Effective Design of Products/Services: An Approach Based on Integration of Marketing and Operations Management Decisions*

This paper presents an integrated framework for designing profit‐maximizing products/ services, which can also be produced at reasonable operating difficulty levels. Operating difficulty is represented as a function of product and process attributes, and measures a firm's relative ease or difficulty in meeting customer demand patterns under specified operating conditions. Earlier optimum product design procedures have not considered. operational difficulty. We show that optimum profit, market share, cost, and product profiles are dependent on operating difficulty level. Empirical results from the pizza delivery industry demonstrate the value of the proposed Effective Product/Service Design approach.     

New Product Development Decision‐Making Effectiveness: Comparing Individuals,Face‐To‐Face Teams,and Virtual Teams*

A total of 411 subjects participated in two decision‐making experiments in order to examine the effectiveness of new product development project continuation decisions. Using escalation of commitment theory, in Study 1, individual versus face‐to‐face team decision‐making effectiveness was compared. Study 2, an extension of Study 1, compared the new product development decision‐making effectiveness of individuals, face‐to‐face teams, and virtual teams. A virtual team is a geographically and temporally dispersed and electronically communicating work group. In Study 2, the virtual teams communicated asynchronously via groupware technology. Our findings suggest that teams make more effective decisions than individuals, and virtual teams make the most effective decisions.     

AN ALTERNATING LEAST-SQUARES PROCEDURE FOR ESTIMATING MISSING PREFERENCE DATA IN PRODUCT-CONCEPT TESTING*

Product-concept testing is a popular activity in marketing research. Often the number of new product/service concepts under study far exceeds the time available for any single respondent. Respondents therefore may receive only a subset of the concepts comprising the total design. Researchers are interested in making plausible imputations for the missing evaluations of any given respondent. This paper proposes a model and an iterative estimation procedure to impute missing entries for each evaluator. The model and the procedure incorporate (1) the internal structure of the response matrix and (2) an ancillary matrix of (nonmissing) respondent background data; they also (3) allow for individual differences in respondents' uses of the numerical rating scale. The model is applied to both real and synthetic data. Suggestions also are given on how the data imputations may be used in market segmentation and product-line decisions.     

科学——产品设计艺术的核心推动力

文章以科学与产品设计艺术之间的关系为出发点,从新材料的应用促进产品设计艺术的发展、技术的发展引领设计风格的变化、新技术的应用不断改变产品设计的方法与手段、生活水平的提高形成新的产品审美需要等方面阐述了科学是产品设计艺术的核心推动力。     

Design of Product Grading Procedures*

Consider a situation in which the items produced by a production process are sorted into two grades according to predetermined specifications and sold at two different prices. A loss is incurred by the producer when an item is classified into a grade and its quality does not meet the consumer's requirement of that grade. A loss in selling price is also incurred when an item is classified into a lower quality grade when it can meet the consumer's requirement of a higher grade. Consequently, the producer's profit is determined by sale prices and losses due to consumer dissatisfaction. The optimal grading specifications are determined to maximize the expected profit. Design of product grading procedures can be based on the performance variable of interest or a surrogate variable correlated with the performance variable. The practice of using correlated variables in product grading is common in industry. We develop product grading models for both the performance variable and a correlated variable.     

对农村计划生育家庭投入机制与产出效益的理性认识

计划生育投入是指为满足控制人口增长、提高人口素质所需要的投入的各种要素的总和 ,从计划生育的投入到家庭效益的产出是个有机联系的过程 ,这种效益集中体现在 :促进了农村育龄人群生育意愿和生育行为的转变 ;为切实解决农业、农民、农村问题提供了有力支持 ;从整体上提高了计划生育户的家庭消费水平。我国农村计划生育投入还存在低效误区 ,今后要抓好计划生育投入机制的转换 ,逐步形成具有中国特色的计划生育投入体系     

产品多元化、国际化与公司绩效——来自中国制造业上市公司的经验证据

产品多元化与国际化战略是公司成长的两种重要模式.本文以2002-2004年我国制造业上市公司为研究样本,利用路径分析法对两者的关系进行实证检验后发现,公司在实施产品多元化与国际化战略的程度上呈现出正相关关系,体现了两种战略的互补效应,并且随着国际化进程的推进,这种关系更加显著.此外,利用2002-2004年三年的混合样本进行分析的结果表明,这两种战略对公司绩效的直接影响并不显著,但对公司绩效的间接影响存在着互补效应.     

The comparison between trade-in and leasing of a product with technology innovations

Companies can adopt trade-in and/or leasing to shorten consumers׳ upgrade cycle and gain control over secondary markets. In this paper, we consider a monopolistic manufacturer who offers a technology product to a market consisting of heterogeneous consumers. We focus on an exogenous, stochastic innovation process that determines the availability of new technology and consequently, residual value of the current product. We derive the optimal pricing strategy of trade-in and leasing, respectively, examine its impact on the manufacturer׳s expected profit, and compare the performance of the two strategies. Trade-in protects the manufacturer against residual value risk and allows the flexibility of offering the option at different innovation states separately. Leasing, on the other hand, provides the manufacturer an opportunity to circumvent low new product prices and thus increases expected profit when product reuse profitability is high. The interplay between the two forces, product reuse profitability and new product price, determines the preference between trade-in and leasing. Our findings provide monopolistic manufacturers guidance on how to optimally employ the trade-in and leasing strategies.     

Liability risk in the pharmaceutical industry: Tort law in the US and UK

This paper examines the extent to which product liability risk contributes to the high costs of pharmaceuticals in the United States relative to prices in the United Kingdom. Research on pharmaceutical prices rarely accounts for the impact of liability risk, and none that we are aware of compares the United States and United Kingdom. Drawing on a dataset of 77 brand name drugs sold in both the U.S. and the U.K., we analyze relative manufacturers’ factory prices in each nation. We utilize several proxies for liability risk including drug litigation history, the percentage of plaintiff wins, and controlled substance classification. Importantly, under U.S. law there are no caps on the amount that can be awarded to a plaintiff claiming economic losses in the U.S. However, payouts in the U.K. are limited. Accounting for market differences and regulatory environments, we find liability risk can account for a portion of the price differential that exists between the U.S. and U.K., warranting further investigation.     

Testing for a Unit Root in ARIMA Processes

A unit root has important long-run implications for many time series in economics and finance. This paper develops a unit-root test of an ARIMA(p-1, 1, q) with drift null process against a trend-stationary ARMA(p, q) alternative process, where the order of the time series is assumed known through previous statistical testing or relevant theory. This test uses a point-optimal test statistic, but it estimates the null and alternative variance-covariance matrices that are used in the test statistic. Consequently, this test approximates a point-optimal test. Simulations show that its small-sample size is close to the nominal test level for a variety of unit-root processes, that it has a robust power curve against a variety of stationary alternatives, that its combined small-sample size and power properties are highly competitive with previous unit-root tests, and that it is robust to conditional heteroskedasticity. An application to post-Second World War real per capita gross domestic product is provided.