The persistence of knowledge‐based advantage: an empirical test for product performance and technological knowledge

Resource‐based theory maintains that intrinsic characteristics of resources and capabilities, such as their tacitness, complexity, and specificity, prevent imitation and thereby prolong exceptional performance. There is little direct evidence to verify these claims, yet a substantial literature encourages firms to formulate competitive strategies around resources with these attributes. Further, work outside the resource‐based tradition suggests that these attributes can slow innovation, and it is not clear when this effect outweighs the benefits of inimitability. This paper seeks to clarify whether and how the complexity, tacitness, and specificity of a firm's knowledge affect the persistence of its performance advantages. We find that the complexity and tacitness of technological knowledge are useful for defending a firm's major product improvements from imitation, but not for protecting its minor improvements. The design specificity of technological knowledge delayed imitation of minor improvements in this study. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The role of perceived product quality and overall satisfaction on purchase intentions

The study investigated the effects of perceived product quality and overall satisfaction on purchase intentions. Moreover, the direct and indirect effects of values and involvement on purchase intentions were studied. The study utilized the survey questionnaire and used sport shoes as the product being researched. The sample consisted of 197 students who responded to an anonymous questionnaire. Five hypotheses were tested and four of them were confirmed by the data. Perceived quality had a direct and an indirect effect (through overall satisfaction) on purchase intentions, overall satisfaction had a direct effect on purchase intentions and involvement had an indirect effect on purchase intentions through overall satisfaction and perceived quality. The results of the study provide several theoretical and practical implications.     

Tacit meaning in disguise: Hidden metaphors in new product development and market making

This article explores the role of metaphor in product development processes and market making. Based on a sociocognitive perspective of innovation dynamics and required learning by market actors, the potential of metaphors for mental model development during new product development (NPD) processes is investigated. Three roles for metaphors as cognitive focusing devices for the co-evolution of producers' and consumers' mental models are inferred: mental model communication, mental model matching, and mental model creation. These roles are illustrated by examples that reinforce the need for creativity in applying metaphors as cognitive focusing devices in NPD and market making.     

浅析石油化工项目产品市场分析

市场分析是项目前期的重要工作之一，目前尚未赢得人们足够的重视。国外的投资咨询公司对石油化工项目的产品市场分析有其一套比较完整的操作程序和评估体系，以BOPP为案例介绍了市场分析的思路和方法，并且指出市场分析作为一种新的理念，必须进一步深化和细化，逐步加以完善。     

Are Fundamentals Priced in the Bond Market?*

To date, the discussion of the Lev and Thiagarajan 1993 fundamentals in the prior literature has been exclusively in the context of the stock market. Our study is the first to examine the value‐relevance of these fundamentals for default risk. By focusing on the market for new bond issues, we examine the value‐relevance of the fundamental score using expected rather than realized returns. Also, by focusing on the bond market we provide a different perspective than that brought by prior studies relying solely on stock prices. We find the fundamentals to be priced in the market for new bond issues as indicators of expected future earnings and to be value‐relevant in enabling the market to discern differences in bond credit quality over and above the published bond ratings.     

An empirical investigation of firm public and private knowledge

Many studies examine firm private knowledge, but purport to be generalizable to the totality of firm knowledge, both public and private. This study demonstrates that public and private firm knowledge are empirically separable constructs that have significant and yet different influences on innovative outcomes. The example of product development effectiveness within this study shows that both public and private knowledge are significantly related to product development quality; however, public knowledge is negatively related to quality lapses while private knowledge is positively related to quality lapses. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Diffusion of Products with Limited Supply and Known Expiration Date

In this paper, we provide a model for diffusion of products, which are available in limited quantity until a known expiration date, after which the unsold products have no value. We consider the case of a performing arts company. The model development is built on the foundation of classical product diffusion model by Bass (1969) and the psychological effect known as the scarcity principle (Cialdini, 1985). Our empirical analysis results show that the proposed model can provide significant improvement in prediction of the products characterized by the scarcity effect.     

Learning across the life cycle: Experimentation and performance among the hollywood studio heads

Guided by notions from the literature on organizational learning, this paper investigates how product line experimentation and organizational performance change across the careers of top managers. Its subjects are the studio heads who ran all the major Hollywood film studios from 1936 to 1965. The study found first, that product line experimentation declines over the course of executive tenures; second, that there is an inverse U‐shaped relationship between top executive tenure and an organization's financial performance; and third, that product line experimentation is more likely to benefit financial performance late in top executives' tenures. These findings are consistent with a three‐stage ‘executive life cycle’. During the early years of their tenures, top managers experiment intensively with their product lines to learn about their business; later on their accumulated knowledge allows them to reduce experimentation and increase performance; finally, in their last years, executives reduce experimentation still further, and performance declines. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quality Competition and Social Welfare in Markets with Partial Coverage: New Results*

We use a vertical product differentiation model under partial market coverage to study the social welfare optimum and duopoly equilibrium when convex costs of quality provision are either fixed or variable in terms of production. We show the following new results. First, under fixed costs, the social planner charges a uniform price for the single variant that just covers costs of quality provision. Like the duopoly equilibrium, this socially optimal pricing entails a partially uncovered market, but a smaller share of the market is served compared with the duopoly equilibrium. Second, for the variable cost case, it is socially optimal to provide both high‐ and low‐quality variants, but market shares need not be equal. This differs from the result in fully covered markets. Third, in the duopoly equilibrium, the quality spread is too wide under variable costs relative to the social optimum. Under fixed costs, the duopoly produces two variants, but quality is too low relative to the social optimum, which has only one variant.     

Measuring Hospital Performance in the Presence of Quasi-Fixed Inputs: An Analysis of Québec Hospitals

This research proposes an approach to measure hospital performance based on a generalization of Banker and Morey (1986) and Førsund (1996). This approach considers quasi-fixed inputs explicitly, calculates their implicit cost, and quantifies returns to scale. The performance measure is decomposed into allocative and technical inefficiencies. Based on a very complete data set of Québec hospitals, we find that significant inefficiencies of up to 17% ($700 CAN million) could have been saved through improved performance. Postestimation analyses that include qualitative measures of care suggest that differences in performance are attributable to differences in management or unobservable quality of care rather than patient case mix.