Entry Deterrence of Capacitated Competition Using Price and Non‐Price Strategies

We analyze the role of pricing and branding in an incumbent firm's decision when facing competition from an entrant firm with limited capacity. We do so by studying two price competition models (Stackelberg and Nash), where we consider the incumbent's entry‐deterrence pricing strategy based on a potential entrant's capacity size. In an extension, we also study a branding model, where the incumbent firm, in addition to pricing, can also invest in influencing market preference for its product. With these models, we study conditions under which the incumbent firm may block the entrant (i.e., prevent entry without any market actions), deter the entrant (i.e., stop entry with suitable market actions) or accommodate the entrant (i.e., allow entry and compete), and how the entrant will allocate its limited capacity across its own and the new market, if entry occurs. We also study the timing difference between the two different dynamics of the price competition models and find that the incumbent's first‐mover advantage benefits both the incumbent and the entrant. Interestingly, the entrant firm's profits are not monotonically increasing in its capacity even when it is costless to build capacity. In the branding model, we show that in some cases, the incumbent may even increase its price and successfully deter entry by investing in consumer's preference for its product. Finally, we incorporate demand uncertainty into our model and show that the incumbent benefits from demand uncertainty while the entrant may be worse off depending on the magnitude of demand uncertainty and its capacity.     

Slicing the cake without baking it: Opportunistic platform entry strategies in digital markets

The growth of digital platforms relies on the generative nature of digital resources and platforms' openness to complementary innovation. These features often generate strong network effects and winner-take-all dynamics that protect incumbents from competition. However, under certain conditions, these same features render incumbent platforms vulnerable to competitive strategic moves via entrant platforms wherein the entrants can capture value and simultaneously avoid upfront investments in value creation. In this study, we identify three such strategies: platform exploitation, platform injection, and platform pacing. These strategies allow the entrant platform to capture value using the incumbent ecosystem's resources by copying parts of the resources (exploitation), by following the development cycle of key boundary resources (pacing), or by placing itself inside the platform (injection). In this study, we employ an interpretative cross-case synthesis to both theorize these strategies as a new category of opportunistic platform competition and to reveal their distinctive characteristics. Overall, the study demonstrates the potential for unconventional and opportunistic platform competition strategies that extend beyond more traditional ones, such as quality, variety, and network size.     

PLATFORM OWNERSHIP

We develop a theoretical framework of trade on a platform on which buyers and sellers interact, and compare the impact of different platform ownership structures. If two‐sided network effects are strong, monopoly ownership induces more trade than dispersed ownership and is therefore socially preferable. Independent of the strength of network effects, monopoly ownership dominates a club‐like ownership structure where incumbent owners can exclude potential entrants. Under dispersed ownership, vertical integration tends to increase welfare as it allows the internalization of demand externalities. Allowing incumbent platform owners to exclude potential entrants hurts buyers but can raise welfare. (JEL: L10, D40)     

New Firms as Employers: The Wage Penalty for Voluntary and Involuntary Job Switchers

According to previous research, new firms pay lower wages. However, previous studies have been unable to control for the possibility that the opportunity costs of accepting employment at new firms may differ across individuals. In this paper, we investigate whether a wage penalty for being employed at a new firm exists if we take the individual employee's experience and status in the labour market into consideration. We focus on individuals who decide to switch jobs and use matched employee–employer data about all firms and employees in Sweden for the period 1998–2010. Our results show that the share of job transitions into lower wages are higher for those who switch to new firms compared with incumbent firms (40 per cent and 31 per cent, respectively). Our endogenous wage equation estimates indicate that being an involuntary job switcher has an equally negative effect on wages at both new and incumbent firms. However, the positive effect of education on wages is more pronounced for job switchers selecting into incumbent firms.     

Competitive Quality Choice and Remanufacturing

We consider an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) who faces competition from an independent remanufacturer (IR). The OEM decides the quality of the new product, which also determines the quality of the competing remanufactured product. The OEM and the IR then competitively determine their production quantities. We explicitly characterize how the OEM competes with the IR in equilibrium. Specifically, we show that the OEM relies more on quality as a strategic lever when it has a stronger competitive position (determined by the relative cost and value of new and remanufactured products), and in contrast it relies more heavily on limiting quantity of cores when it has a weaker competitive position. The IR's entry threat as well as its successful entry can decrease the consumer surplus. Furthermore, our results illustrate that ignoring the competition or the OEM's quality choice leads to overestimating benefits of remanufacturing for consumer and social welfare. In addition, we show an IR with either a sufficiently weak competitive position (so the OEM deters entry) or a sufficiently strong one (so the OEM is forced to limit quantity of cores) is desirable for reducing the environmental impact. Comparing our results with the benchmark in which the OEM remanufactures suggests that encouraging IRs to remanufacture in lieu of the OEMs may not benefit the environment. Furthermore, the benchmark illustrates that making remanufacturing more attractive improves the environmental impact when the remanufacturer is the OEM, while worsening it when remanufacturing is done by the IR.     

