Manufacturer Reputation Research Articles

Enhancing organic milk sales through cumulative power of product – extrinsic cues: empirical evidence from China

PurposeTo examine the impact of manufacturer reputation, retailer reputation, and product price on consumers’ perceived quality and purchasing behavior regarding organic milk.Design/methodology/approachEmploying a 2 × 2 experiment, data were collected from 1,259 consumers in 32 provinces in China.FindingsWhen a low-reputation manufacturer sells products through a high-reputation retailer, it improves consumers’ perception of quality and positively influences their purchasing behavior. Interestingly, setting higher prices for products manufactured by low-reputation companies and selling them through high-reputation retailers did not significantly enhance consumers’ perceived quality and deter their purchasing behavior.Originality/valueThe analysis expands the framework for cue diagnosis. While the existing framework primarily focuses on the influence of cue-type combinations on perceived quality, it does not integrate purchasing behavior into the conceptual framework. This limitation hinders people understanding of the theoretical mechanisms underlying the use of cues in purchasing decisions. This paper address this by gradually introducing variables, such as retailer reputation and product price, into the baseline model, thereby extending this theory. In addition, this paper advances the marketing research literature within the business-to-business-to-consumer context by examining the additive effects of manufacturer reputation, retailer reputation, and product price on consumers’ perception of quality and purchasing behavior.

Research on warranties for different components in an open vertically integrated supply chain

How to set appropriate warranty periods for different components is a common problem for manufacturers who produce end products when pricing. This study investigates a pricing game between a vertically integrated manufacturer and an external end-product manufacturer with the vertically integrated manufacturer supplying the key component of the end product to the external end-product manufacturer and competing with the external end-product manufacturer in the terminal market as a leader. The two manufacturers make decisions on the warranty period for the key component and the end product without the key component respectively under a two-component structure. We assume that customers perceive product quality through warranty periods of different components and brand reputations of the manufacturers. The result shows that the manufacturer with a higher brand reputation has an incentive to offer a longer warranty period. However, due to the impact of corresponding warranty costs, there exist intervals of brand reputation in which the manufacturer provides a shorter warranty period for the key component or the end product without the key component than the competitor even though the brand reputation of this manufacturer is higher. The best choice for the vertically integrated manufacturer is to increase the key component wholesale price but keep the end product sale price unchanged when the brand reputation of the external end-product manufacturer gets stronger. Interestingly, the higher the brand reputation of the external end-product manufacturer, the greater the profit of the vertically integrated manufacturer. Related numerical examples and managerial insights are presented in this paper.

Effect and formulation of ecolabel policy: A perspective of green supply chain decision and coordination.

Ecolabel policy has become an important strategy to encourage the consumption of green products throughout the world, contributing to sustainable development which is an inevitable choice for human society. Considering the manufacturer's reputation, consumer's environmental awareness, and effects of ecolabel certification on product demand, this study proposes several Stankelberg game models containing one manufacturer and one retailer to compare the optimal decisions and the impacts on the green supply chain with/without ecolabel certification, where four different scenarios are investigated in the centralized and decentralized situations. The results indicate that the ecolabel policy only functions below a threshold associated with the consumer's environmental awareness, which is higher in the decentralized situation. On the contrary, the optimal ecolabel standard in the centralized decision-making situation is higher than that in the decentralized ones if maximizing the environmental benefit. For the manufacturer, only when producing products as the ecolabel standard can it get the optimal profit. Finally, a wholesale price contract with the manufacturer's reputation is proposed, which improves the product's green degree and the environmental benefit to the optimal level in a decentralized supply chain.

Product outsourcing policy for a sustainable flexible manufacturing system with reworking and green investment.

Production of defective products is a very general phenomenon. But backorder and shortages occur due to this defective product, and it hampers the manufacturer's reputation along with customer satisfaction. That is why, these outsourced products supply, a portion of required products for in-line production. This study develops a flexible production model that reworks repairable defective products and outsources products to prevent backlogging. A percentage of total in-line production is defective products, which is random, and those defective products are repairable. A green investment helps the reworking process, which has a direct impact on the market demand for products. A classical optimization solves the profit maximization model, and a numerical method proves the global optimal solutions. Sensitivity analysis, managerial insights, and discussions provide the highlights and decision-making strategies for the applicability of this model.

