Strategies for marketing new computer products

Using the example of the computer industry, this paper explains how the marketing of new ‘high technology’ products can be improved by tailoring the extent and focus of prelaunch marketing planning to the nature and focus of the marketing strategy chosen for the new product.     

网络外部性条件下新产品扩散的赠样策略研究

在具有网络外部性新产品的赠样营销中,所选取的最优赠样目标受到消费者购买行为和消费者网络的共同影响.在无标度消费者网络下,运用基于智能体的仿真研究方法,研究新产品推广企业利用有限的产品销售量和赠样成本信息自我学习寻找最优的赠样目标.仿真研究结果表明:正网络外部性及消费者同质情形下,在一定的临界采纳比例区域内最优赠样方案的产品扩散效果优于随机赠样方案,该区域内网络平均度越大产品扩散的速度越快,网络的异构程度则与产品成功扩散的难易和扩散速度无关;消费者异质情形下,新产品推广企业可以寻找到使产品成功扩散的最优赠样方案;同时具有正负网络外部性时,最优赠样方案与随机赠样方案实施效果无显著差异;最优赠样目标平均度大于网络的平均度,平均聚集系数处于网络平均聚集系数附近.     

有竞争产品时改进型新产品最优上市策略

技术进步推动新产品以更快的速度进入市场,企业为了抢占更多的市场份额,往往会选择推出老产品的改进型新产品,以完成产品的更新换代.针对企业不断推出改进型新产品的情况,考虑双寡头环境下新老两代产品共存时的需求变动,研究改进型新产品的最优上市时间和新产品上市后老产品的最优调整价格问题,并分析改进型新产品的最优上市时间、老产品的最优调整价格与技术水平、产品价格等因素的关系.研究表明:老产品的市场潜力越大、技术水平越高,改进型新产品的最优上市时间越晚;改进型新产品的技术水平越高,其最优上市时间越早;竞争企业产品的价格和技术水平对改进型新产品最优上市时间起反向作用;改进型新产品的价格和技术水平对老产品的最优调整价格起反向作用;竞争企业产品的价格和技术水平对老产品的最优调整价格起反向作用.     

Financial planning for new products: Part I—Basis for model formulation

In a previous paper the author presented a staged approach methodology for the evaluation and selection of R & D projects. The present paper is intended to serve as its complement.The aim is the formulation of a matching overall long range budget planning policy which will attempt to answer the questions of “how many projects to prove” and “how much to fund” on the basis of satisfying the company growth objective.To achieve the above purpose, a staged budget planning model has been developed which recognizes and utilizes the specific attributes of the various R & D stages. Tje project stage survival rate and project stage cost ratio concepts are discussed. A steady flow of projects through the various R & D stage is maintained. The aim of the program is to produce periodically a planned number of new products fro commercial investment.This methodology may apply to R & D program with a sufficient number of moderately sized projects that justify the use of survival rate and cost ratio values. It should be constructed as a tentative effort for possible use within the staged limitations.     

Beyond products: new strategic imperatives for developing competencies in dynamic environments

Strategy research has often taken a product-centered perspective. When firms compete in environments characterized by accelerating product life cycles, mass customization, and technological discontinuities, a product-centered perspective on strategy may help explain a firm’s current competitive advantage. However, this perspective adds little guidance in making strategies that create competitive advantage in the future. In this paper, we present a perspective in which dynamic environments require firms to focus on (1) building market-driven, technological, and integration competencies, not a stream of product improvements, and (2) decoupling these competencies from current products in order to create and exploit new opportunities. We discuss the perspective of products as a temporary integration of market and technology trajectories. Research propositions are presented and future implications are discussed.     

Supply chain configuration for diffusion of new products: An integrated optimization approach

We develop an integrated/hybrid optimization model for configuring new products’ supply chains while explicitly considering the impact of demand dynamics during new products’ diffusion. The hybrid model simultaneously determines optimal production/sales plan and supply chain configuration. The production and sales plan provides decisions on the optimal timing to launch a new product, as well as the production and sales quantity in each planning period. The supply chain configuration provides optimal selection of options and safety stock level kept at each supply chain function. Extensive computational experiments on randomly generated testbed problems indicate that the hybrid modeling and solution approach significantly outperforms non-hybrid alternative modeling and solution approaches under various diffusion and supply chain topologies. We provide insights on optimal production/sales plan and supply chain configuration for new products during their diffusion process. Also, managerial implications relevant to effectiveness of the hybrid approach are discussed.     

