Smart Products: Conceptual Review,Synthesis, and Research Directions*

Smart products have received increasing attention from researchers and practitioners alike. One limitation of the existing literature, however, is that the term is often used as a blanket term and that there is no consensus on what a smart product actually is. Because different studies rely on differing conceptualizations, the current body of knowledge is scattered and lacks a uniform language and conceptual boundaries. Specifically, existing research has subsumed inherently different products under one collective term, has relied on a multitude of ad hoc criteria to define smart products or has conflated smart products with the services they render and/or the wider ecosystem, in which they operate. These developments limit the systematic advancement of the field and impede the integration of the smart product concept into related concepts such as the Internet of Things. To address these issues, this article provides an extensive analysis of the status quo of the field, with the goal of developing a common language and comprehensive conceptualization of smart products. First, existing studies on smart products were systematically reviewed across contributing disciplines and supplemented with a bibliometric analysis that allowed for a deeper understanding of the smart product concept within and across disciplines. This analysis revealed an initial set of 16 capability-based criteria that are currently applied to conceptualize smart products. Second, based on a systematic coding procedure, these criteria were synthesized and organized within a comprehensive framework delineating four distinct product archetypes for the digital age: (1) Digital, (2) Connected, (3) Responsive, and (4) Intelligent. Third, three major conceptual themes that arise from this framework are identified and possibilities for future research are pointed out. In sum, this work contributes to the literature by improving the understanding of smart products as an epistemic object and by laying the ground for more cumulative research endeavors.     

包装以新方式架起产品、消费者和制造商之间的桥梁

当今社会,消费品加工企业面临的一大挑战不仅是开发新产品以吸引消费者的注意力,更重要的是维系消费者的忠诚度,这一切都依赖于恰当地应用产品的外包装。包装印刷是成功的关键,同时也是未来市场投资的方向。柔性版印刷技术为包装领域带来了活力,它可以有效地改进外包装的特性。近来在包装领域出现了一个新的概念———交互式包装,它包括感觉包装、功能包装和智能包装,这一概念使包装印刷已经超出了只是改善图像效果这一范畴,而是已经成为产品的一部分,甚至就是产品本身。包装加工工艺利用将包装和产品直接联系起来的方式标识、归类最终的包…     

Cursed Consumers and the Effectiveness of Consumer Protection Policies*

We model firms' quality disclosure and pricing in the presence of cursed consumers, who fail to be sufficiently skeptical about undisclosed quality. We show that cursed consumers are exploited in duopoly if firms are vertically differentiated, if there are few cursed consumers, and if average product quality is high. Three common consumer protection policies that work under monopoly, that is, mandatory disclosure, third party disclosure and consumer education, may all increase exploitation and decrease welfare. Even where these policies improve welfare, they often lead to a reduction in consumer surplus. Our conclusions hold in extensions with endogenous quality and horizontal differentiation.     

Reputation for Product Innovation: Its Impact on Consumers*

Just as firms compete for customers, they also vie for reputational status across their relevant constituent groups. To many firms, a reputation as an innovative company is something that is both prized and actively sought after. Despite an abundance of anecdotal evidence pointing to several firms' active pursuit of an innovative reputation, there is little empirical evidence to evaluate the soundness of this pursuit. On a general level, this research recognizes that firms compete for competitive advantage via their tangible and intangible resources. Much of the innovation literature centers on the tangible impact that new product development initiatives have on outcomes of innovation. Yet research investigations of the less tangible facets of innovation, such as a reputation, remain relatively uninvestigated despite their promise as a source of sustainable competitive advantage. This study investigates the effects of a corporate reputation for product innovation (RPI) and its impact on consumers. Consumer involvement levels are proposed to mediate the relationship between RPI and consumer outcomes. Empirical results indicate that a high consumer perceived RPI, via the involvement construct, leads to excitement toward and heightened loyalty to the innovative firm. A more positive overall corporate image and tolerance for occasional product failures are also positive outcomes noted in the results. Contrary to expectations, a high perceived RPI does not lead to a consumer propensity to pay price premiums.     