Corporate social responsibility: a strategic and profitable response to entry?

This paper investigates whether an incumbent has an incentive to introduce corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities only as a response to entry by a competitor, i.e., the incumbent would eschew CSR if left uncontested. We assume that the entrant cannot provide CSR at least at the outset for two reasons: (1) it would not be credible due to its lack of recognition and (2) due to high fixed cost to pay e.g., for licensing. More precisely, this paper shows that monopolistic firms can have indeed the incentive to introduce CSR activities only as a response to entry. Therefore, increased competition can turn a firm “green”, providing a “win–win” for business as well as for the environment.     

Assessing the Height of Mobility Barriers: A Methodology and an Empirical Test in the UK Retail Grocery Industry1

A profitable niche will have few entrants if the presence of significant mobility barriers impedes entry and, hence, reduces the expected rents for entrants. Identifying sources of mobility barriers is critical in explaining how incumbents can sustain competitive advantage and obtain supranormal profits (excess rents). While much of strategic management research (and strategic group research, in particular) focuses on the pursuit of sustainable performance advantages, there is relatively little empirical research exploring the dynamics of firm movement and the impact of mobility barriers on performance. The paper analyses mobility dynamics and, most importantly, develops a method to identify the location and severity of mobility barriers. The method is illustrated on a database of large multiples in the UK retail grocery industry for the period 1982–1986. It appears that there are two dimensions of strategic change that facilitate movement into profitable niches. Implications for competition and profitability are discussed.     

A GAP FOR ME: ENTREPRENEURS AND ENTRY

We present a theory of entrepreneurial entry (and exit) decisions. Knowing their own managerial talent, entrepreneurs decide which market to enter, where markets differ in size. We obtain a striking sorting result: Each entrant in a large market is more efficient than any entrepreneur in a smaller market because competition is endogenously more intense in larger markets. This result continues to hold when entrepreneurs can export their output to other markets, thereby incurring a unit transport cost or tariff. The sorting and price competition effects imply that the number of entrants (and hence product variety) may actually be smaller in larger markets. In the stochastic dynamic extension of the model, we show that the churning rate of entrepreneurs is higher in larger markets. (JEL: L11, L13, M13, F12)     

Adjustments of wage-tenure profiles with respect to entry age

This paper adds a new empirical finding of the impact of workers’ entry age on wage-tenure profiles to the literature, which might be explained by human capital and deferred compensation models. I analyze two different data sets stemming from personnel records of a large German company and from German linked employer-employee data. The analyzed company employs a quite large share of older workers but does not hire many older workers. Estimated earnings functions indicate that wage-tenure profiles are adjusted with respect to entry age: workers with older entry age earn higher entry wages and have lower wage growths than younger workers. The linked employer-employee data confirm the findings from personnel records as most firms pay higher entry wages and flatter wage-tenure profiles to older new entrants. The personnel data set and the linked employer-employee data set have their advantages and disadvantages so that an analysis of both enhances the credibility of the main results.     

DO NEWSPAPERS SERVE THE STATE? INCUMBENT PARTY INFLUENCE ON THE US PRESS, 1869–1928

Using data from 1869 to 1928, we estimate the effect of party control of state governments on the entry, exit, circulation, prices, number of pages, and content of Republican and Democratic daily newspapers. We exploit changes over time in party control of the governorship and state legislatures in a differences‐in‐differences design. We exploit close gubernatorial elections and state legislatures with small majorities in a parallel regression‐discontinuity design. Neither method reveals evidence that the party in power affects the partisan composition of the press. Our confidence intervals rule out modest effects, and we find little evidence of incumbent party influence even in times and places with high political stakes or low commercial stakes. The one exception is the Reconstruction South, an episode that we discuss in detail.     

