Differentiated Products

A buyer seeks to procure a good characterized by its price and its quality from suppliers who have private information about their cost structure (fixed cost + marginal cost of providing quality). We solve for the optimal buying procedure, i.e. the procedure that maximizes the buyer's expected utility. We then use the optimal procedure as a theoretical and numerical benchmark to study practical and simple buying procedures such as scoring auctions and negotiation. Specifically, we derive the restrictions that these simpler procedures place on allocations and compare them with the optimal allocations to generate insights about the properties of these simpler procedures and identify environments where they are likely to do well. We also use the optimal procedure benchmark to compare the performance of these procedures numerically. We find that scoring auctions are able to extract a good proportion of the surplus from being a strategic buyer, that is, the difference between the expected revenue from the optimal mechanism and the efficient auction. Sequential procedures (to which many negotiation processes belong) do less well, and, in fact, often do worse than simply holding an efficient auction. In each case, we identify the underlying reason for these results.

Firms selling multiple quality-differentiated products frequently alter their product lines when a competitor enters the market. We present a model of multiproduct monopoly and duopoly using a general "upgrades" approach that yields a powerful analytical framework. We provide a simple theoretical explanation for the common strategies of using "fighting brands" and of product line "pruning." We also present a general condition that guarantees that a monopolist will forsake market segmentation opportunities and sell but a single product. A number of previously studied issues can be addressed by our model, including inter-temporal price discrimination and "damaged goods." 4 Dial-around carriers allow consumers to bypass their home carriers by dialing a special access code. 5 Yankee Group provides industry research and consulting services. 6 "AT&T Launches Lucky Dog Telephone in Response to '

Incentives to engage in predatory pricing are examined using a reduced-form approach that captures the tradeoff between loss of current profits from predation, and gain in future profits if predation is successful. Under some conditions a predator can impose losses on a victim at little cost to itself. Simulations are performed with the retail liquor market in Edmonton, Alberta. Predation is found to be more cost effective when nearby competitors are few. Predation is more attractive to store chains than to independent stores if chain members are spatially dispersed so that cannibalization of sales within the chain is minimized.

We study a firm selling two products/services, which are differentiated solely in their prices and delivery times, to two different customer segments in a capacitated environment. From a demand perspective, when both products are available to all customers, they act as substitutes, affecting each other’s demand. Customized products for each segment, on the other hand, result in independent demand for

The conventional wisdom in economic theory holds that switching costs make markets less competitive. This paper challenges this claim. We formulate an empirically realistic model of dynamic price competition that allows for differentiated products and imperfect lock-in. We calibrate this model with data from frequently purchased packaged goods markets. These data are ideal in the sense that they have the necessary variation to separately identify switching costs from consumer heterogeneity. Equally important, consumers exhibit inertia in their brand choices, a form of psychological switching cost. This makes our results applicable to the broad range of products that are distinctly identified (i.e., branded) rather than just to those products for which there is a product adoption cost or explicit switching fee. In our simulations, prices are as much as 18 per cent lower with than without switching costs. More importantly, we do not observe equilibrium prices increasing even in the presence of switching costs that are of the same order of magnitude as product price.

As consumer products have become more similar in respect of technical performance and quality emotional characteristics are increasingly important in differentiating products on the market. Consequently measurement of emotions evoked by fragrance is an important aspect of perfume development in the fragrance industry and developing a sensitive and reproducible technique is crucial to ensuring successful fragrance performance in the market.

Recessions can severely affect the performance and even the survival of firms. However, all firms are not equally affected by a recession. In fact, some firms even prosper during recessions. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some firms view a recession as a disguised opportunity, and develop an aggressive marketing response, whereas others cut back, waiting for the recession to pass. Why do some firms view the recession as an opportunity, and develop an aggressive marketing response to it? What are the effects of such a marketing response on the performance of the firm? These are the two central questions we address in this paper.