Closed-loop supply chain configuration for new and reconditioned products: An integrated optimization model

Closed-Loop Supply Chain Management (CLSCM) is considered as a strategic response to the call for corporate sustainability while further expanding the scope of value creation to include product reconstruction. The Closed-Loop Supply Chain (CLSC) performance is directly related to the CLSC network design. The CLSC network design, with long-term and strategic connotations, involves selection of an integrated network of partner organizations to be engaged on one hand in the forward supply chain processes relevant to families of existing and new products and also involved in reverse supply chain activities relevant to reconstruction of the returned products. At the tactical level, Closed-Loop Supply Chain Configuration (CLSCC) attempts to address issues pertinent to launch of a new product and its reconstruction. The CLSC network design is well studied in the current literature, but addressing the CLSCC is neglected. To study the CLSCC problem we: (a) develop an integrated optimization model for problem; (b) present a real-world case study of a battery manufacturer; (c) based on the case study, we conduct a comprehensive set of computational experiments followed by a series of what-if analyses to compare profitability of the Forward Supply Chain Configuration (FSCC) versus the CLSCC; and (c) discuss the key observations and managerial implications drawn from the computational experiments, applicable to other real-world instances. The significant outcomes of the study suggest that: (i) performance of the firm׳s base case integrated CLSCC model is significantly better than the current supply chain model (ii) the sales-price ratio of new battery is found to be negatively related with the maximum acquiring price of used batteries; (iii) combination of sales price ratios of new and reconditioned batteries determines the total net profit for a given return rate. Finally, important managerial insights and scope for future research are discussed.     

Managing growth: New products and new markets at Monsanto

In a little more than a decade, bioengineering has moved from the esoteric halls of academia and R & D departments to the center stage of major corporate financial strategic planning. For many major chemical and refining companies, genetic manipulation is becoming the centerpiece of survival. Dupont, for instance, is considering getting rid of the $21-billion Conoco Company in order to devote resources to the development of, and more importantly, the marketing of bioengineered products. Monsanto, largely because of its emphasis on reducing the environmental impact of its agricultural products, is one of the few major corporations to cultivate profit from the soil surface through design for the environment. Monsanto's CEO, Robert Shapiro, has made the consideration of the company's impact on the environment dependent on the company's competetive future.     

How to get new products to market quicker : The systematic development of new products, markets and production methods so that the concern can operate successfully

Innovation encompasses a number of activities within a concern that lead to successful introduction of new products, gaining new markets and/or the introduction of new production methods. The basis for these activities is the combined creative capacity of management and employees. By forming an Innovation Group from suitable concern functionaries, new products, markets and production methods can be effectively developed that will not only suit the available external opportunities but also conform to internal strengths, so that the potential of the concern can be optimally used.     

A new product growth model with a dynamic market potential

Traditional new product diffusion models have assumed a constant market potential over the planning horizon for forecasting product adoptions. This assumption is conceptually unsound and is likely to yield either theoretically unacceptable parameter estimates of the model or poor demand forecasts. This paper presents a dynamic growth model which relaxes this assumption. Model illustrations, limitations and further extensions are included.     

Production planning for remanufactured products

This paper presents a methodology for production planning within facilities involved in the remanufacture of products. Remanufacturing refers to the process of accepting inoperable units, salvaging good and repairable components from those units, and then re-assembling good units to be re-issued into service. These types of facilities are common, yet many suffer from the unpredictability of good and repairable component yields, as well as processing time variation. These problems combine to make it extremely difficult to predict whether overall production output will be sufficient to meet demand. Low yields of key components can lead to shortages which require the facility to purchase new components for legacy systems, often with long lead times, thus causing overall delays. The approach developed here is a probabilistic form of standard material requirements planning (MRP), which considers variable yield rates of good, bad, and repairable components that are harvested from incoming units, and probabilistic processing times and yields at each stage of the remanufacturing process. The approach provides estimates of the expected number of remanufactured units to be completed in each future period. In addition, we propose a procedure for generating a component purchase schedule to avoid shortages in periods with a low probability of meeting demand. The proposed methodology is applied to an antenna remanufacturing process at the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC). In this case study the proposed methodology identifies a potential shortage of a key component and suggests a corrective action to avoid significant delay in the delivery of remanufactured units.     

Revenue management for remanufactured products

Revenue management for remanufactured products has not been addressed in literature so far. There could be more than one quality level of the recovered products, which would draw different prices in the secondary markets. In this paper, we develop a pricing model to maximize the expected revenue from the recovered products. Numerical examples are included for illustration.     