Market Penetration and Acquisition Strategies for Emerging Economies

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are expanding their global reach, carrying their products and brands to new and diverse markets in emerging economies. As they tailor their strategies to the local context, they have to create product and brand portfolios that match their competences with local needs. A multi-tier strategy with local and/or global brands may provide MNEs with the widest reach into the market and the potential for market leadership. However, it has to be supported with an appropriate combination of global and local resources. Foreign entrants therefore have to develop operational capabilities for the specific context, which requires complementary resources that are typically controlled by local firms. As institutional obstacles and weaknesses of local firms often inhibit the direct acquisitions, foreign investors may pursue unconventional strategies to acquire local resources.We outline the strategies for penetrating local markets through multi-tier branding and the acquisition of local firms, and offer new typologies that describe staged, multiple, indirect, or brownfield acquisitions. We illustrate them by analysing the entry and growth of Carlsberg Breweries in four very different emerging economies: Poland, Lithuania, Vietnam and China.     

Product Line Extensions and Technology Licensing with a Strategic Supplier

In many industries, original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) must obtain critical components from a few powerful suppliers. To the extent that the OEMs are also concentrated, the interactions between the suppliers of critical components and the OEMs are strategic, and have implications for how an incumbent OEM chooses its product line and interacts with potential rivals. We demonstrate that, by adding a low‐end product line extension, an OEM can induce a strategic supplier to offer more favorable pricing. Moreover, depending upon the cost structure and relative performance of the product line extension, the OEM may benefit even more from the low‐end line extension if it is produced by a rival instead of by itself, even if it cannot obtain any licensing income from it. Among other things, we show that this can result in a decentralized OEM accommodating competition from rivals producing product line extensions that would not be developed in a vertically integrated supply chain. In an extension, we re‐examine the common assumption that the supplier unilaterally dictates a single wholesale price that is available to all downstream buyers. We demonstrate that, by committing to offer a “lowest available” wholesale price to all downstream buyers, a supplier can encourage an incumbent OEM to share its technology (or otherwise accommodate the entry of a rival) so that the supplier, the incumbent OEM, and the rival are all better off.     

An Analysis of Scoring and Buyer‐Determined Procurement Auctions

In procurement auctions, the object for sale is a contract, bidders are suppliers, and the bid taker is a buyer. The suppliers bidding for the contract are usually the current supplier (the incumbent) and a group of potential new suppliers (the entrants). As the buyer has an ongoing relationship with the incumbent, he needs to adjust the bids of the entrants to include non‐price attributes, such as the switching costs. The buyer can run a scoring auction, in which suppliers compete on the adjusted bids or scores, or, he can run a buyer‐determined auction, in which suppliers compete on the price, and the buyer adjusts a certain number of the bids with the non‐price attributes after the auction to determine the winner. Unless the incumbent has a significant cost advantage over the entrants, I find that the scoring auction yields a lower average cost for the buyer, if the non‐price attributes are available. If the non‐price attributes are difficult or expensive to obtain, the buyer could run a buyer‐determined auction adjusting only the lowest price bid.     

KNOWING THE RIGHT PERSON IN THE RIGHT PLACE: POLITICAL CONNECTIONS AND RESISTANCE TO CHANGE

We use a political economy model of Schumpeterian growth with entry to investigate how an incumbent politician can strategically use the level of red tape to acquire incumbency advantage. By setting sufficiently high red tape, the politician induces the incumbent firm in the intermediate sector to invest in political connections, which are valued also by voters, who recognize that bureaucratic costs can be reduced by connected firms. Within this framework, we study the Markov perfect equilibria of an infinitely repeated game among politicians, firms, and voters, and show that all equilibria are characterized by investments in political connections and the re‐election of the incumbent politician. Political connections may prevent entry of advanced competitors and cause the economy to lag behind the technological frontier. Our model provides a possible explanation for the persistence of inefficient democracies and political barriers to technology development, where these reflect shared rather than conflicting interests.     

