Stakeholders’ relationships and product market competition

In this article, we study the relationships between main stakeholders (shareholders, consumers and employees) when firms are consumer oriented (CO) in the sense of caring about consumers’ interests in the objective function. We let these firms first bargain with labour union over their employees’ wages and then compete either in the quantity space (Cournot competition) or in the price space (Bertrand competition). Our model shows that taking care of the consumers’ interests when determining product market strategies may reverse the traditional ranking between Cournot and Bertrand equilibria. This implies that if shareholders in a CO firm can choose either a quantity or a price strategy, they will surprisingly choose the latter. Moreover, we show that the conflicting interests between main stakeholders are attenuated under Bertrand competition compared to Cournot competition.     

How do employee training and knowledge stocks affect product innovation?

The main purpose of this paper is to explore how interactions of knowledge flows and knowledge stocks could shape firms’ innovative performance. Knowledge flows are measured on the grounds of human resource training practices while different levels and forms of knowledge stocks (i.e. educational attainment, exporting activity, and firm age) are considered. We make use of two-period panel probit regressions and a rich data survey of the 524 largest Greek manufacturing firms conducted in two waves (2011 and 2013). Our findings suggest that the beneficial effects of knowledge flows strengthen when knowledge stocks accumulated by employees’ education and firm age are low. When knowledge stocks are limited, knowledge flows can act as a bridge for product innovation. On the contrary, when knowledge stocks are high, higher investments in knowledge flows may lead to diminishing returns and, thus, to decreased innovation performance beyond a certain point.     

The relationship between start-up motive and earnings over the course of the entrepreneur’s business tenure

We investigate whether the start-up motive is related to the entrepreneur’s earnings, and whether the relationship between the entrepreneur’s business tenure (i.e., the time the entrepreneur is running the business) and his earnings depends on the start-up motive. We employ a unique longitudinal data base providing information on start-up motive and earnings for 7902 entrepreneurs in the EU-15 countries, where 12 different start-up motives are distinguished. We classify these 12 motives in three broad categories of opportunity, necessity and other start-up motives. Our analysis shows that, first, earnings of necessity entrepreneurs are significantly lower than those of opportunity entrepreneurs, irrespective of the type of necessity motive. Second, these differences remain rather stable over the course of the entrepreneur’s business tenure, i.e., these differences are of a permanent nature. Third, we do not find evidence for earnings differences within the broad category of necessity entrepreneurs (i.e., between the different types of necessity motives).     

Endogenous product versus process innovation and a firm’s propensity to export

This article provides an empirical analysis of the effects of new product versus process innovations on export propensity at the firm level. Product innovation is a key factor for successful market entry in models of creative destruction and Schumpeterian growth. Process innovation helps securing a firm’s market position given the characteristics of its product supply. Both modes of innovation are expected to raise a firm’s propensity to export. According to new trade theory, we conjecture that product innovation is relatively more important in that regard. We investigate these hypotheses in a rich survey panel data set with information about new innovations of either type. With a set of indicators regarding innovation motives and impediments and continuous variables at the firm and industry level at hand, we may determine the probability of launching new innovations and their impact on export propensity at the firm level through a double treatment approach.     

Does the Linder effect hold for differentiated agri-food and beverage product trade?

Using a generalized gravity equation, this study tests for the Linder effect in differentiated agri-food product trade, i.e. as the demand structures of two countries become more similar, their trade intensity increases. Two proxies of demand structure, the Balassa index and the absolute value of the difference in per capita Gross Domestic Products (GDPs) of trading partners, are used to capture the Linder effect. In addition, two measures of bilateral trade, the Grubel and Lloyd (GL) index, and the value of bilateral trade are used as the dependent variable. This study investigates the role of the Linder effect in explaining the trade of 37 differentiated agri-food and beverage products categorized into eight product groups: cereals, fresh fish, frozen fish, vegetables, fresh fruit, processed fruit, tea and coffee and alcoholic beverages. The data covers trade across 52 developed and developing countries from 1990 to 2000. The type of proxy used for the Linder effect and the way in which bilateral trade is measured influence the outcome of the statistical tests for the Linder effect. The Linder effect for cereals, frozen fish, vegetables, processed fruits and tea and coffee, using the value of trade as the dependent variable, is often accepted, but it is generally rejected when the GL index is used as the measure of trade intensity. In brief, the results do not provide strong support for the Linder effect in the trade of differentiated agri-food products.     