This work investigates the role of perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) in enhancing employee engagement (EE) in the State of Qatar. We collected survey data from local and expatriate employees of government, semigovernment, and private sector Qatari firms on their perceptions of CSR activities undertaken by their employers. The scope of CSR included activities targeted at employees, customers, the government, and society at large (social and nonsocial stakeholders). We also measured two facets of EE: organizational engagement and job engagement. We examined how these dimensions of EE are associated with employees' perception of the firm's CSR activities, controlling for the type of firm (government, semigovernment, or private) and the type of employee (local or expatriate). Our results reveal that CSR to society and CSR to employees affect organizational engagement whereas CSR to customers affects job engagement. CSR to the government is not significantly related to either aspect of EE.

Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to explore the interaction between an organisation's need to demonstrate compliance with legislative requirements and private assurance standards and the protection of their corporate and/or product brands. Design/methodology/approach -This paper evaluates the mechanisms implemented to address legislative compliance, product liability, brand equity and maintaining stakeholder confidence within the context of the supply of safe food. Findings -The paper finds that, within the international regulatory framework, individual organisations or indeed discrete supply chains must maintain stakeholder confidence in their ability to produce safe, wholesome food, whilst seeking to differentiate products and remaining competitive, especially where brand owners have put significant intellectual and financial resource into the development of either corporate or product brands. Increasingly the corporation identity is now the brand and this is a valuable business asset. In order to protect that asset, effective food safety management must be at the core of organisational strategy and, in the event that such controls fail, crisis management protocols should be in place that can be implemented quickly and effectively. Originality/value -This paper is of both industrial and academic value.

This paper focuses attention on the making of space for rural gentrification, both discursively and materially. The paper emphasises the differential constructions of gentrification within urban and rural studies. Connections are drawn between production-side theories of gentrification, notions of the Ôpost-productivist countrysideÕ and studies that have related rural demographic change and gentrification with planning and property relations. Drawing on these three sets of ideas, the paper explores gentrification in rural Norfolk. It is argued that the contemporary geography of rural gentrification may in part reflect historic structures of landownership as well as settlement classifications associated with the land-use planning system. Country and District level analysis is followed up by detailed study of gentrification of two villages in Norfolk, which highlights how gentrified rural spaces may be produced in rather different way and through different agencies, and as a result takes different forms.

We analyze two and three-dimensional variants of Hotelling's model of differentiated products. In our setup, consumers can place different importances on each product attribute; these are measured by weights on the disutility of distance in each dimension. Two firms play a two-stage game; they choose locations in stage 1 and prices in stage 2. We seek subgame-perfect equilibria. We find that all such equilibria have maximal differentiation in one dimension only; in all other dimensions they have minimum differentiation. An equilibrium with maximal differentiation in a certain dimension occurs when consumers place sufficient importance (weight) on that attribute. Thus, depending on the importance consumers place on each attribute, in two dimensions there is a max-min equilibrium, a min-max equilibrium, or both. In three dimensions, depending on the weights, there can be a max-min-min equilibrium, a min-max-min equilibrium, a min-min-max equilibrium, any two of these, or all three.

In this paper, we investigate the customers using the services offered by the electronic grocery stores (EGS) in the greater Helsinki area. The study aims at revealing the benefits of the EGS service and problems that the customers have faced when shopping in the EGS. The empirical consumer data was gathered in the metropolitan area of Helsinki, Finland, in spring 1999. The EGSs in Finland are not able to produce any remarkable value added for consumers today. An EGS could produce value added for consumer by offering differentiated products and services for various consumer groups. r

The abundance and distribution of selected minor and trace elements (Ti, Zr, Y, Nb, Ce, Ga and Sc) in fresh volcanic rocks can be used to classify the differentiation products of subalkaline and alkaline magma series in a similar manner to methods using normative or major-element ...

This paper proposes a framework for evaluating the impact of e-commerce on the roles of distributors in the semiconductor industry for four different types of products, namely differentiated products, architectural products, technological products, and complex products. Questionnaire and the purposive sampling method were used to collect data from respondents in the distribution industry. The results of the study show that the salience of the roles is increasing. In addition, there is strong likelihood of e-commerce replacing the traditional distributors, more so for less standardized products such as complex, technological, and architectural products.