企业创新战略视角下产业模块化动力机制研究——基于计算机产业史的考察

采用纵向案例研究方法,对计算机产业从大型机时代向PC机时代的演进历程进行了考察,对产业模块化的动力机制进行探索分析。认为由企业间竞争而激发的创新战略是产业模块化的主要驱动力量：产业演化初期,有实力的在位企业会通过激进式创新,完成产品从一体化向模块化的转换;在此背景下,新进入者会从“低端价值模块”进入,采用模块创新策略逐渐瓦解在位企业所垄断的一体化价值链;新进入者也会利用破坏创新技术,采取“低端客户进入”与开放技术标准等策略,来破坏在位企业的竞争优势,加速产业模块化。     

Cost‐Reducing Innovation and the Role of Patent Intermediaries in Increasing Market Efficiency

Patent intermediaries have gained importance as non‐practicing entities in the innovation domain, buying innovations from an external provider and then licensing them to practicing firms. In this study, we analyze the competition between two identical incumbent firms and a patent intermediary for the acquisition and licensing of a cost‐reducing innovation developed by an external innovator. We show that the outcome of the IP acquisition and licensing game critically depends on the degree of the cost‐reducing innovation. Patent intermediaries win IP rights in patent markets if the innovation is incremental. They also win the IP rights when the innovation is moderate or radical, providing they have significant efficiency advantages over incumbent firms and the uncertainty about the degree of innovation is low. We also show that patent intermediaries serve to make markets more efficient. When the innovation is incremental or moderate, they help ensure a lower cost of production and a lower price for customers, and when the innovation is radical, they help increase the profits of the incumbent firms.     

Examining the effects of negative affectivity on self- and supervisor ratings of job stressors: the role of stressor observability

In this study, we investigated job stressor ratings through Lazarus' transactional stress theory and the usefulness of supervisor ratings as an alternative to employee self-reports. Based on the finding that negative affectivity (NA) causes incumbents to over-report job stressors, we hypothesized that supervisors may also be affected by their NA when appraising an incumbent's job stressors. Building upon the literatures on judgement processes and social-cognitive information processing, we further hypothesized that stressor observability is an important boundary condition. Specifically, we hypothesized that the impact of NA on both self- and supervisor-reported job stressors should increase as stressor observability decreases. Moreover, we hypothesized that incumbent and supervisor ratings would converge less as stressor observability decreases. Data from 260 incumbent-supervisor dyads showed that stressor observability reduced the impact of supervisor NA on supervisor ratings (but not the impact of incumbent NA on incumbent stressor ratings). Further, as hypothesized, incumbent and supervisor ratings showed less convergence the less observable the stressor was. The results highlight the importance of personal and situational factors in the stressor appraisal process – an issue that advances both research and practice in the field of stressor ratings.     

FINANCIAL DEVELOPMENT AND VERTICAL INTEGRATION: THEORY AND EVIDENCE

Existing evidence is mostly inconclusive on the relevance of financial development as a determinant of vertical integration. This paper presents evidence that, once industry heterogeneity in firm size distribution is taken into account, financial development is an important determinant of cross‐country differences in vertical integration. Financial development fosters entry of firms and increases competition in the industry. This reduces vertical integration of larger firms, but also leads smaller, non‐integrated, firms to exit the industry. As a result, higher financial development reduces vertical integration in industries where a high share of output is produced by small firms. The positive effect of financial development on entry also reduces vertical integration by fostering the development of input markets.     

Does order of entry shape competitive strategies? An analysis of European mobile operators

Research on first mover advantages is interested in the performance effects of the order of entry into new markets. However, with a few exceptions, the competitive strategies used by different cohorts of entrants have not been studied. We advance research on first mover advantages by arguing that pioneers and followers differ in terms of the competitive strategy employed. Additionally, our research proposes that the different competitive strategies used evolve over time. To test our hypotheses, we use data from the European mobile industry. Our findings show that pioneers benefit from a hybrid strategy in the initial stages of the market development. However, over time, the relative position of first movers in terms of quality, prices and operating costs worsens.     

捆绑策略对于低性能产品引入的价值

如何将低性能产品(低吸引力产品)引入现有高性能产品进行销售已成为企业关注的重要问题,尤其是当低性能产品具有各种边际成本结构以及顾客表现为在更长时间域理性选择购买时机的行为时.研究了捆绑策略对于低性能产品引入的价值,考虑了不引入低性能产品(只销售高性能产品)的基准策略以及引入低性能产品(同时销售两种产品)的完全捆绑策略、分开销售策略与混合捆绑策略.结论显示:当低性能产品的边际成本较低以及与高性能产品之间的竞食性较强时,不引入低性能产品对企业更有利.当低性能产品具有中等(较低)边际成本且与高性能产品之间的竞食性较弱时,企业应当采用混合捆绑策略引入低性能产品.此外,还分析了完全捆绑策略与分开销售策略的适用范围.