Dynamic control of a monopolist’s product and process innovation with reference quality

ABSTRACT

Our main purpose is to investigate the dynamic control problem of a monopolist’s product and process innovation under reference quality. The main features of this article are: (i) a monopolist dealing with customer behaviour in the spirit of the principle of behaviour economics determines the product price, and carries out the activities of product and process innovation; (ii) the consumers’ demand depends on price, product quality and reference quality, and adopts an additive separable demand function form. Our main results show that under the cases of the monopolist optimum and the social planner optimum, (i) there exists an unique stable, which is a saddle-point steady-state equilibrium; (ii) the change rates of the monopolist’s investments in product and process innovation are increasing with the reference quality, while the monopolist’s steady-state investments in product and process innovation are decreasing with the reference quality; (iii) as the memory parameter increases with other parameters kept constant, it is very likely that the monopolist’s investment in process innovation be greater than the investment in product innovation; and (iv) the social incentive towards both investments in product and process innovation is always larger than the private incentive characterizing the profit-seeking monopolist.     

Analyses on web-based product data management

This paper is concerned with the development of product data management （PDM） systems--WPDM systems based on web technologies. As a tool to integrate information, traditional PDM system has many benefits for the companies in such aspects as improving design productivity, better control over projects and so on. With the maturing of web technologies, the advantages of WPDM system are obvious. We will show these advantages in detail in Part 3. WPDM system is built on three-tier application model to provide security and flexibility, they are back-end, middle layer and front-end. The basic designs in each layer will be briefly introduced in Part 4. In the future, WPDM will be extended to integrate with other applications to provide a complete web-based engineering environment.     

What are the determinants of hiring? The importance of product market demand and search frictions

In this article, we study the importance of product market demand and search frictions for hiring. We use a search-matching model with imperfect competition in the product market to derive an equation for total hiring in a local labour market, and estimate it on Swedish panel data. If product markets are imperfectly competitive, product demand shocks should have a direct effect on employment for given levels of prices and wages. Our main finding is that product demand has such a direct effect on hiring. This highlights the importance of taking imperfect competition in the product market into account in studies of employment dynamics and hiring. We also find that, for given levels of prices, wages, and product demand, the number of unemployed workers in a local labour market has a positive effect on hiring, suggesting that search frictions matter. Quantitatively, product demand shocks seem to be more important for understanding the variation in hiring than shocks to the number of unemployed workers.     

The impact of science and technology parks on firms’ product innovation: empirical evidence from Spain

Science and Technology Parks (STP) have attracted considerable attention and public funds in recent years. However, the conclusions on their effectiveness remain mixed. This work evaluates the impact of STP on firm product innovation in the Spanish context, as an example of a less developed innovation system in which regional and national governments are prioritizing STP initiatives. This work draws on a large sample of firms provided by the Spanish Survey on Technological Innovation that is conducted annually by the National Statistical Institute. We explore alternative econometric methods to obtain average treatment effects for firms located in 22 Spanish STPs. Our results show that Spanish STPs have a strong and positive impact on the probability and amount of product innovation achieved by STP located firms. These results hold when the endogeneity of STP location is taken into account.     

Firm adaptiveness and performance heterogeneity: the case of sales–advertising dynamics in an evolving product market

We combine evolutionary theory concepts and multivariate persistence methodology to develop and test expectations about the adaptiveness of firm decisions and its implications for performance heterogeneity. We focus on the relatively reversible advertising decisions in an evolving product market, domains typically ignored by evolutionary research. We find that an adaptive decision routine helps an incumbent firm maintain its advantages and overcome the challenge posed by a major competitive entry.