64 Feeding elite equine athletes: Perspectives from high-goal polo and endurance riding competitors

Knowing equine stakeholder feeding practices can better inform research, extension, and education programs. The objective of this exploratory survey was to describe feeding management and activity of horses performing at elite levels in polo and endurance riding. High-goal polo participants were targeted for survey distribution through a polo magazine publication during the winter of 2018. A researcher recruited endurance riders to participate at an American Endurance Ride Conference sanctioned event held in Florida during March 2018. Participants were contacted 3 times to complete a questionnaire to describe horse management practices, dietary information, and preferences with regards to equine nutrition. Eight of 11 (72.7%) polo players and 9 of 22 (40.9%) endurance riders completed the survey. Seventy-six percent of barns (13/17) were located in Florida at the time of survey completion. To compare disciplines, continuous data were analyzed using t -test and categorical data using a Mann-Whitney U-Test. Polo ponies were fed alfalfa hay, with 50% (4/8) of respondents predominately feeding alfalfa hay, and the remaining feeding alfalfa/grass hay mixtures. Endurance horses were more likely ( P = 0.056) to have ad libitum access (7/9) to forage than polo ponies (2/8), likely because most endurance horses were housed on pasture (6/9). For hay, nutritional value was extremely important in forage selection decisions for both polo and endurance sports. Polo respondents were more likely to value ( P = 0.018) forage color and smell than endurance participants. All respondents reported feeding their horses grain or concentrate, a typical recommendation for feeding horses with elevated nutrient requirements due to increased workload. Nutritional value was the most important factor for selection of grain or concentrate, followed by feed availability, veterinarian or nutritionist recommendation, feed manufacturer reputation, cost, or industry professional recommendation, in order of preference. Polo ponies worked an average of 51 ± 24 min/d (STD DEV) 6 times per week. Endurance horses worked longer (115 ± 52 min/d, P = 0.007) but less frequently (4 times per week, P = 0.001) than polo ponies. Polo ponies tended to compete more frequently (3.9 ± 2.3 times per month, P = 0.101) than endurance horses (1.8 ± 0.7). During a race, endurance horses were fed more frequently and offered different feeds than the typical ration. These data indicate feeding management preferences are specific to athletic activities. Widespread use of this questionnaire could help target equine educational programs to the needs of the industry.

Implementation of food safety management systems that meets ISO 22000:2018 and HACCP: A case study of capsule biotechnology products of chaga mushroom.

In our study, a food safety management system was developed for a chaga mushroom biotechnology product manufacturer, with the purpose of meeting the quality demands of customers and enhancing the manufacturer's reputation. The study focused on identifying the potentially significant hazards present at each stage of the production process for chaga mushroom capsule products, and on ensuring that the biotechnology company in question has fully implemented ISO22000:2018 and the HACCP methodology. The results indicate that, in the 1 year following the implementation of ISO 22000:2018, there was a statistically significant drop (P <0.05) in the coliforms level of the tested biotechnology product samples that started in the ninth month following implementation. The rapid screening of mycotoxin, heavy metal, and pesticide residue levels also increased monitoring intensity and strengthened the periodic rotation plan, enabling control over potential problems relating to raw materials and ensuring product quality. This finding reveals the importance and necessity of rapid screening for small- and medium-sized food industry enterprises. Furthermore, 1 year after the system's implementation, the defect rate for chaga products was also observed to have declined, and the number of process flow anomalies requiring correction was also found to have decreased significantly (P <0.05), indicating that safety and quality levels were improving and stabilizing. If implemented over a longer period of time, the food safety management system's benefits would stand out even more, and significant improvements would be observed for more monitored items. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: Few studies have touched on food safety management systems (FSMSs) developed for capsule health food products. The enterprise examined in this study had actively worked to improve its quality system and meet its customers' needs through the implementation of the FSMSs.

