determine the future strength of the ties between partners. We argue that the “degree” and “type” of interorganizational learning that are required to efficiently develop an alliance's first NPD project determine the strength of the ties between the partners. Each “degree and type” of learning has a different impact on the frequency and media richness of the partners' communication, and consequently each leads to a different level of social tie strength between the partners. This relationship is moderated by the partners' market overlap. We suggest that the required “degree and type” of interorganizational learning is contingent on the project characteristics (degree of innovation; “radical versus incremental,” and the mode of development; “modular versus integrated”). This relationship, however, is moderated by the partners' technical skills (complementary versus similar).     

Speed-to-Market and New Product Performance Trade-offs

When pressed to accelerate a development effort, more than a few managers have responded in terms such as “Good, fast, cheap … Pick any two.” Time-to-market decisions clearly play an important role in determining the ultimate success or failure of a new product. Just as clearly, however, speed to market is not the sole determinant of success. The seemingly offhanded “Pick any two” response points to the tradeoffs that product development managers must make in their decisions about development time and costs. Barry Bayus discusses the relationship between product development time and costs, and he fomulates a mathematical model that simultaneously considers the decisions regarding time-to-market and product performance levels. He applies the model to two competitive scenarios, and he identifies the optimal entry timing and product performance decisions for various market, demand, and cost conditions. In the first scenario, a firm must decide whether to accelerate development efforts to catch a competitor that has just introduced a new product. Analysis of the tradeoffs among the various parameters in the model suggests that fast development of low-performance products is optimal under the following conditions: a relatively short window of market opportunity, a weak competitor, and relatively high development costs. For example, if the competitor is weak, high performance levels are not necessary and the firm can safely reduce time-to-market. Under the same scenario (that is, accelerating development to catch a competitor), the analysis suggests that fast development of products with high performance levels is optimal under conditions of relatively high sales and relatively flat development costs. In the second scenario, the firm must decide whether to speed development efforts to beat the competition to market. Analysis of the various tradeoffs for this scenario suggests that first-to-market status for a product with a high performnace level is optimal under the following conditions: a relatively long window of market opportunity, relatively high sales, and relatively flat development costs. With a long product lifecycle, stable margins, and high sales, the firm can generate sufficient revenue to offset the increased cost incurred in speeding a high-performance product to market. Beating a competitor to market with a low-performance product is never optimal for the cases considered here.     

Experimenting with purchase history based price discrimination

Many purchases of differentiated goods are repeated, giving sellers the opportunity to engage in price discrimination based upon the shopper's previous behavior by either offering loyalty discounts to repeat buyers or introductory rates to new customers. Recent theoretical work suggests that loyalty discounts can be profitable to sellers when customer preferences are not stationary and sellers can pre-commit to prices for repeat buyers, but otherwise returning customers can be expected to pay the same or more than new buyers. This paper reports behavior in controlled laboratory experiments designed to empirically test the impact of these factors on pricing strategies. The results generally support the comparative static predictions of the theoretical model. When customer preferences are fixed over time, sellers attempt to lure customers from their rival. Price pre-commitment for repeat shoppers when buyer preferences vary over time resulted in modest loyalty pricing, but the discounts are not as prevalent as predicted as sellers rarely price below cost. Behaviorally, price pre-commitment to loyal customers is found to reduce prices overall.     

