Digital product innovations for the greater good and digital marketing innovations in communications and channels: Evolution,emerging issues,and future research directions

During the past quarter-century, digital technologies-based innovations for creating, communicating, and delivering products of value to customers have significantly risen in importance to the competitiveness of firms. Digital technologies-based innovations have been transformational in numerous ways, such as their impact on firms’ marketing behaviors, consumers’ search and buying behaviors, and the structural characteristics of markets and industries. Against this backdrop, this article provides a perspective on the evolution of research and practice in digital product innovations and digital marketing innovations. Specifically, the article focuses on (a) innovations for the greater good in the domain of the former and (b) direct and mediated communications through social media platforms and omnichannel marketing in the domain of the latter. In respect of each of the above, the article provides an overview of the evolution and current state of the field, highlights certain current issues and the trajectory of the field, and proposes directions for future research.     

贵州省旅游景区门票定价问题研究

"十一五"期间,贵州省旅游业快速增长,在旅游竞争日益白热化的格局下,全省旅游收入在全国排位仍然上升了6位,但仍存在票价上涨过快、过度价格竞争等问题,相关管理部门应允许部分景区适度提高门票价格,逐步扩大"免费游"景点开放范围,进一步建立健全管理法制,不断创新和提供新产品,促进该省景区经济、社会和环境效益协调发展。     

地方政府竞争过程中的双重效应问题探讨

摘要：在社会经济发展过程中，地方政府间的竞争应是正负效应同时存在的。正效应的存在，说明了地方政府间竞争存在的必要性与现实意义；而负效应的存在，则反映了在引导和发挥地方政府竞争优势的同时，仍需下大力气去规范各种竞争行为。依靠直接推动投资、增加优惠政策、实施地方保护等不合理与不正当的竞争手段在竞争中确实可以取得一定的成效，然而从长远的角度来分析，只有通过制度创新来形成一个更有效率的制度安排，才能取得真正的并具有持续生命力的竞争优势。     

Protecting positioning innovations: the emergence of non-traditional trademark registrations

Firms need to protect their positioning innovations from copycatting and imitation by competition. However, there is limited insight into factors driving legal protection of positioning innovations. This research utilizes non-traditional trademark (NTT) registrations as indicators of protection of certain types of positioning innovations by firms and investigates the role of firm and industry factors in these registrations. Findings based on secondary data collected over the time period (1984–2015) reveal that firm age and market share play a positive role in NTT registrations. Analysis also shows that industry munificence plays a positive role in NTT registrations, whereas competitive intensity and industry dynamism lower NTT registrations. Together, these findings provide important implications for research and practice that extend beyond technological innovations and add to the innovations literature in marketing.     

Innovations in Retail Business Models

A retail business model articulates how a retailer creates value for its customers and appropriates value from the markets. Innovations in business models are increasingly critical for building sustainable advantage in a marketplace defined by unrelenting change, escalating customer expectations, and intense competition. Drawing from extant strategy and retailing research, we propose that innovations in retail business models are best viewed as changes in three design components: (1) the way in which the activities are organized, (2) the type of activities that are executed, and (3) the level of participation of the actors engaged in performing those activities. We propose six major ways in which retailers could innovate their business models to enhance value creation and appropriation beyond the levels afforded by traditional approaches to retailing. We also describe the drivers of business model innovations, the potential consequences of such innovations, and numerous examples from retail practice that highlight our concepts and arguments. In doing so, we provide a starting point for academic research in a domain that is deficient in theoretical and empirical research, and offer retailing managers a framework to guide retail business model innovations for sustainable competitive advantage.     

我国出口产品遭遇新型非关税壁垒的对策研究

在经济全球化形势下,贸易壁垒从内容到形式不断更新。由于我国企业出口产品技术含量较低,价格低廉,对相关标准与规则了解不够,缺乏自我保护意识,致使其在国际贸易中遭遇到日益频繁的技术性贸易壁垒、反倾销等新型非关税壁垒。文章提出,我国企业应积极进行技术创新,与国际标准接轨,建立产业预警机制,组建出口企业行业战略联盟,以应对技术性贸易壁垒。应加强行业自律,重视非价格竞争;加强成本控制,转换国际市场进入方式;招聘专业人才,加强市场信息管理;健全财务制度,充分利用世贸组织争端解决机制,以应对反倾销。     

Fortune at the bottom of the innovation pyramid: The strategic logic of incremental innovations

It is not uncommon to come across appeals in business literature exhorting managers to devote greater effort to the pursuit of radical innovations, or to see comments admonishing managers for devoting too much energy to the search for incremental innovations. Over the years, successful radical innovations have undisputedly had a significant impact on the fortunes of a number of companies. At the same time, firms cannot afford to overlook the role of incremental innovations in enhancing and sustaining the revenue and profit streams of successful radical innovations. From the standpoint of survival, growth, and profitability, both home runs, meaning radical innovations, and singles, meaning incremental innovations, matter. The fact that home runs are generally infrequent underscores the importance of frequent singles. This article explores the various competitive strategy contexts in which incremental innovations can be leveraged effectively against that backdrop.     