Investigating Buyer’s Perceptions and Purchase Decisions for New Product Development: A Case of Feed Additive from Popped Rice

The aim of the study is to develop product innovation based on Thai rice. This research intends to further develop popped rice into zinc oxide-doped activated carbon for animal feed additive, to study buyer’s perceptions and purchase decisions for new product development. The study used the mixed methodological approach. The first step began with idea generation to identify alternative advantage of the new product. The ideas of assessment phase led to a review of important criteria which showed that new product development for animal feed additive had the highest weighted score. The qualitative research was conducted through in-depth personal interviews with 10 participants working in the animal feed industry. The quantitative research was conducted through the questionnaire survey with 72 respondents working in swine farms, deciding the products bought for animal feeds. The combined results revealed that zinc oxide-doped activated carbon made from popped rice can potentially penetrate the feed additive market. However, the producer needs solid proof or certification in relation to the product’s features and its efficiency with the competitive price. The results suggested that buyers of animal feed additive with the greater concern for price, brand, and reputation of manufacturer will lead to less chance for customers to consider buying the new product of zinc oxide-doped activated carbon from popped rice for animal feed additive. Thus, the developer may need to create a reputation by getting product qualification certificate.

Factors Influencing Consumers Buying Intentions Towards Electric Cars: The Arab Customers’ Perspective

The main objective of the study is to examine the impact factors on consumer&amp;rsquo;s intention towards purchasing hybrid cars from Arab Buyers perspective. Data were collected from a sample of 200 customers in Amman Capital. The study findings are analyzed by IBM SPSS (v22). After testing the five hypotheses using various techniques, it was found that there is a positive impact of price, Reputation of manufacturer, Fuel economy on purchase intention. It also indicates that there is a negative impact of brand image and safety rating on customer intention towards purchasing electric cars. According to these results, the study suggested several recommendations to sales &amp;amp; marketing managers of electric &amp;amp; hybrid cars to improve buyer intentions by take in consideration the price and fuel economy factors and reinforcement the reputation of manufacturer in their marketing activities.

Decentralized Identifiers and Verifiable Credentials for Smartphone Anticounterfeiting and Decentralized IMEI Database

The smartphone industry is lucrative for device counterfeiting with over 1.5 billion devices sold annually in the last three years. In 2017, it is estimated that there were around 184 million counterfeit devices, valued at 45.3 billion EUR, 12.9% of total sales. Beyond its economic impact, smartphone counterfeiting affects various aspects of user security and privacy, harms manufacturer reputation, and degrades service quality. Furthermore, since smartphone devices are attached to different mobile networks globally, challenges arise on how devices’ identities are maintained and verified and how the supply chain actors can access the device identity throughout its life cycle with less control from third parties. Decentralized identifiers (DIDs) and verifiable claims implemented on a distributed ledger technology present a powerful candidate to address this challenge. Thanks to Blockchain’s use of cryptographic identifiers, record immutability, and provenance, and the features provided by the DIDs and verifiable claims that enable identity management decentralization, portability, and discoverability. This article proposes a smartphone anticounterfeiting system based on an integrated approach of the technologies mentioned above. The proposed system eliminates the need for a central authority and provides the features of identity creation, transfer of ownership, and the capability of fast and secure reporting of stolen devices.

Financial Incentives to Avoid Major Quality Problems in a Supply Chain

Manufacturers who outsource components incur risks as well as benefits. If the supplied product has a major quality defect, the adverse effect on the manufacturer's reputation reduces its market share. This paper presents a discrete-time model of a buyer who collaborates with a sole supplier to avoid quality problems by paying a higher per-unit purchase price to the supplier and/or paying the supplier a lump sum contingent on the absence of a major quality defect. Analytical results include an optimal risk-posture policy for which the buyer should use only one of these financial incentives or the other, and computational results provide insights about the relationship of that optimal policy to various parameters.