FROM EXPERIENCE: Products Talking to People—Conversation Closes the Gap between Products and Consumers

Product design is a complex undertaking, requiring manufacturers to find a balance among business goals, regulatory guidelines, the requirements of the distributor and retailer, and consumer demand. Along the way, it is sometimes easy to forget that, in the end, an actual person will attempt to operate the product.
Manufacturers are skilled at collecting and analyzing data about their customers and at using this information to formulate a "brand message": those things a company wants to communicate to consumers, the expectations that should be set in the consumer's mind, and what feelings and associations consumers should take away from an interaction with the company and its products. But while this information may be useful in understanding demographic and economic aspects of consumers, it often does not help the manufacturer understand how the product and user should interact—how the product and user should "talk" to each other. Something is lost in translation as a product goes from being a conceptual instantiation of a brand to being an actual physical object that a consumer must communicate with and must manipulate. The result is an experience that reflects poorly on the product and the manufacturer.
This article presents a framework for developing the interaction between user and product, using the metaphor of conversation between people. Human beings have developed a set of conversational rules and norms over the last few thousand years, and by leveraging these standards, manufacturers can create product interactions that provide a better experience to the consumer.     

PERSPECTIVE: How Honda Innovates*

This article describes how Honda leverages its engine and other key subsystem technologies into new products uniquely designed for new target users and their new special uses. In this profile of the development of the Honda Element sports utility vehicle, we see how firm can identify new target applications, dive deeply into user research, and translate its acquired insights into specific designs and features. The feasibility and profitability of the effort is maximized by leveraging robust, fully operational platforms within new product lines.     

Assessing the Economic Rationality of Remanufacturing Products*

Consideration is given to the factors that affect the determination of the profitability of remanufacturing product. This results in a technique being developed and applied to assess the economic rationality of remanufacturing a variety of products. A study of price preferences from 49 subjects finds that in many cases an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) will earn greater overall profits by offering both new and remanufactured versions of their product. Differences in pricing behavior are noted between both products and individuals. There also appears to be differences in switching behavior. It is, however, reasonable to treat the transfer in preference from new product to remanufactured product as linear over some price range. This assumption allows for a relatively simple calculation of under what circumstances it is economically rational for an OEM to produce both new and remanufactured products and in such situations what the relative prices, sales, and profits should result. The remanufactured products considered are retreaded tires, auto parts, cell phones, toner cartridges, printers/copiers, and disposable cameras. In addition to the article's academic contributions, techniques and insights are offered for practitioners to assist them in understanding the opportunities and implication of pursuing remanufacturing as an addition to their current products.     

How Much Will Consumers Pay? A Hedonic Analysis of the Cable Television Industry

Because cable television is the classic example of a bundled commodity, it is difficult to determine how consumers value individual cable networks offered on a typical system. This paper uses a modified hedonic framework to determine the marginal willingness to pay by consumers for individual cable networks. The traditional hedonic framework is adapted to allow for the lack of competition on the supply side of the market. It is clear that consumers do value some types of programming more than other types. Sports, news, and family programming all have positive implicit prices while program guides have negative marginal prices.     

如何做好物资采购工作

长期以来电力企业物资采购沿用的是计划经济时期传统的采购模式和管理办法随着市场经济的建立和不断完善改革物资采购管理工作势在必行。     

关于推进纺织品消费的思考

进入21世纪后，中国纺织经济仍然面临着供大于求的问题。近期国家权威性统计报告指出，2001年第一季度我国纺织产品供大于求的矛盾依然突出，衣着消费品零售价格跌势不减。笔者在数十篇文章中，坚持认为我国处在社会主义初级阶段，纺织品生产的供大于求仅是一种结构性过剩的表现。本文在坚持这个观点的前提下，从推进纺织品消费入手研究，提出解决供大求的理性思路。     