The production of the prompt charm mesons D 0 , D + , D * + , and their antiparticles, was measured with the ALICE detector in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC, at a centre-of-mass energy √ s NN = 2.76 TeV per nucleon-nucleon collision. The p t -differential production yields in the range 2 < p t < 16 GeV/c at central rapidity, |y| < 0.5, were used to calculate the nuclear modification factor R AA with respect to a proton-proton reference obtained from the cross section measured at √ s = 7 TeV and scaled to √ s = 2.76 TeV. For the three meson species, R AA shows a suppression by a factor 3-4, for transverse momenta larger than 5 GeV/c in the 20% most central collisions. The suppression is reduced for peripheral collisions. * See Appendix A for the list of collaboration members Suppression of high p t D mesons in Pb-Pb collisions at √ s NN = 2.76 TeV 3 Suppression of high p t D mesons in Pb-Pb collisions at √ s NN = 2.76 TeV Suppression of high p t D mesons in Pb-Pb collisions at √ s NN = 2.76 TeV 7 central collisions), aimed at reducing the large combinatorial background.

We propose a framework for analyzing transformations of demand. Such transformations frequently stem from changes in the dispersion of consumers' valuations, which lead to rotations of the demand curve. In a wide variety of settings, profits are a U-shaped function of dispersion. A high level of dispersion is complemented by a niche posture, and low dispersion is complemented by a mass-market posture. We investigate numerous applications of our framework, including product design; advertising, marketing and sales advice; and the construction of quality-differentiated product lines. We also suggest a new taxonomy of advertising, distinguishing between hype, which shifts demand, and real information, which rotates demand.

The production of the prompt charm mesons D 0 , D + , D * + , and their antiparticles, was measured with the ALICE detector in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC, at a centre-of-mass energy √ s NN = 2.76 TeV per nucleon-nucleon collision. The p t -differential production yields in the range 2 < p t < 16 GeV/c at central rapidity, |y| < 0.5, were used to calculate the nuclear modification factor R AA with respect to a proton-proton reference obtained from the cross section measured at √ s = 7 TeV and scaled to √ s = 2.76 TeV. For the three meson species, R AA shows a suppression by a factor 3-4, for transverse momenta larger than 5 GeV/c in the 20% most central collisions. The suppression is reduced for peripheral collisions.

We propose a framework for analyzing transformations of demand. Such transformations frequently stem from changes in the dispersion of consumers' valuations, which lead to rotations of the demand curve. In a wide variety of settings, profits are a U-shaped function of dispersion. A high level of dispersion is complemented by a niche posture, and low dispersion is complemented by a mass-market posture. We investigate numerous applications of our framework, including product design; advertising, marketing and sales advice; and the construction of quality-differentiated product lines. We also suggest a new taxonomy of advertising, distinguishing between hype, which shifts demand, and real information, which rotates demand.

Mergers in the UK brewing industry in the last decade have reduced the number of national brewers from six to four. The number of brands, in contrast, has remained relatively constant. We analyze the effects of the mergers on brand competition and pricing. Brand-level demand equations are estimated from a panel that includes all draft beers that accounted for at least 1/2% of local markets. We model brandsubstitution possibilities in a very flexible way. In particular, we estimate the matrix of cross-price elasticities nonparametrically. We use the estimated demand equations to assess the strength of brand competition along various dimensions, and we evaluate the effects of the mergers by computing equilibria of pricing games with different numbers of players.

We propose a framework for analyzing transformations of demand. Such transformations frequently stem from changes in the dispersion of consumers' valuations, which lead to rotations of the demand curve. In a wide variety of settings, profits are a U-shaped function of dispersion. A high level of dispersion is complemented by a niche posture, and low dispersion is complemented by a mass-market posture. We investigate numerous applications of our framework, including product design; advertising, marketing and sales advice; and the construction of quality-differentiated product lines. We also suggest a new taxonomy of advertising, distinguishing between hype, which shifts demand, and real information, which rotates demand.

This paper employs a nation-wide sample of supermarket scanner data to estimate a large brand-level demand system for beer in the U.S. using the Distance Metric method of Pinkse, Slade and Brett [Pinkse, J., Slade, M., Brett, C., 2002. Spatial price competition: a semiparametric approach. Econometrica 70, . Unlike previous studies, this work estimates the own-and cross-advertising elasticities in addition to price elasticities. Positive and negative cross-advertising elasticities imply the presence of both cooperative and predatory effects of advertising expenditures across brands; however, the former effect appears to dominate suggesting that advertising increases the overall demand for beer. We discuss the implications of these results in this industry.