Suchmaschinen unter der Lupe: Informationsherrschaft und ihre Schranken

Informational power by search engines should be analysed from different perspectives. On the one hand, unlimited access to personal data can be in conflict with the interests of individuals whose data can be accessed. These interests are part of a right to privacy, including a “right to be forgotten,” which, however, must be balanced against the public interest in disclosure of information. Balancing these conflicting interests is a difficult task — a task that lies with the search engines themselves. On the other hand, firms and individuals may have an interest in their information to be found, in particular (but not only) for commercial purposes. Suppressing or “downgrading” this information as displayed to users may significantly reduce visibility. In light of these interests, it has been proposed to oblige search engines to implement “search neutrality“; i.e., that they have to present search results in an unbiased way. In this article, we take a clear position against ex ante regulation. Instead, competition law provides a sufficient framework, to protect against the abuse of “informational” market power. We sketch a new approach that may allow competition law to be applied more quickly in dynamic markets such as internet search markets.     

Unilateral Effects in Merger Analysis: Models,Merits, and Merger Policy

This paper models the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) unilateral effects merger policy using a sample of 192 investigations undertaken between 1993 and 2010. Statistical analysis shows that the number of significant rivals represents a reasonable structural proxy for the FTC’s merger challenge decision, although other variables, such as impediments to entry, fringe share, clear evidence of head-to-head competition between the merging firms, competitive effects’ evidence, and efficiency-related proxies, also affect the decision to challenge a merger. Some of these variables suggest that the innovations in the 2010 Merger Guidelines had already been applied in FTC merger analysis.     

Co-opetition and Technological Innovation in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises: A Multilevel Conceptual Model

Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) face tremendous challenges in their attempt to pursue technological innovations. This paper argues that co-opetition strategy—simultaneous pursuit of competition and collaboration—helps SMEs to develop their ability to effectively pursue technological innovations. We developed a multilevel conceptual model consisting of factors at the industry, dyadic, and firm level to understand the drivers of co-opetition and discuss benefits and costs of co-opetition for SMEs. We believe that this paper will stimulate future conceptual and empirical research on this important topic and has implications for SME managers and policymakers.     

The Market for Knowledge Brokers

A widely-used policy to diminish the market failure on the market for innovations is the provision of R&D subsidies. However, the absence of competition at several stages of the procurement process could lead to inefficient use of these subsidies. To introduce more competition, a market for knowledge brokers could be created. The role of these knowledge brokers would be at four stages of the procurement process: (i) placing the call for tender; (ii) obtaining research proposals; (iii) monitoring the research efforts; and (iv) disseminating the research results. It can be expected that creation of such a market yields a better match between demand and supply on the market for R&D, yields a higher quality research product for a given price and that it increases the dissemination of research results.     

Consumer response to norm-breaking pricing events in e-commerce

e-commerce allows for many innovations in pricing: some have been embraced by consumers, others rejected. Using an online experiment, we explore the role of norms in predicting consumer responses to differential pricing arrived at either by violating an established pricing norm (dynamic posted pricing; setting prices based on individual consumer demand) or not (two retailers pricing differently). Our findings support the critical role of norms, such that belief in the norm is a strong predictor of negative responses (i.e., fairness, trust, purchase, search and complaint intentions) and priming people to consider norms generally increases the negative response. We also find that prior trust in the firm acts as a partial buffer against the negative response to norm breaking but at a diminishing rate as prior trust increases.     

Business Dynamics and Efficiency in Industries and Regions: The Case of Spain

High rates of firm births and deaths are a pervasive phenomenon across industries and territories. Most studies have related the great turbulence at the fringe of practically all manufacturing industries to positive effects on the long-run performance of industries. According to these views business turbulence, although it has a relatively small incidence on net entry, leads to allocative improvement and stimulates innovation. The existing set of empirical studies does not reach clear conclusions, however, and many questions are still open. Our contribution analyses the relationship between business dynamics in manufacturing and the growth of total factor productivity in industries and regions. After a review of current literature on entry and exit it is argued that most models are tailored to suit the processes observed in industries and regions that are near the technological frontier, and we propose an approach that could be more representative of middle range economies such as Spain. According to this approach new firms are seen more as users of innovations than producers of innovations. We adopt a model based on a vintage capital framework in which new entrants embody the edge technologies available and exiting businesses are supposed to represent the most marginal obsolete plants. Both industries and regions are represented by a Hall's type production function which controls for imperfect competition and economies of scale. The results show that both entry and exit rates contribute positively to the growth of total factor productivity in industries and in regions.     

