Marketing Consumer Durables in Mature Product Categories - Do Innovators Matter?

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Kaya ◽  
Paul Steffens ◽  
Sönke Albers ◽  
Dennis Proppe
2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Harald Hruschka

AbstractWe analyze market baskets of individual households in two consumer durables categories (music, computer related products) by the multivariate logit (MVL) model, its finite mixture extension (FM-MVL) and the conditional restricted Boltzmann machine (CRBM). The CRBM attains a vastly better out-of-sample performance than MVL and FM-MVL models. Based on simulation-based likelihood ratio tests we prefer the CRBM to the FM-MVL model. To interpret hidden variables of conditional Boltzmann machines we look at their average probability differences between purchase and non-purchases of any sub-category across all baskets. To measure interdependences we compute cross effects between sub-categories for the best performing FM-MVL model and CRBM. In both product categories the CRBM indicates more or higher positive cross effects than the FM-MVL model. Finally, we suggest appropriate future research based on larger and more detailed data sets.


2000 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajesh K. Chandy ◽  
Gerard J. Tellis

A common perception in the field of innovation is that large, incumbent firms rarely introduce radical product innovations. Such firms tend to solidify their market positions with relatively incremental innovations. They may even turn away entrepreneurs who come up with radical innovations, though they themselves had such entrepreneurial roots. As a result, radical innovations tend to come from small firms, the outsiders. This thesis, which we term the “incumbent's curse,” is commonly accepted in academic and popular accounts of radical innovation. This topic is important, because radical product innovation is an engine of economic growth that has created entire industries and brought down giants while catapulting small firms to market leadership. Yet a review of the literature suggests that the evidence for the incumbent's curse is based on anecdotes and scattered case studies of highly specialized innovations. It is not clear if it applies widely across several product categories. The authors reexamine the incumbent's curse using a historical analysis of a relatively large number of radical innovations in the consumer durables and office products categories. In particular, the authors seek to answer the following questions: (1) How prevalent is this phenomenon? What percentage of radical innovations do incumbents versus nonincumbents introduce? What percentage of radical innovations do small firms versus large firms introduce? (2) Is the phenomenon a curse that invariably afflicts large incumbents in current industries? Is it driven by incumbency or size? and (3) How consistent is the phenomenon? Has the increasing size and complexity of firms over time accentuated it? Does it vary across national boundaries? Results from the study suggest that conventional wisdom about the incumbent's curse may not always be valid.


Author(s):  
Peter Scott

By 1939 rising living standards provided access to an array of durable goods that many people regarded as necessities, but would have been beyond the dreams of their parents twenty-five years earlier. Rising real wages, falling fertility rates, and an expansion and liberalization of consumer credit, collectively made affordable goods that cost several weeks’, months’, or (in the case of housing) years’ income. This chapter examines these trends and then discusses their impacts on household demand for durable goods. For most durables, demand is shown to have risen substantially faster than incomes, producing a major rise in their share of total consumer expenditure. This was partly driven by technological improvements, though successful marketing (both of the goods and the consumer credit that made them affordable) also played a key role.


Author(s):  
Dengfeng Yan ◽  
Jaideep Sengupta

Abstract This research seeks to examine, first, whether and why consumers perceive divisible versus indivisible numbers differently and, second, how such divergent perceptions influence consumer preferences for marketer-created entities associated with divisible versus indivisible numbers. Integrating insights from two different literatures—numerical cognition and loneliness—we propose and find that numbers perceived to be divisible (vs. indivisible) are viewed as having more “connections” and are therefore deemed to be less lonely. Building on these findings and the literature on compensatory consumption, we then propose and demonstrate that a temporary feeling of loneliness increases participants’ relative preference for various targets—products, attributes, and prices—associated with divisible (vs. indivisible) numbers, which are perceived to be relatively more connected and less lonely. It merits mention that our findings are triangulated across a wide variety of numbers, different product categories, and multiple operationalizations of loneliness.


Resources ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 72
Author(s):  
Gabriela Jarrín Jácome ◽  
María Fernanda Godoy León ◽  
Rodrigo A. F. Alvarenga ◽  
Jo Dewulf

Aluminium is a metal of high economic importance for the European Union (EU), presenting unique properties (e.g., light weight and high corrosion resistance) and with applications in important sectors (e.g., transportation, construction and packaging). It is also known for its high recyclability potential, but relevant losses occur in its life cycle, compromising the amount of aluminium available for secondary production. A novel methodology that allows the identification of these losses and their impact on the aluminium flows in society is the MaTrace model. The objective of this article is to perform a dMFA of the secondary production of aluminium in the EU technosphere using the modified version of MaTrace, in order to estimate flows of the metal embedded in 12 product categories. Twelve scenarios were built in order to assess the impact of changes in policies, demand and technology. The flows were forecasted for a period of 25 years, starting in 2018. The results of the baseline scenario show that after 25 years, 24% of the initial material remains in use, 4% is hoarded by users, 10% has been exported and 61% has been physically lost. The main contributor to the losses is the non-selective collection of end-of-life products. The results of the different scenarios show that by increasing the collection-to-recycling rates of the 12 product categories, the aluminium that stays in use increase up to 32.8%, reaffirming that one way to keep the material in use is to improve the collection-to-recycling schemes in the EU.


2021 ◽  
pp. 0887302X2199826
Author(s):  
Muzhen Li ◽  
Li Zhao

Nowadays, more fashion companies have started to adopt various sustainability practices and communicate these practices through their annual public CSR reports. In this study, we aim to provide a holistic perspective of fashion companies’ sustainable development and investigate the sustainability practices of global fashion companies. A total of 181 CSR reports from 29 fashion companies were collected. A Dictionary approach text classification method, combined with Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a computer-assisted topic modeling algorithm, was implemented to detect and summarize the themes and keywords of detailed practices disclosed in CSR reports. The findings identified 12 main sustainability practices themes based on the triple bottom line theory and the moral responsibility of corporate sustainability theory. In general, waste management and human rights are the most frequently mentioned themes. The findings also suggest that global fashion companies adopted different sustainability strategies based on their product categories and competitive advantages.


2021 ◽  
pp. 000183922110123
Author(s):  
Johnny Boghossian ◽  
Robert J. David

Categories are organized vertically, with product categories nested under larger umbrella categories. Meaning flows from umbrella categories to the categories beneath them, such that the construction of a new umbrella category can significantly reshape the categorical landscape. This paper explores the construction of a new umbrella category and the nesting beneath it of a product category. Specifically, we study the construction of the Quebec terroir products umbrella category and the nesting of the Quebec artisanal cheese product category under this umbrella. Our analysis shows that the construction of umbrella categories can unfold entirely separately from that of product categories and can follow a distinct categorization process. Whereas the construction of product categories may be led by entrepreneurs who make salient distinctive product attributes, the construction of umbrella categories may be led by “macro actors” removed from the market. We found that these macro actors followed a goal-derived categorization process: they first defined abstract goals and ideals for the umbrella category and only subsequently sought to populate it with product categories. Among the macro actors involved, the state played a central role in defining the meaning of the Quebec terroir category and mobilizing other macro actors into the collective project, a finding that suggests an expanded role of the state in category construction. We also found that market intermediaries are important in the nesting of product categories beneath new umbrella categories, notably by projecting identities onto producers consistent with the goals of the umbrella category. We draw on these findings to develop a process model of umbrella category construction and product category nesting.


Economica ◽  
1962 ◽  
Vol 29 (116) ◽  
pp. 425
Author(s):  
Franklin M. Fisher ◽  
J. S. Cramer
Keyword(s):  

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