Customer interactivity and new product performance: Moderating effects of product newness and product embeddedness

Understanding customer needs which drive significant product innovation is particularly challenging for new product development (NPD) organizations. Research has addressed how organizations benefit from interacting with customers, but more conceptualization is needed into the dimensions of the customer interaction process. In a business-to-business (B2B) setting, customer interactivity is conceptualized as a multi-dimensional construct consisting of bidirectional communications, participation, and joint problem solving during NPD projects. Drawing upon organizational information processing theory, customer interactivity is hypothesized to be positively related to customer information quality when developing highly innovative products, but not when developing modifications or extensions of existing products. Another condition affecting this relationship studied is the embeddedness of the new product in the customer's business environment. Customer interactivity is hypothesized to be positively related to information quality for highly embedded product, but not for low embedded product. Results from a sample of NPD organizations in several B2B industries support these hypotheses. The study contributes to the marketing literature and practice by identifying important dimensions of the customer interaction process which lead to more proactive organizations, and identifying two moderating conditions of the customer interactivity and NPD performance relationship.     

对制定产品标准中一些问题的探讨

针对在制定产品标准中存在的一些问题,提出产品标准已不仅是作为组织生产的依据,企业不必为他人制定产品标准;行业在制定特定型号的产品标准时应该谨慎行事;产品标准中净含量的标注不能一概而论等四个论点.并就其进行了论述和探讨.     

Product configurator impact on product quality

More and more firms today rely on product configurators to more efficiently and effectively meet increasingly diverse customers’ needs. In literature, however, the discussion of the performance outcomes of product configurator use is limited and largely based on anecdotal evidence. Our paper contributes to fill this gap by developing and empirically testing hypotheses about the relationship between product configurator use and product quality. We find empirical support for the hypotheses that product configurator use improves product quality and that this relationship is negatively moderated by the difficulty for a company to determine the needs of its target market. We conclude by discussing implications of our findings for both research and practice.     

Process implications of the use of the Internet in new product development: a conceptual analysis

New product development requires a long and detailed process with numerous activities such as product line planning, strategy development, concept generation and screening, business analysis, development, testing and validation, manufacturing development and commercialization. Furthermore, each of these activities has its own unique requirements, some requiring information collection from the market, whereas others requiring the collaboration of different people who are involved in the new product development activities. This paper investigates the Internet's role in these activities and develops research propositions. In addition, it discusses how the impact of the Internet might change based on different products and different organizational conditions.     

Theory of constraints and the combinatorial complexity of the product-mix decision

The theory of constraints (TOC) proposes that, when production is bounded by a single bottleneck, the best product mix heuristic is to select products based on their ratio of throughput per constraint use. This, however, is not true for cases when production is limited to integer quantities of final products. Four facts that go against current thought in the TOC literature are demonstrated in this paper. For example, there are cases in which the optimum product mix includes products with the lowest product margin and the lowest ratio of throughput per constraint time, simultaneously violating the margin heuristic and the TOC-derived heuristic. Such failures are due to the non-polynomial completeness (NP-completeness) of the product-mix decision problem, also demonstrated here.     

The sufficiency of product and variable costs for production-related decisions when economies of scope are present

This article examines the usefulness of product and variable costs for pricing, product mix, and capacity expansion decisions when economies of scope are present. A numerical example demonstrates that the sufficiency of product and variable costs are diminished when economies of scope are present, even under economic conditions that are the most conducive for product and variable costs to lead to an optimal decision. Further analysis of production-related decisions with hard constraints indicates that the usefulness of variable costing incorporating the effect of a bottleneck activity is also diminished when economies of scope are present. Since economies of scope are one of the primary conditions necessary for firms to produce multiple products in a competitive economy [Panzar, J., Willig, R., 1981. Economies of scope. American Economic Review 71 (2), 268–272], the findings of this article bring into question the sufficiency of product and variable costs for production-related decisions.     

论企业产品标准水平的认定

从加强石油内、外部企业产品标准的管理与监督,提高石油企业生产用产品质量水平的角度,论述了开展企业产品标准水平认定的必要性和重要性.针对石油行业内、外部企业产品标准的管理现状,提出了进行企业产品标准水平认定方法.     

Product competence exploitation and exploration strategies: The impact on new product performance through quality and innovativeness

The ability to manage existing assets and capabilities (exploitation) and the development of new capabilities (exploration) are arguably among the most relevant new product success factors. However, while exploitation-related capabilities are based on certainties regarding the efficiency of a company, exploration-related capabilities require the analysis of new technologies and processes. In existing literature, there is a gap concerning the trade-off between the exploitation and exploration of competences. Based on the theoretical background of Resource Based Theory, Dynamic Capabilities Theory and Discovery and Creation Theory, a model is proposed to analyze this gap. In this study, which examines 197 manufacturing organizations, we build on the dualities of the two types of competences and their impact on speed-to-market and market performance. The findings indicate that the choice between exploitation and exploration depends on the goals of new product development. While exploitation increases product objective quality, exploration enhances product innovativeness to the firm. Furthermore, we found that both exploitation and exploration constitute important success factors when it comes to launching new products. Finally, moderate effects of competitive intensity and market turbulence are also examined. High levels of market turbulence improve the results of exploitation, while low levels of competitiveness may encourage exploration.     

Strategic segmentation of a market

When competing firms target information towards specific consumers through direct marketing activities, complete segmentation of markets can result. We analyze a two-stage duopoly where, prior to price competition, each firm targets information to specific consumers and only consumers informed by a firm can buy from it. This has the effect of endogenously determining market segments in a model of ‘sales'. In equilibrium, pure local monopoly emerges; firms target and sell to mutually exclusive market segments. When the cost of marketing approaches zero, market shares reflect relative production efficiency (equal shares when firms are symmetric); this may not be the case when marketing cost is high.     