Evolution of firms' product strategy over the life cycle of technology-based industries: A case study of the global mobile phone industry, 1980–2009

This paper adopts industry life cycle approaches to understand better the changing rationales for product strategy development in the worldwide mobile phone industry. Based on both primary and secondary sources, we find that mobile phone manufacturers have radically changed their product strategy over the industry life cycle in response to various factors, such as the intense global competition and the need to respond rapidly to changes in technology and mass-consumer preferences. We also find that, when the mobile phone industry entered a stage of shake-out in the 2000s, contrary to the prediction of the classical product–process life cycle model, mobile phone manufacturers focused their strategy not only on process but also on product innovations. The continuous launch of new and advanced product technologies served mainly to stimulate the demand for replacement purchases. We observe this unexpected key role of product innovation to be very strong also in the stage of industry maturity.     

The search for skills: Knowledge stars and innovation in the hiring process

The effective utilization of knowledge has become an important part of how firms gain competitive advantage in the marketplace. However, the recruitment, search, and selection processes used to obtain workers who would develop and deploy that knowledge have not materially changed for many years, with human resources (HR) frequently automating legacy procedures. We believe that the hiring processes for exceptional knowledge workers, whom we call knowledge stars, must adapt to the current business environment. Using the framework of architectural innovation, we propose that HR’s recruitment of knowledge stars should begin before specific jobs are announced, should be done in partnership with line managers, and should be done in coordination with implementation of other workplace innovations such as the development of communities of practice and participative management. We conclude by discussing how changes in the search processes for knowledge stars fit in context with some other ongoing challenges for HR personnel.     

Cost share‐induced technological change and Kaldor’s stylized facts

This paper presents a theory of induced technological change in which firms pursue a random, local, and bounded search for productivity‐enhancing innovations. Firms implement profitable innovations at fixed prices, which then spread through the economy. After diffusion, all firms adjust prices and wages. The model is consistent with a variety of price‐setting behaviors, which determine equilibrium positions characterized by constant cost shares and productivity growth rates. A fixed mark‐up can yield Marx‐biased technological change. Target‐return pricing yields Harrod‐neutral technological change with a fixed wage share as a stable equilibrium, consistent with Kaldor's stylized facts, while allowing for deviations from equilibrium, as observed in the longer historical record.     

高端白酒的市场营销策略浅析

白酒是中国的国酒,有着千年历史,白酒也承载着中华的文化。同时酒类行业具有很高的回报率和利润率。正是因为这样诱人的企业利润,酒饮料市场在我国竞争日益激烈,分析高端白酒所面临的机遇与挑战有助于其在该市场的竞争,保持并不断扩大市场份额。同时探讨解决品牌白酒扩大酒饮料市场份额的可行方法和白酒营销在市场中的创新,为确立品牌白酒在酒饮料市场中的龙头地位,发扬中华文化有着积极而深远的意义。     

The Technological Innovation Journey of Hisense Group

This case illustrates key innovations that took place in Hisense Group, one of the leading companies in the electronic appliances industry in China, from 1990s to 2010. Several factors contributed to its leading position, including strategic positioning, consistent technological innovation over decades, and an efficient administrative system. Since 1992, Hisense has paid close attention to technological innovation. It makes it clear that R&D plays a dominant role in competition. Hisense has continuously invested heavily in R&D and restructured its R&D administrative system, including the organizational framework, incentive mechanisms, project management and teamwork. Hisense’s strategy has resulted in major technological innovations. Hiview chip is a technological breakthrough, which helps the company gain competitive advantages.     

Bank branching deregulation and the credit risk of the regional banking sector: Evidence from city commercial banks in China

From 2006 to 2011, with the change in regulatory policies, most regions of China relaxed restrictions on the intercity branching of city commercial banks, which led to a significant increase in the number of nonlocal branches of city commercial banks. We assess the impact of this bank branching deregulation on the credit risk of the regional banking sector across 286 prefecture-level cities in China. We find that deregulation has increased the credit risk of the regional banking sector in host cities by intensifying competition and encouraging risk-taking behaviors such as “lowering lending criteria” and “attracting deposits with higher interest”. Moreover, this effect becomes more pronounced in regions with a higher initial level of the loan-to-deposit ratio and regions with a higher initial level of competition in the banking sector.     

Predicting the future of disruptive technologies: The method of alternative histories

With digital technologies shaping competition in many industries, predicting the future of potentially disruptive technologies becomes an essential task of business leaders concerned with the survival and success of their organizations. Looking into the future of disruptive technologies requires a philosophical stance and a practical method that accommodates the inherent uncertainty and nonlinearity of the path of disruptive innovations. Unfortunately, much of the current thinking in relation to adoption and diffusion of innovations is rather linear and deterministic. This article proposes a set of philosophical principles, together with a practical brainstorming method, for glimpsing into the future of disruptive technologies. The method of alternative histories is based on the traditional brainstorming techniques and the philosophical ideas of Imre Lakatos, Roy Bhaskar, Bruno Latour, and Nassim Taleb.