How Teamwork Matters More as Team Member Dispersion Increases*

Product development teams become increasingly dispersed because innovative project tasks require the input of specialized knowledge at multiple locations. Prior analyses indicate that as team member dispersion increases teams find it more difficult to perform high‐quality teamwork. Moreover, the literature has largely assumed that the performance effect of teamwork in innovative projects would be driven by the nature of the project task and that this would be true regardless of the degree to which team members were co‐located. The present study argues, however, that teamwork affects team performance more strongly as team member dispersion increases. Two main reasons for this are discussed: (1) High‐quality teamwork can leverage the increased knowledge potential of dispersed teams; and (2) team leaders in more dispersed teams have little possibility to compensate low‐quality teamwork through hands‐on leadership. Responses from 575 managers, team leaders, and team members of 145 new product development (NPD) projects in the software industry were used to analyze the moderating effect of team member proximity on the relationship between teamwork quality and team performance. Using regression analysis, support is found for the initial hypothesis that team member dispersion moderates the relationship between teamwork quality and team performance, that is, that increasing team member dispersion increases the positive impact of teamwork quality on team performance. As such, the present analysis advances understanding of dispersed teams, showing that teamwork quality not only is more difficult to achieve but also is more critical to team performance as team dispersion increases. Furthermore, low‐proximity teams can reach higher levels of effectiveness and efficiency than co‐located ones if they manage to achieve high levels of teamwork over distance. Thus, team dispersion may well be an opportunity and should not just be regarded as a liability to be overcome or avoided. This research recognizes that the vast majority of teams are neither perfectly co‐located nor perfectly virtual. There are many shades of gray between these two extremes, and various individual, team, task, and contextual characteristics may have an effect on how decreases—however small—in geographical proximity affect the process and performance of teams. Future research is encouraged to address such factors at different levels of analysis aimed at providing managers with recommendations for dispersed teamwork.     

Design of Robust New Products under Variability: Marketing Meets Design*

In designing consumer durables such as appliances and power tools, it is important to account for variations in product performance across different usage situations and conditions. Since the specific usage of the product and the usage conditions can vary, the resultant variations in product performance also can impact consumer preferences for the product. Therefore, any new product that is designed should be robust to these variations—both in product performances and consumer preferences. This article refers to a robust product design as a design that has (1) the best possible (engineering and market) performance under the worst‐case variations and (2) the least possible sensitivity in its performance under the variations. Achieving these robustness criteria, however, implies consideration of a large number of design factors across multiple functions. This article's objectives are (1) to provide a tutorial on how variations in product performance and consumer preferences can be incorporated in the generation and comparison of design alternatives and (2) to apply a multi‐objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) that incorporates multifunction criteria in order to identify better designs while incorporating the robustness criteria in the selection process. Since the robustness criteria is based on variations in engineering performance as well as consumer preferences, the identified designs are robust and optimal from different functional perspectives, a significant advantage over extant approaches that do not consider robustness issues from multifunction perspectives. This study's approach is particularly useful for product managers and product development teams, who are charged with developing prototypes. They may find the approach helpful for obtaining customers' buy‐in as well as internal buy‐in early on in the product development cycle and thereby for reducing the cost and time involved in developing prototypes. This study's approach and its usefulness are illustrated using a case‐study application of prototype development for a handheld power tool.     

Coordination of Design Supply Chains for Bundling Physical and Software Products*