Purpose-This paper seeks to explore the role that Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) plays in the processes of product innovation and marketing-as an element that strengthens the cooperation and communication among agents within the innovation project, reducing the obstacles to innovation and enhancing the development of differentiated products as well. Design/methodology/approach-The study of a sample of 2,038 companies from all sectors of economic activity in Catalonia allows the contrast of initial hypotheses and establishes a profile of an innovative company based on the significant relationships that exist between innovation and ICT use in marketing and cooperation. Findings-Two ideas stand out from the analysis. First, intensive ICT use in marketing makes the company more innovative, as it perceives that its usage breaks down barriers to innovation and speeds up processes that in turn become more efficient. Second, increasing ICT use in marketing encourages company predisposition to collaborate with and integrate particular agents within the business environment in the development of the innovation process, improving the degree of adaptation of the new product to market demands. Research limitations/implications-The use of dichotomic scales to measure variables, or restricting the study sample to any type of new product regardless of its degree of novelty or intangibility in company and market terms perhaps limits the usefulness of the paper. Practical implications-The study shows the relationship between ICT use, cooperation and the innovation process. Originality/value-This study offers important contributions, and draws conclusions for those directors involved in the development of new products. A new framework is presented for identifying the role that intensive ICT use in marketing plays as an element that strengthens the cooperation and communication relationships in new product development processes. On the other hand, the application of the CHAID analysis allows us to identify the principal traits that define an innovation company.

The newspaper industry is a two-sided market: the readers market and the advertising market are closely linked by inter-market network externalities. We estimate market power in the Italian newspaper industry by building a structural model which encompasses a demand estimation for di¤erentiated products on both sides of the market and where pro…t maximization by the publishing …rms takes into account the interactions between them. The question that we address is whether the observed price pattern is consistent with pro…t-maximizing behavior by competing …rms or is instead driven by some form of (tacit or explicit) coordinated practice.

In this article, we construct a model to study competing payment networks, where networks offer differentiated products in terms of benefits to consumers and merchants. We study market equilibria for a variety of market structures: duopolistic competition and cartel, symmetric and asymmetric networks, and alternative assumptions about multihoming and consumer preferences. We find that competition unambiguously increases consumer and merchant welfare. We extend this analysis to competition among payment networks providing different payment instruments and find similar results.

Product development professionals may have the feeling that yet another buzzword or magic bullet always lurks just around the corner. However, researchers have devoted considerable effort to helping practioners determine which tools, techniques, and methods really do offer a competitive edge. Starting 30 years ago, research efforts have aimed at understanding NPD practices and identifying those which are deemed "best practices." During the past five years, pursuit of this goal has produced numerous privately available reports and two research efforts sponsored by the PDMA.

This paper employs a nation-wide sample of supermarket scanner data to estimate a large brand-level demand system for beer in the U.S. using the Distance Metric method of Pinkse, Slade and Brett [Pinkse, J., Slade, M., Brett, C., 2002. Spatial price competition: a semiparametric approach. Econometrica 70, . Unlike previous studies, this work estimates the own-and cross-advertising elasticities in addition to price elasticities. Positive and negative cross-advertising elasticities imply the presence of both cooperative and predatory effects of advertising expenditures across brands; however, the former effect appears to dominate suggesting that advertising increases the overall demand for beer. We discuss the implications of these results in this industry.

In this paper we consider a class of structural econometric models in which the distribution of the endogenous variables is implicitly dened as the solution of a xed-point problem. We propose a simple two-stage estimator which does not require the econometrician to solve the xed point problem, and provide sucient conditions for its consistency and asymptotic eciency. We show that

This study explores the relationship between corporate social responsibility and emotional labor strategies of frontline employees. In particular, the research focuses on the impact of perceived motives of corporate social responsibility on the cynicism, authenticity, and subsequently, the effect of cynicism and authenticity on surface acting and deep acting of frontline employees. Based on the online survey of 258 frontline employees in South Korea and structural equation modeling of the data, the findings show that the selfish motives of corporate social responsibility (CSR) increase cynicism whereas the altruistic motives of corporate social responsibility increase authenticity and decrease cynicism of frontline employees. In addition, this study reveals that CSR-cynicism leads to surface acting and reduces deep acting whereas CSR-authenticity increases deep acting and does not significantly affect surface acting of frontline employees.