The project of a new of neural networks products line: An application

The aim of this paper is to propose a new approach to the issue ofpositioning and pricing a firm's new products line; it is shown here how to conceive an artificial neural system able to find the optimal solution. The formulation of the problem follows the model proposed by Dobson and Kalish, while the implementation is based on the Hopfield Neural Network, thus used here for a new class of problems. The model shows a capacity to converge to the optimal solution; besides its effectiveness, this technique appears to also be efficient if applied to such a production problem.     

Reducing delivery times for OKP products

The management of the manufacture of ‘one-of-a-kind’ products (OKP) is a neglected field in production management. The key to an improvement in productivity and profitability in this field appears to depend mainly on a reduction in the delivery times for products, which in turn requires a reduction in material throughput times, and in design and production planning lead times. This paper looks at some of the ways which can be used to reduce OKP delivery times.     

Coordinating pricing and production decisions for multiple products

We consider a dynamic problem of joint pricing and production decisions for a profit-maximizing firm that produces multiple products. We model the problem as a mixed integer nonlinear program, incorporating capacity constraints, setup costs, and dynamic demand. We assume demand functions to be convex, continuous, differentiable, and strictly decreasing in price. We present a solution approach which is more general than previous approaches that require the assumption of a specific demand function. Using real-world data from a manufacturer, we study problem instances for different demand scenarios and capacities and solve for optimal prices and production plans. We present analytical results that provide managerial insights on how the optimal prices change for different production plans and capacities. We extend some of the earlier works that consider single product problems to the case of multiple products and time variant production capacities. We also benchmark performance of proposed algorithm with a commercial solver and show that it outperforms the solver both in terms of solution quality and computational times.     

The experience effect and pricing for agricultural products

It has been found that for a wide range of industrial products the unit prices and costs decrease by a constant percentage when production volume doubles—this is called the experience effect. This unit price behaviour is also observed for certain classes of basic agricultural products. As international market competition increases, price behaviour differences among countries may lead farmers, their organizations and governments to better understand what are the causes of the differences so that they can maintain and improve their competitive position internationally.     

The resource recovery level decision for end-of-life products

Resource recovery from end-of-life (EOL) products is becoming increasingly engaged in by companies as a response to customer, consumer, government and social pressures, the electronics industry cites competitor pressures as being the main driver of EOL product take-back and recovery. Recovery can occur at three levels; i.e. product, part and material. Each of these options has economic and environmental advantages and disadvantages depending on the product type and a host of other influencing factors. The work described in this paper supports the decision as to the most favourable route from a cost and value perspective, a software model that provides such support is also described.     

Competitive markdown timing for perishable and substitutable products

We model as a duopoly two firms selling their fixed stocks of two substitutable items over a selling season. Each firm starts with an initial price, and has the option to decrease the price once. The problem for each firm is to determine when to mark its price down in to maximize its revenue. We show that the existence and characterization of a pure-strategy equilibrium depend on the magnitude of the increase in the revenue rate of a firm when its competitor runs out of stock. When the increase is smaller than the change in the revenue rate of the price leader when both firms are in stock for all of the three possible scenarios, neither firm has the incentive to force its rival to run out of stock and if a firm marks its price down after the season starts, its inventory runs out precisely at the end of the season. When the increase is larger than the change of the price leader׳s revenue rate in one particular scenario, waiting until its rival runs out of inventory may be an equilibrium strategy for the larger firm even though this may lead to leftover inventory for itself. In other cases, there may be no pure-strategy equilibrium in the game. In certain regions of the parameter space, a firm׳s revenue may be decreasing in its starting inventory which shows that a firm may be better off if it can credibly salvage a portion of its inventory prior to the game. While most of our analysis is for open-loop strategies, in the final part of the paper, we show that the open-loop equilibrium survives as an equilibrium when we consider closed-loop strategies for an important subset of the parameter space.     

同质时鲜产品捆绑销售的最优策略

由于时鲜产品具有十分显著的时效性,为了更快地将时鲜产品销售出去,很多零售商采用了捆绑销售的方式.研究了同质时鲜产品捆绑销售的最优策略问题,对同质时鲜产品捆绑销售的最优价格、最优临界时间以及最优数量决策问题进行了描述,并利用随机效用理论建立了MNL模型.获得了同质时鲜产品捆绑销售单变量决策的最优价格、最优临界时间和最优数量,以及相应的最大利润.进而研究了同质时鲜产品捆绑销售的双变量组合决策问题,并给出了最优双变量组合决策和条件.最后,给出了一个算例,并分析了捆绑销售中价格、数量与时间之间的关系.