Research on product development management has concentrated on physical products or on software, but not both. This article explores a special new product development (NPD) approach in which the internal development of core physical products is augmented by bundled and largely outsourced software features. We studied a medical device producer that has established a new medical information product group (MIPG) within their NPD organization to create software features that are bundled with their core physical products. The MIPG has conceptualized these software features as multiple software development projects, and then coordinated their realization largely through the use of external software suppliers. This case study centers on the question: how can firms effectively coordinate such product development processes? Our analysis of case evidence and related literature suggests that such product bundling processes, when pursued through design supply chains (DSC), are more complex than is typical for the development of streams of either physical products or software products individually. We observe that DSC coordination transcends the requirements associated with traditional “stage‐gate” NPD processes used for physical product development. Managers in DSC settings face a tension inherent to distributed work: keeping internal and external development efforts separate to exploit the design capabilities within a network of software suppliers, while ensuring effective delivery of a stream of bundled products. Many managers face this coordination tension with little, if any, prior knowledge of how to create a streamlined and effective DSC. Our research indicates that these managers need to make a series of interrelated decisions: the number of suppliers to qualify and include in or exclude from the DSC; the basis for measuring and modifying the scope of the suppliers' work; the need to account for asymmetric cost structures and expertise across the DSC; the mechanisms for synchronizing development work across elements of the DSC; and the approaches for developing skills—both technical and administrative—that project managers need for utilizing in‐house competencies while acquiring and assimilating design know‐how from external development organizations. When managers take a flexible approach toward these decisions based on a modular set of software development projects, they can improve their NPD outcomes through technical and organizational experimentation and adjust their own resource deployment to best utilize the suppliers' capabilities within their DSC.     

Identification of Lead Users for Consumer Products via Virtual Stock Markets*

Newly launched products in the consumer goods and services markets show high failure rates. To reduce the failure rates, companies can integrate innovative and knowledgeable customers, the so‐called lead users, into the new product development process. However, the detection of such lead users is difficult, especially in consumer product markets with very large customer bases. A new and potentially valuable approach toward the identification of lead users involves the use of virtual stock markets, which have been proposed and applied for political and business forecasting but not for the identification of experts such as lead users. The basic concept of virtual stock markets is bringing a group of participants together via the Internet and allowing them to trade shares of virtual stocks. These stocks represent a bet on the outcome of future market situations, and their value depends on the realization of these market situations. In this process, a virtual stock market elicits and aggregates the assessments of its participants concerning future market developments. Virtual stock markets might also serve as a feasible instrument to filter out lead users, primarily for the following two reasons. First, a self‐selection effect might occur because sophisticated consumers with a higher involvement in the product of interest decide to participate in virtual stock markets. Second, a performance effect is likely to arise because well‐performing participants in virtual stock markets show a better understanding of the market than their (already self‐selected) fellow participants. So far, only limited information exists about these two effects and their relation to lead user characteristics. The goal of this paper is to analyze the feasibility of virtual stock markets for the identification of lead users. The results of this empirical study show that virtual stock markets can be an effective instrument to identify lead users in consumer products markets. Furthermore, the results show that not all lead users perform well in virtual stock markets. Hence, virtual stock markets allow identifying lead users with superior abilities to forecast market success.     

Featuring Capability: How Carmakers Organize to Deploy Innovative Features across Products

Innovative features such as hands‐free car entry and ignition systems, stop‐start devices, telematics systems, and panoramic windshields are increasingly important to carmakers' innovation strategies. However, while product‐centric innovation has been extensively studied, there is less insight into the way companies implement their feature‐innovation strategies. The capability to explore, integrate, and deploy such attractive features is a critical dynamic capability; it allows carmakers to refresh their products, develop their competences, and maintain the efficiency of their traditional new product development. This research investigates the structures and processes of feature innovation in the automotive industry. It is based on a global investigation encompassing 9 generalist carmakers and 26 cases of feature innovation. The results show a clear trend, over the past decade, toward a structure of autonomous “advanced engineering” units and processes that are responsible for exploring innovative features and transferring them to multiple products. This paper details the key attributes of these units, and the role they play along the multiproduct learning cycle. Supplementing this structural analysis, the paper also identifies the coordination patterns between exploration and new product development activities. These results provide industry‐level insights into the way firms organize their feature‐innovation capability, and bring empirical elements to the ambidexterity literature.     