Impact of health-related claims on the perception of other product attributes

New EU legislation (EU Regulation 1924/2006) will allow a number of nutrition and health claims in food products. The objective of this research was to study how health claims affect consumers’ perception of other product attributes. A survey with a total of 4612 respondents from the Nordic countries explored consumers’ perceptions of attractiveness, healthiness, naturalness, tastiness and ability to reduce risk of disease by comparing ratings of products with and without health claims. Used claims varied in their benefit, active ingredient, claim structure and framing. The results showed that health claims had a moderate but mostly negative impact on the perception of other product attributes; the most significant impact was decrease in perceived naturalness. Consumers could also interpret the benefits in claims as intended. The wording of the claim had only small impact on the perception of the products, whereas earlier market presence of the ingredient had a large impact: differences among the Nordic countries reflected the previous exposure to health claims. The findings from this study suggest that consumers do not imply other health benefits from health claims and the health claim per se is not likely to cause any unrealistic positive inferences in perceived product quality.     

Estimating the final priority ratings of engineering characteristics in mature-period product improvement by MDBA and AHP

Quality function deployment (QFD) has been widely used to translate customer requirements (CRs) into engineering characteristics (ECs) in product improvement. Product planning house of quality (PPHOQ) is of fundamental and strategic importance in the QFD system. In the construction process of the PPHOQ of mature-period (MP) product, correctly estimating the final priority ratings of ECs is essential, because it will largely affect the target value of ECs for improvement. To exploit competitive information of MP products, this paper develops a comprehensive and systematic methodology to rate the final priority of ECs for MP product improvement. The proposed method is on the basis of maximal deviation based approach (MDBA) for dealing with the corporations' performance estimations of ECs, and it integrates AHP and scale method for analyzing the priority rating of achieving the improvement goal of performance evaluation (IGPE) of each EC. Finally, a case study is provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Product Location with Foresight

Traditional location literature concludes that firms will optimally differentiate in order to alleviate a tendency toward competitive pricing. However, it has recently been shown that firms will minimally differentiate if they (correctly) anticipate an absence of price competition. This paper examines the relationship between product location and the sustainability of cooperative pricing, in horizontally and vertically differentiated markets. Further, it describes equilibrium locations when firms are able to choose their locations jointly and when they must choose independently.     

Optimal policies in hybrid manufacturing/remanufacturing systems with product substitution

In hybrid control systems for simultaneous remanufacturing of used products and manufacturing of new ones, the two operations are not directly interconnected if remanufactured items are downgraded and have to be sold in markets different from those for new products. Sometimes a connection between these markets is given by a downward substitution property which allows the producer to offer a new item instead of a remanufactured one in case of a shortage of a remanufactured product. Thus, shortage costs can be avoided, but a loss in profit due to sale of a high-graded product at the price of a low-graded one has to be accepted. For a single-period problem with stochastic returns of used products and stochastic demands of serviceable ones, it is shown how the manufacturing and remanufacturing decisions have been coordinated in order to maximize the total expected profit. It turns out that under strictly proportional costs and revenues a medium-simple ‘order-up-to policy’ with two parameters and two parameter functions is optimal. However, optimal policies in situations where manufacturing leadtimes exceed leadtimes for remanufacturing turn out to be different from those in the opposite leadtime case. The research presented combines methods for policy analysis in stochastic manufacturing/remanufacturing problems and in stochastic inventory control problems with substitutable products.     

Segmentation, advertising and prices

This paper explores the implications of market segmentation on firm competitiveness. In contrast to earlier work, here market segmentation is minimal in the sense that it is based on consumer attributes that are completely unrelated to tastes. We show that when the market is comprised by two consumer segments and when there is sufficient variation in the per-consumer costs firms need to incur to access the different consumer populations, then firms obtain positive profits in symmetric equilibrium. Otherwise, the equilibrium is characterized by zero profits. As a result, a minimal form of market segmentation combined with advertising cost asymmetries across consumer segments give firms an opportunity to generate positive rents in an otherwise Bertrand-like environment.     

Enhancing the business-to-business supply chain: Insights from partitioning the supply-side

A market orientation has long been established as the key to success in supply chain management. A central concept of this orientation is market segmentation. The concept of market segmentation, however, has primarily been focused on the demand side of the supply chain; its potential application on the supply side has not thoroughly been addressed. This paper extends the purview of the concept behind segmentation by presenting the concept of “supply-side partitioning” to refer to the management of heterogeneities on the supplier side of the supply chain. Further, the concept of “transvectional alignment” is proposed for the purpose of simultaneously aligning market segments with appropriate suppliers at all levels of the supply chain by identifying, evaluating, and selecting supply groups that satisfy the demand function(s) of each segment. This paper discusses supply-side partitioning, includes a model for the supply chain utilizing transvectional alignment, and offers implications for the application of supply-side partitioning in the business-to-business marketspace.     

Evaluating product and process design changes with warranty data

This paper suggests evaluating field performance by analyzing hazard plots of the random variable time to first warranty claim. This approach corrects biases that arise when a single member contributes many repairs to the repair population and allows comparing the empirical lifetime distribution with the parametric model assumed at product design (e.g., Exponential or Weibull). Using automobile warranty data we demonstrate how using too broad a scope can mitigate changes in field performance by aggregating improving and degrading components. When comparing warranty performance across model years, the analyst should adjust the hazard plots to reflect common field service time.