A Consumer-Based Approach to Designing Product Line Extensions

A high proportion of new product introductions entail line extensions (e.g., new flavors, sizes, convenience packs, features) rather than totally new products. An attendant problem with line extending involves the possibility of cannibalization of the firm's current products. Paul Green and Abba Krieger describe an approach for designing line extensions that employs consumer tradeoff data and a variety of search heuristics to find "optimal" extensions that explicitly consider the cannibalization of current offerings. The methodology is applied to a case in which an agricultural chemicals firm is introducing a new soybean herbicide.     

The importance of being first : The case of prescription drugs in Canada

There is a growing literature on the importance of being first, which suggests that where there is uncertainty about the product quality of late entrants' brands the pioneering brand will retain a competitive advantage. This is consistent with studies of the U.S. drug industry. Using Canadian data for the drug industry it is shown that eliminating quality differences is a necessary but not sufficient condition for late entrants to gain market share. In addition, price competition has to be stimulated. Under these conditions the late entrants have taken up to 100 percent of the pioneering brands market.     

野狼也温柔从创意到品牌大理想

故事发生在积雪覆顶的雪山上,一个迷路的旅行者在寒冷的暴风雪中苦苦寻找一个落脚点,沿途一直有野狼紧随其后、伺机而动。饥寒交迫中,他终于忍不住而晕倒在地。狼群奔向晕倒的旅行者,静静地依偎在他身上、为他取暖。“不是非要相识,才能相拥入怀。”     

Why Many Chinese Look Unhappy？

<正>I agree that many Chinese look unhappy,but I decided that they were just relaxed, when the muscles to change the expression are not used at all.For many cult...     

Volatility due to offshoring: Theory and evidence

Existing models of offshoring are not equipped to explain how global production sharing affects the volatility of economic activity. This paper develops a trade model that can account for why offshoring industries in low wage countries such as Mexico experience fluctuations in employment that are twice as large as in high wage countries such as the United States. We argue that a key to explaining this outcome is that the extensive margin of offshoring responds endogenously to shocks in demand and transmits those shocks across borders in an amplified manner. Empirical evidence supports the claim that the extensive margin of offshoring is an active margin of adjustment, and quantitative simulation experiments show that the degree of movement of this margin in the data is sufficient to explain relative employment volatility in Mexico and the U.S.     

French revolution or industrial revolution? A note on the contrasting experiences of England and France up to 1800

At the end of the eighteenth century, England and France both underwent revolutions: France the French Revolution, England the industrial revolution. This note sheds new light on these contrasting experiences in the histories of England and France by looking at the evolution of real consumer prices in London and Paris in the centuries leading up to 1800. Whilst in London, building workers were facing low and stable consumer prices over the period, leaving plenty of scope for a demand-driven consumer revolution (in particular after 1650), their Parisian counterparts had to engage in a year-long grind to maintain a decent living, and often had to cut consumption to make ends meet. The exercise conducted in the present paper gives a quantitative and economic underpinning to the notion that the French revolution did not arise out of nowhere, but rather had its roots in centuries of hardship amongst working class people as they struggled to make a living.     

The dynamic effects of a currency union on trade

The response of trade to a monetary union is a dynamic process. An empirical study of the European monetary union finds that the extensive margin of trade in new goods responded several years ahead of EMU implementation and ahead of overall trade volume. A dynamic rational expectations trade model shows that early entry of new firms in anticipation is explainable as a rational forward-looking response to news. The model helps identify which types of trading frictions are reduced by a currency union, and shows how new entry can be affected by uncertainty about EMU.     

Birds of a feather get lost together: new venture team composition and performance

This study explores the relationship between new venture team composition and new venture persistence and performance over time. We examine the team characteristics of a 5-year panel study of 202 new venture teams and new venture performance. Our study makes two contributions. First, we extend earlier research concerning homophily theories of the prevalence of homogeneous teams. Using structural event analysis we demonstrate that team members?? start-up experience is important in this context. Second, we attempt to reconcile conflicting evidence concerning the influence of team homogeneity on performance by considering the element of time. We hypothesize that higher team homogeneity is positively related to short term outcomes, but is less effective in the longer term. Our results confirm a difference over time. We find that more homogeneous teams are less likely to be higher performing in the long term. However, we find no relationship between team homogeneity and short-term performance outcomes.