Customer Empowerment in New Product Development*

The traditional new product development (NPD) model, in which companies are exclusively responsible for coming up with new product ideas and for deciding which products should ultimately be marketed, is increasingly being challenged by innovation management academics and practitioners alike. In particular, many have advocated the idea of democratizing innovation by empowering customers to take a much more active stake in corporate NPD. This has become feasible because the Internet now allows companies to build strong online communities through which they can listen to and integrate thousands of customers from all over the world. Extant research has provided strong arguments that indicate that customer empowerment in NPD enables firms to develop better products and at the same time to reduce costs and risks if customers in a given domain are willing and able to deliver valuable input. Customer empowerment, however, not only affects the firm's internal NPD processes as reflected in the products that are ultimately marketed. Instead, it might also affect the way companies are perceived in the marketplace (by customers who observe that companies foster customer empowerment in NPD). This paper provides the first empirical study to explore how customers from the “periphery” (i.e., the mass that does not participate) perceive customer empowerment strategies. Customer empowerment in NPD is conceptualized along two basic dimensions: (1) customer empowerment to create (ideas for) new product designs; and (2) customer empowerment to select the product designs to be produced. Therefore, customers may be empowered to submit (ideas for) new products (empowerment to create) or (2) to “vote” on which products should ultimately be marketed (empowerment to select). In the course of two experimental studies using three different product categories (T‐shirts, furniture, and bicycles) both customer empowerment dimensions (as well as its interaction) are found to lead to (1) increased levels of perceived customer orientation, (2) more favorable corporate attitudes, (3) and stronger behavioral intentions. These findings will be very useful to researchers and managers interested in understanding the enduring consequences of customer empowerment in NPD. Most importantly, the results suggest that empowerment strategies might be used to improve a firm's corporate associations as perceived by the broad mass of (potential) customers. In particular, marketers might foster customer empowerment as an effective means of enhancing perceived customer orientation. Customers will in turn provide rewards, as they will form more favorable corporate attitudes and will be more likely to choose the products of empowering as opposed to nonempowering companies, ceteris paribus. Customer empowerment thus constitutes a promising positioning strategy that managers can pursue to create a competitive advantage in the marketplace.     

Relationships Between Businesses and Marketing Research Firms: Impact of Partnering on Performance

Many firms are turning from discrete, arms-length, adversarial exchanges with a multitude of marketing research suppliers toward long-term, collaborative relationships with a smaller number of “partners.” Advocates of partnering believe that it is a way to reduce total costs and improve quality, while dissenting firms believe partnering can breed complacency. This article presents the results of a study that examines performance outcomes (product quality, service quality, cost efficiency, timeliness, and overall customer satisfaction) and the degree to which a client partners with its marketing research firms. Results indicate a relationship between partnering and increased performance in all five areas. Implications for managers include the possibility of better performance from research firms if the relationship is more collaborative in nature.     

Market Orientation and Innovativeness in Supply Chains: Supplier's Impact on Customer Satisfaction

As today's firms increasingly outsource their noncore activities, they not only have to manage their own resources and capabilities, but they are ever more dependent on the resources and capabilities of supplying firms to respond to customer needs. This paper explicitly examines whether and how firms and suppliers, who are both oriented to the same customer market, enable innovativeness in their supply chains and deliver value to their joint customer. We will call this customer of the focal firm the “end user.” The authors take a resource‐dependence perspective to hypothesize how suppliers' end‐user orientation and innovativeness influence downstream activities at the focal firm and end‐user satisfaction. The resource dependence theory looks typically beyond the boundaries of an individual firm for explaining firm success: firms need to satisfy customer demands to survive and depend on other parties such as their suppliers to achieve customer satisfaction. Accordingly, the research design focuses on three parties along a supply chain: the focal firm, a supplier, and a customer of the focal firm (end user). The results drawn from a survey of 88 matched chains suggest the following. First, customer satisfaction is driven by focal firms' innovativeness. A focal firm's innovativeness depends, on the one hand, on a focal firm's market orientation and, on the other hand, on its suppliers’ innovativeness. Second, no relationship could be established between a focal firm's market orientation and a supplier's end‐user orientation. Market orientation typically has within‐firm effects, while innovativeness has impact beyond the boundaries of the firm. These results suggest that firms create value for their customer through internal market orientation efforts and external suppliers' innovativeness.     