This paper provides empirical evidence for the widespread belief that a magazine's companion website induces channel competition on its print version. The analysis is based on aggregated quarterly magazine-specific data on circulation, a broad variety of magazine characteristics, consumer characteristics and information on a magazine's website presence.

We studied clinopyroxene-apatite-K-feldsparphlogopite xenoliths (CAKP), collected from the Late Cretaceous lamprophyre dikes of the Alcsútdoboz-2 (Ad-2) borehole, Transdanubian Central Range, Hungary. Apatite and K-feldspar contain a large number of primary, negative crystal shaped carbonatite melt inclusions. Chemically, the melt inclusions are phosphorous dolomitic in apatite and dolomite-bearing alkaline-aluminosiliceous in K-feldspar. As these melts in apatite and K-feldspar cannot be the differentiation product or residuum of each other, and appear to have been present in the host rock at the same time, they are likely to have formed by liquid immiscibility. Clinopyroxene and phlogopite are interpreted as products of metasomatic reactions between ultramafic mantle and carbonatite melt initially infiltrating the mantle rock. During this process the composition of the metasomatizing carbonatite melt changed, resulting in the separation of two immiscible melts. One melt was phosphate carbonatite in composition, and the other was a carbonate-bearing alkaline aluminosiliceous melt. Both melts were over-saturated with respect to apatite and K-feldspar. This process initiated the crystallization of the host minerals from a continuously percolating melt and, consequently, led to the entrapment of large populations of melt inclusions. The initial metasomatizing melt had a phosphorous Mg-calcitic carbonatite composition (with low Mg#), and is likely to have been formed in a subducted lithospheric slab.

The production of the prompt charm mesons D 0 , D + , D * + , and their antiparticles, was measured with the ALICE detector in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC, at a centre-of-mass energy √ s NN = 2.76 TeV per nucleon-nucleon collision. The p t -differential production yields in the range 2 < p t < 16 GeV/c at central rapidity, |y| < 0.5, were used to calculate the nuclear modification factor R AA with respect to a proton-proton reference obtained from the cross section measured at √ s = 7 TeV and scaled to √ s = 2.76 TeV. For the three meson species, R AA shows a suppression by a factor 3-4, for transverse momenta larger than 5 GeV/c in the 20% most central collisions. The suppression is reduced for peripheral collisions. * See Appendix A for the list of collaboration members Suppression of high p t D mesons in Pb-Pb collisions at √ s NN = 2.76 TeV 3 Suppression of high p t D mesons in Pb-Pb collisions at √ s NN = 2.76 TeV Suppression of high p t D mesons in Pb-Pb collisions at √ s NN = 2.76 TeV 7 central collisions), aimed at reducing the large combinatorial background.