The importance of product positioning and global branding for sustaining competitive advantage within the companies＇ global marketing strategy

In today＇s globally competitive world, because of the globalization, new business patterns and the changing nature of consumers, the companies feel the necessity to act strategic in the market and to reach up the target markets and sustain maximum customer satisfaction in order to compete and survive. In this context, within the study it is tried to define product positioning in international markets and global branding strategies conceptually and to focus on their contributions to the overall competitive advantage of the company. Initially, the study tries to present the association between product positioning and global branding approaches of the companies and sustaining competitive advantage. Justifications for the examination of the importance of companies＇ international product positioning and global branding orientations as a basis of creating competitive advantage were derived from the literature. It is suggested that the companies＇ product positioning and global branding orientations and sustaining competitive advantage are the important aspects in multinational management and international business areas. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to evaluate the impact of product positioning and global branding strategies of the companies with special references to various industries and global brands.     

Supply chain coordination with CCPP for a short-life-cycle product

Supply chain coordination for short-life-cycle products with price-dependent demand is a focus in present operation management and management science fields. This paper considers the supply chain coordination problem for a single-cycle and two-selling-stage short-life-cycle product. Firstly, the inventory model of whole system is depicted with a stochastic dynamics programming. Then, a new combined contract CCPP （combined contract with pending prices） is developed to coordinate the decentralized system, and its validity for channel coordination is proved. Finally, the analysis on system performances is simulated with some examples.     

Skilled–unskilled wage inequality,product variety,public input and increasing returns: A static general equilibrium analysis

The paper develops a four sector small open economy model with two traded final good sectors, a public intermediate good producing sector and a nontraded good sector producing varieties of intermediate goods. There are three primary factors: capital, skilled labour and unskilled labour. Industrial sector producing a traded good uses capital, intermediate goods and skilled labour as inputs. Intermediate goods producing sector also uses capital and skilled labour. Public input producing sector and the agricultural sector producing the other traded good use capital and unskilled labour as inputs. It is shown that, if production technologies are the same for the agricultural sector and the public input producing sector and if the scale elasticity of output is very low, then an increase in capital stock (unskilled labour endowment) raises (lowers) the skilled–unskilled wage ratio. However, an increase in skilled labour endowment does not produce any unambiguous effect. On the other hand, an increase in the tax rate on industrial output and/or an increase in the price of the agricultural product, armed with the same set of assumptions, lowers the skilled–unskilled wage ratio.     

New product launch: herd seeking or herd preventing?

A decision maker offers a new product to a number of potential adopers. He does not know the value of the product, but adopers receive some private information about it. We study how the decision maker may influence learning among adopers by manipulaing the launch sequence when both the decision maker and adopers can learn about the value of the product from previous adoption decisions. The conditions under which the decision maker prefers a sequential launch to a simultaneous launch depend on adopers?? prior beliefs about the value of the product and adoption costs. We derive the decision maker??s optimal launch sequence and study how it endogenizes informational herding.     

Diversification: a road to inefficiency in product innovations?

Motivated by recent empirical observations made in industries such as the automobile industry, this paper employs an agent-based industry simulation model to examine the strategic relationship between product diversification strategies and some aspects of the product innovation strategy of a single producer. In particular, it is established that an increase in the average degree of product diversification in an industry increases the incentive for a producer to reduce the time to market for innovations at the expense of product quality. However, if all firms adapt their strategies according to these incentives, this results in a severe loss of average firm profits in the industry and also to a reduction in consumer surplus. It is then studied how the strength of this dilemma depends on several parameters describing the market structure and patent policy.     

