On Competitive Strategy from OEM to OBM - A Case Study on a Sealing Parts Company in Taiwan

As the market becomes more globalized and the international situation continues to undergo complex changes, the income and profits of the OEM business are getting thinner and smaller. In such circumstances, many companies have initiated OBM business, causing fierce brand competition in the market. This study took a sealing parts company in Taiwan as the subject to explore how the company operates smoothly to maximize profits with both OEM and OBM business, determines the proper business strategy according to different customer groups and market segments, distributes customer orders and develops business strategy when OEM business conflicts with OBM business, so as to avoid customer complaints and reduce the risk of losing orders. This study first discussed the brand positioning of the subject company and brand competitions in the industry. Next, through qualitative interviews, it analyzed the market segmentation under the competition among international brands and the impacts of COVID-19 on the development of company strategy.

EXPRESS: Prominent Retailer and Intra-brand Competition

Online retail search traffic is often concentrated at a “prominent” retailer for a product. The authors unpack the ramification of this pattern on pricing, profit, and consumer welfare in an intra-brand setting. Prominence denotes a larger number of heterogenous search cost consumers starting their search at the prominent retailer than at any other retailer. This analyses show that search traffic concentration can intensify intra-brand competition, can lower average prices of all retailers, and can improve consumer welfare. Interestingly, the prominent retailer's incremental traffic advantage can increase or reduce its own profit; the authors denote these as the “blessing” and “curse” of prominence respectively. The authors extend their analysis to a setting where consumers consider searching only amongst those retailers of whom they are individually aware of; the prominent retailer is included in all these individual awareness sets. The effects on market average prices and welfare carry over, but only below a critical threshold level of the prominent retailer's first-search traffic advantage. Above this threshold, market average prices rise and welfare decreases, making this the region where search concentration warrant scrutiny from policy makers. The authors close with policy remedies, and managerial implications of search concentration.

STORE PROMOTION, MANUFACTURER COMPETITION AND WELFARE

This study evaluates the partial exclusion effects of store promotion. We find that a manufacturer with a better brand name has a higher willingness-to-pay for promotion services offered by retail stores or online platforms. The promotion results in higher sales-weighted average prices (wholesale and retail) and a larger inter-brand price gap. The stores or platforms extract more profits from manufacturers and consumers through the promotion services. The effects on consumer surplus and social welfare depend on whether the promotion alters consumer preferences. If it does, more consumers would be choosing their less-preferred brands because of the larger inter-brand price gap, which would be socially inefficient. If it does not, the promotion may help to correct the price distortion, but the social welfare effect is positive only when the promotion effect is small enough. In both cases, the promotion services reduce the total consumer surplus by softening inter-brand competition.

Study of Factors Influencing on the Brand Availability at Stores in Sri Lankan Cables Firm

In the view of the availability of the selected brand cables at the stores, it is a vital aspect that the decision-makers will have to consider that the product and services of the internal aspects will have to synchronize with the external aspects in order to gain the advantage of the brand, competition as well as the marketing channels. Prime objective of the research is to identify and understand the factors that affect the availability of the selected cables at the stores in Sri Lanka in absolute and relative terms in order to provide effective recommendations to increase the product reachability. The research has been considered at all the stores as well as the distributor who sell the cable products all around the selected region. The participants were taken from the Colombo district, and the sample has been considered as a hundred. The study has been designed in a quantitative manner where the research instrument has taken to collect the data was a structured questionnaire. The research has attained the outcomes as there is a relationship among competitor cable products, brand awareness, intermediaries’ activities with the dependent variable of availability of the selected brand cables at the stores. The researcher has figured out the aspects which could motivate the consumers to make the purchasing decisions with regards to the selected variables of the cable products.

Cross-brand and cross-channel advertising strategies in a dual-channel supply chain

The economic value of private brands and online marketing channel have been widely recognized in literature and practical life. Besides, studies show that advertising, as one of the major factors, can affect consumer attitudes and has significant effects on demand and profit. On the existing basis, this paper analyzes the advertising strategies under competition between a national brand manufacturer and a retailer with private brand, where the national brand can be sold both through a direct channel and a store channel but the retailer brand can be sold only through a store channel. We study the best advertising investment strategies and the balanced profits of the national brand manufacturer and retailer in the disintegrated system and the integrated system. Specially, in the disintegrated system, we discuss the best decision-making issues for national brand manufacturer and retailer in two special cases which there is only have brand competition or channel spillover effects. We discuss the impacts of the spillover effect and brand competition on the chain members and advertising strategies of different channels. In addition, we design a unilateral advertising subsidy contract to coordinate the supply chain. The results in this paper offer structural and quantitative insights into the interplay between the manufacturer and retailer in the dual channel supply chain and can be used as a reference for choosing the optimal advertising strategy.

Intra-brand competition in a differentiated oligopoly

In this paper we consider a differentiated oligopoly with two product varieties that are supplied by two groups of firms. After computing the Cournot solution of the game, we study its sensitivity to different sources of competition, namely the degree of product substitutability and market composition. Market composition can change either via new firms entering one industry or via firms switching production techniques, thus modifying the intensity of intra-brand competition. After studying the welfare consequences of an intensification of competition, we identify the equilibrium market composition when firms are driven by profit considerations. All the results are expressed in terms of the degree of product substitutability and of what we define “weighted relative efficiency” (WRE), which is a parameter combining both firm characteristics and market conditions.