低碳经济下考虑满意度的冷链路径优化

为了在降低冷链物流配送成本的同时,保证顾客满意度和碳排放成本达到企业的要求。充分考虑客户软时间窗约束、行驶距离、生鲜变质等多重影响因素,构建考虑顾客满意度的低碳冷链物流路径优化模型,结合固定成本、碳排放成本、损坏成本、冷藏成本、运输成本以及时间窗成本,采用遗传算法进行求解,并应用实例加以验证。结果表明,相对于不考虑满意度的路径优化,以总成本为目标的冷链物流路径优化,能够平均减少23 km的运输距离和降低2.72%的配送总成本;同时结果也更优于以低碳为目标的求解。模型在提高顾客满意度的同时,实现了降低配送总成本以及减少物流活动中碳排放的目标。因此,研究为物流运输企业提高服务质量和经济效益提供了有效的技术路线,结果可为冷链物流行业的服务能力提升以及低碳转型发展提供启示,为物流行业的可持续发展研究提供理论参考。     

基于变邻域搜索算法的物流配送系统集成优化研究

本文针对物流配送系统集成优化问题,考虑取货和送货两种业务的配送情形下仓库和车辆的容量上限约束,构建包括仓库的开放成本、配送成本以及容量溢出成本的非线性混合整数优化模型,设计变邻域搜索启发式算法对模型进行求解。算法通过泰森多边形确定位置上的初始订单分配,再通过扫描半径及消费者数据结构标识实现邻域搜索,改进算法对解决方案进行迭代更新,完成优化求解。最后通过对辽宁宅急送取／送一体化物流配送案例进行数值分析,验证算法可行性和有效性。     

Integrating Customer Requirements into Product Designs

Despite all best efforts, the design process often leads to the introduction of products that do not meet customer expectations. Although the design team typically applies customer-related information from several sources, the product design somehow fails to satisfy customer requirements. Clearly, we need to develop a better understanding of the process by which designers in large development organizations transform information about customer requirements into the final design specification. To improve our understanding of this process, Antonio J. Bailetti and Paul F. Litva examine design managers' perspectives on the sources of customer requirement information. During the evolution of a product design, the design team applies information that is endorsed by marketing and product management. Common sources of such information include commercial specifications, inferences from existing products and services, deployment studies, and external standards. When this management-endorsed information is deemed inadequate, designers supplement it by creating and sharing their own customer-related information. This local information includes the results of benchmarking function and performance, the designers' perceptions of a service provider's installed base of equipment, and validations of intermediate designs. Marketing and product management cannot easily review the local information that designers create and share in evolving a final design. This article highlights the importance of creating mechanisms for ensuring that customer requirement information from various sources is internally consistent. To meet this goal of consistency, organizations must ensure that customer requirements information produced by marketing satisfies the information processing requirements of the design community. In addition, the knowledge that designers actually apply to produce a design must incorporate customer requirement information endorsed by marketing and product management at all stages of product development.     

顾客集中与管理层治理——基于薪酬契约和代理成本的视角

本文以创业板上市公司为研究样本，从薪酬契约和代理成本的视角，检验了顾客集中与管理层治理的关系。实证分析结果显示，顾客集中度与高管薪酬和代理成本存在显著负相关关系。结果表明：顾客集中显著影响公司薪酬契约，顾客集中降低了高管薪酬；顾客集中降低代理成本，减轻管理层代理冲突问题。这些研究结论丰富了公司治理的理论内容，同时对于缓解公司代理冲突、改善公司治理矛盾具有重要的现实意义。     

Understanding market agility for new product success with big data analytics

The complexity that characterises the dynamic nature of the various environmental factors makes it very compelling for firms to be capable of addressing the changing customers' needs. The current study examines the role of big data in new product success. We develop a qualitative research with case study approach to look at this. Specifically, we look at multiple cases to get in-depth understanding of customer agility for new product success with big data analytics. The findings of the study provide insight into the role of customer agility in new product success. This study unpacks the interconnectedness of the effective use of data aggregation tools, the effectiveness of data analysis tools and customer agility. It also explores the link between all of these factors and new product success. The study is reasonably telling in that it shows that the effective use of data aggregation and data analysis tools results in customer agility which in itself explains how an organisation senses and responds speedily to opportunities for innovation in the competitive marketing environment. The current study provides significant theoretical contributions by providing evidence for the role of big data analytics, big data aggregation tools, customer agility, organisational slack and environmental turbulence in new product success.