The welfare effects of import “subquotas” on heterogeneous product categories

In spite of its importance to policy makers, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the welfare effects of one aspect of trade policy-how to implement an import quota that applies to a heterogeneous product category. The government can impose a simple quota that applies indiscriminately to all goods within the product category or it can divide the quota among them with subquotas. In this paper, we analyze the welfare effects of subquotas. Under certain simplifying assumptions we find that a system of subquotas nearly always exists that provides greater welfare than a simple quota for a large country that retains quota rights or for a large or small country that gives quota rights away to foreigners. However, subquotas cannot increase the welfare of a small country that retains quota rights. The difference lies in the effect of imports on the home country's terms of trade.The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the US International Trade Commission. The authors are grateful for helpful comments on an earlier draft by anonymous referees.     

Semiotic knowledge toward heritage product in tourism industry： A case of Terengganu

In order to provide an appropriate context for the current state of the heritage product in tourism industry, semiotic knowledge become an important role to know deeply the identity, philosophy, and also the meaning of behind the actual product. Scott （2000） stresses the requirement of aesthetic and semiotic content in a creative product, instead of creativity. But, how many of retailers and salespersons in heritage product believe the semiotic as knowledge to present the product and opportunities in their selling？ According to Kotler （2000） a good personal selling will provide a detailed explanation or demonstration of the product. The message can be varied by the salesperson to fit the motivations and interests or each prospective customer. So, the purpose of this paper is to closely examine the level of awareness among retailers and salesperson toward the important of semiotic knowledge as part of strategic persuasion in a selling process. This survey study will develop a sample among retailers and salesperson in Kuala Terengganu as a respondent who give the feedback to fulfill the research questions.     

Consumers’ preferences for a local food product: a real choice experiment

This paper analyses consumers’ preferences for a local food in Spain and assesses their willingness to pay (WTP) using a real choice experiment to mitigate possible hypothetical bias. In particular, preferences for fresh lamb meat were investigated and two attributes evaluated, “locally grown” and the type of lamb meat. Data came from an experiment conducted in Spain during 2009. An error component random Parameter model with correlated errors was used to estimate the effect of the attributes on consumers’ utility and derive their WTP. Results suggest that consumers positively value both attributes and are willing to pay a premium of 9 % price increase for the “locally grown” lamb meat (“Ojinegra from Teruel”) and 13 % price increase for the “Ternasco” lamb meat. If we assume a market where only “Ternasco” lamb meat without indication of the local origin is sold, and then a new “Ternasco” lamb is introduced in the market with the “Ojinegra from Teruel” label, this new local lamb meat would capture 18 % of the market if the package is assumed to be sold at 3.5 \(\hbox {C}\!\!\!\!\!=\) and a 10 % market share if the package is assumed to be sold at 4 \(\hbox {C}\!\!\!\!\!=\) .     

Is product boycott a good idea for controlling child labor? A theoretical investigation

A popular form of action to curb child labor and uphold international labor standards in general is a ‘product boycott’ by consumers. There are labeling agencies that inform us if, for instance, a carpet or a hand-stitched soccer ball is free of child labor. The presence of a consumer boycott will typically mean that products tainted by child labor will command a lower price on the market than ones certified to be untainted. It is popularly presumed that such consumer activism is desirable. The paper formally investigates this presumption and shows that consumer product boycotts can, in a wide class of situations, have an adverse reaction that causes child labor to rise rather than fall. This happens under weak and plausible assumptions. Hence, there has to be much greater caution in the use of consumer activism, and one has to have much more detailed information about the context where child labor occurs, before using a boycott.     

Is technology acquisition enough to improve China's product quality? Evidence from firm-level panel data

As developing countries open themselves up to trade, many industrial firms in these countries are finding it difficult to compete internationally due to poor product quality and low product variety. Although China has been the largest producer of crude steel since 1996, China's steel firms have produced an overabundance of low-quality steel while domestic purchasers of steel have increasingly demanded higher quality steel products. Many have argued that for Chinese steel firms to improve product quality they must adopt more advanced technologies. Employing firm-level panel data of steel firms in China, we econometrically test the relative importance of two possible sets of factors affecting a firm's ability to utilize technology to improve product quality: technology acquisition factors and technology absorptive capacity factors. We find that technology complements such as in-house R&D and foreign knowledge must be combined with technology for Chinese firms to improve product quality.