Being Innovative While Being Green: An Experimental Inquiry into How Consumers Respond to Eco‐Innovative Product Designs

Eco‐innovations are an effective way for companies to strategically align themselves with customers’ growing environmental concerns. Despite their crucial role, scant research has focused on eco‐innovative product designs. Drawing from the sustainability and innovation literature, this article proposes that in the design of an eco‐innovation, its degree of innovativeness, level of eco‐friendliness, and detachability significantly affect consumers' adoption intentions. This article develops various conceptual models tested through three independent online experiments with U.S. consumers. The findings support the hypotheses and provide useful insights into the underlying mechanisms of how and why consumers respond to eco‐innovative product designs across various high‐tech product categories. Specifically, the results show (1) a positive effect of innovativeness degrees of eco‐innovative attributes on consumers' perceptions of product eco‐friendliness and on their adoption intentions as well as a significant moderating role of consumers' need for cognition (Study 1); (2) a positive influence of eco‐friendliness levels of eco‐innovative attributes on consumer adoption intentions in the case of high‐complexity products but not for low‐complexity products, emphasizing the need to adopt different approaches when developing eco‐innovations to ensure favorable consumer reactions (Study 2); and (3) a significant impact of the detachability of eco‐innovative attributes on consumers' perceptions of trade‐offs between environmental benefits and product functionality and on their intentions to adopt eco‐innovations (Study 3). These findings add to existing theoretical knowledge, provide actionable managerial implications, and identify fruitful avenues for future research.     

对西部地区成品油物流配送中心建设的构想

在分析西部地区中国石油销售系统物流配送业务发展现状及存在问题的基础上,提出成品油物流配送中心的建设应按照"四化一高"的要求,坚持"五统一"原则,整体规划、分步实施、稳妥推进、务求实效.在西部9省区拟建设物流配送中心56个,配送油库63座,辅助油库47座;重组业务机构、调顺关系,优化配送流程;按照统一的建设标准,集中投资,加快改造配送油库,根据以后的发展需要,逐步关停大部分辅助油库;加快建设一二次物流信息系统和物流数据仓库,从而达到科学优化、自动处理、实时调度、信息共享的目的,为科学决策和控制提供支持.     

How Cloudy a Crystal Ball: A Psychometric Assessment of Concept Testing*

Although traditional and conjoint forms of concept testing play an important role in the new product development process, they largely ignore data quality issues, as evidenced by the traditional reliance on the percent Top‐2‐Box scores heuristic. The purpose of this research is to reconsider the design of concept testing from a measurement theory (generalizability theory) perspective and to use it to suggest some ways to improve the psychometric quality of concept testing. Generalizability theory is employed because it can account for the multiple facets of variation in concept testing, and it enables a concept test to be designed to provide a required level of accuracy for decision making in the most effective way, whether the purpose of measurement is to scale concepts or something else, such as to scale respondents. The paper identifies four types of sources—concept‐related factors, response task factors, situational factors, and respondent factors—that can contribute to the observed variation in concept testing and develops six research propositions that summarize what is known or assumed about their contribution to observed score variance. Four secondary data sets from different concept testing contexts are then used to test the propositions. The results provide new insights into the design of concept tests and the psychometric quality of the concept testing data: (1) the concepts facet is not a major contributor to response variation; (2) of the response task factors, concept formulations are a trivial source of variance, but items are not always a trivial source of variance; (3) the situational factors that are investigated are trivial sources of variance; (4) respondents are always a major contributor to the total variation; (5) concepts by respondents are not always a major contributor and the other interactions are often not trivial; and (6) residual error is always a major source of variance. Additionally, the analyses of the secondary data sets enable some useful managerial conclusions to be drawn about the design of concept testing. First, the sample size needed to reliably scale concepts depends on the types of concepts being tested. Second, averaging over items provides considerably more reliable information than relying on a single item. Third, which specific item performs best is inconsistent and very context specific. The popular purchase intention item is never the best single item to use. Fourth, not much is gained by sampling levels of the response task factors. Finally, concept testing should be designed to meet the needs of specific managerial tasks.