The Xiaodingxi and Manghuihe volcanic sequences represent key components of the Lancangjiang igneous zone in southwest China. Their petrogenesis provides important constraints on the tectonic evolution of the eastern Paleotethys ocean. The basaltic rocks from the Xiaodingxi and Manghuihe sequences yield SHRIMP zircon U-Pb weighted mean ages of 214 ± 7 Ma and 210 ± 22 Ma, respectively, which is 15-20 Ma younger than the ages of the syn-collisional granite magmatism (230-241 Ma). Samples from the volcanic sequences are dominated by alkaline basalts and basaltic andesites, and can be geochemically classified into two groups. Group 1 samples, mainly from the Xiaodingxi sequence and the lower part of the Manghuihe sequence, are characterized by low MgO (1.49-7.50 wt.%) and Zr/Nb (9.4-15.3), and high Al 2 O 3 (15.95-18.39 wt.%). They are enriched in LILE and LREE contents and depleted in HFSE, and have 87 Sr/ 86 Sr(t) ratios of 0.705473-0.706972, ε Nd (t) of − 1.47-0.75, and similar Pb isotopic compositions to the global average composition of pelagic sediments. In contrast, Group 2 samples from the middle-upper parts of the Manghuihe sequence have similar Al 2 O 3 (16.62-18.23 wt.%) but higher MgO (8.08-11.74 wt.%) and Zr/Nb (15.9-23.9) than those of Group 1 samples. They exhibit relatively flat REE patterns, significantly negative Nb-Ta and Th-U anomalies and positive Sr anomalies. In comparison with Group 1, Group 2 samples show higher Cr, Ni contents and ε Nd (t) values (1.17-5.02), and lower 87 Sr/ 86 Sr(t) and Pb isotopic ratios (Δ8/4 = 43.2-59.8 and Δ7/4 = 11.8-19.8). The geochemical data suggest that Group 1 samples might be the differentiated product of primitive high MgO and low Al 2 O 3 melts originating from a refractory modified mantle with the involvement of 5-10% recycled pelagic sediments. The parental magma for Group 2 samples may have been derived from a plagioclase-rich, garnet-free source comprising 80-85% fluid-metasomatized and 15-20% asthenospheric components. Based on all available data, a tectonic model involving eastward subduction in the Permian and collision in the Triassic can be proposed for the evolution of the eastern Paleotethys ocean. During the late Triassic, the progressive upwelling of the asthenospheric mantle, shortly after slab detachment, may have led to the melting of the metasomatized mantle wedge, resulting in the post-collisional Group 1 and Group 2 magmas.

The spatial distribution patterns of genets and ramets within populations are expected to change as a function of the frequency with which clonal species recruit different types of offspring (sexual and clonal). We used an integrated approach to study the spatial arrangement of clonal plants by combining molecular and ecological data using Opuntia microdasys as a study system. The species is able to produce two types of clonal (plantlets and cladodes) and one type of sexual (seeds) offspring. Additionally it is found in three habitats that cause differences in the ability of each type of offspring to establish. In 2007, all individuals in the three habitats (162 in BH = bajada, 264 in IDH = hill-piedmont, and 136 at HPH = interdunes) were tagged and mapped. Amplified inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSR’s) were used to determine the multilocus genotype and relatedness of each individual ramet using 120 polymorphic bands (104 in BH, 128 in HPH and 180 in IDH). The spatial distribution pattern of genets and ramets was analyzed with the Hopkins test and spatial autocorrelation analysis. For all habitats we found that O. microdasys displayed a spatial distribution characterized by clumps of aggregated ramets, but habitats differed in the number of genets present. As for other clonal species a strong positive spatial autocorrelation exists within 20 m, although all analyses suggest that adjacent ramets are genetically less related to each other or belong to different genets, that is, ramets of different genets are intermingled. The spatial arrangement of genets and ramets in O. microdasys between habitats closely matches the frequency of establishment of each type of offspring (e.g. the more clonal areas are clumped groups of related individuals). These results confirm that in two habitats (BH and IDH) clonal recruitment had been more common than in the other habitat (HPH).

Trichoderma mycoparasitism includes recognition, attack, overgrowth and lysis of the host fungus accompanied by morphological changes and secretion of hydrolytic enzymes and antibiotics. Studying the underlying signal transduction pathways, the tga1 gene encoding a G subunit of Trichoderma atroviride P1 was analysed. A tga1 mutant showed continuous sporulation and elevated internal steady-state cAMP levels. tga1 gene deletion resulted in a complete loss of mycoparasitic overgrowth and lysis of Rhizoctonia solani, Botrytis cinerea, and Sclerotinia sclerotiorum during direct confrontation, although infection structure formation was unaVected. The reduced mycoparasitic abilities were reXected by strongly decreased chitinase activities and reduced nag1 and ech42 gene transcription. Furthermore, production of 6-pentyl--pyrone and of metabolites with sesquiterpene structure was reduced in the tga1 mutant. Regardless of these deWciencies, the mutant displayed an enhanced growth inhibition of the host fungi by over-producing other low molecular weight antifungal metabolites, suggesting opposite roles of Tga1 in regulating the biosynthesis of diVerent antifungal substances in T. atroviride.