DOES THE SUPPLIER AFFECTS CONSUMERS’ PRODUCT PERFORMANCE EXPECTATIONS? AN ANALYSIS ABOUT THE INNOVATIVENESS PERCEPTION

The extent that a firm is perceived as innovative is crucial for competitiveness. Thus, companies constantly try to build a strong reputation for product innovation. One way to increase this reputation is to collaborate with highly reputed partners. In this respect, this study investigates ingredient branding alliances based on responsibility attributions theory. In particular, we show that there are various combinations of supplier and manufacturer reputation, but only one combination that finally leads to the desired increased intention to buy the joint offering. This particular combination is a collaboration where a highly reputed supplier promotes the offering of a manufacturer with a low reputation. This study makes a contribution to a better understanding of ingredient branding potential for increasing the innovativeness of manufacturers.

Analisis Faktor-Faktor yang Mempengaruhi Pilihan Jenis Minuman pada Situasi Konsumsi Hang-Out dan Celebration

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Soft-drink market in Indonesia continuously grows in the last ten years; however the growth is varied among soft-drink categories in different years. This encourages practitioners in soft-drink industry to understand what factors influencing the consumer when they buy soft-drink to consume, as this will be beneficial to formulate an effective marketing strategy. This research elaborates factors that are predicted as influencer for consumer in choosing soft-drink to buy and consume during hang-out and celebration situation. From 2&lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt;6&lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt; factors of product attributes, consumer characteristics, social, and environmental, there are 11 factors which significantly influence respondent decision to choose&lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt; &lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt;any type of soft-drink. These are: age, education, household expenditure, hang-out frequency, product availability, taste, aroma, product freshness, manufacturer reputation, and peer’s choice of drink. Bottled water, carbonated soft-drink, and ready to drink tea are the most chosen soft-drink categories by respondent.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;em&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

Regulatory and cost barriers are likely to limit biosimilar development and expected savings in the near future.

In March 2010 Congress established an abbreviated Food and Drug Administration approval pathway for biosimilars-drugs that are very similar but not identical to a reference biological product and cost less. Because bringing biosimilars to the market currently requires large investments of money, fewer biosimilars are expected to enter the biologics market than has been the case with generic drugs entering the small-molecule drug market. Additionally, given the high regulatory hurdles to obtaining interchangeability-which would allow pharmacists to substitute a biosimilar for its reference product, subject to evolving state substitution laws-most biosimilars will likely compete as therapeutic alternatives instead of as therapeutic equivalents. In other words, biosimilars will need to compete with their reference product on the basis of quality; price; and manufacturer's reputation with physicians, insurers, and patient groups. Biosimilars also will face dynamic competition from new biologics in the same therapeutic class-including "biobetters," which offer incremental improvements on reference products, such as extended duration of action. The prospects for significant cost savings from the use of biosimilars appear to be limited for the next several years, but their use should increase over time because of both demand- and supply-side factors.

Optimal pro-rata warranty decision with consideration of the marketing strategy under insufficient historical reliability data

Warranties play an important role in the market, not only safeguarding the rights and interests of consumers, but also promoting the sales and reputation of manufacturers. Due to their impacts on the market, manufacturers should take their warranty policies into consideration in developing an integrated marketing strategy which can promote a product by simultaneously considering pricing, production, and related post-sale services. Most of the studies regarding the issue of pro-rata warranties (PRW) only focus on cost analysis with the reliability estimation, and few consider how marketing strategies can be integrated in the warranty decision. Moreover, the manufacturer may not have sufficient historical data to estimate the deterioration of a newly developed product, and therefore, the results obtained from analytical models may not be reliable. A Bayesian analysis should be a reasonable approach in order to deal with such a problem for the situation of insufficient historical data because it can effectively assess the deterioration based on experts’ opinions and possibly few relevant data. Accordingly, this paper proposes a Bayesian decision-making model which considers the PRW policy with the pricing and the production strategy. Moreover, in order to deal with the complexity of computation of the proposed model, a heuristic algorithm is also provided, and finally, a practical application case is used to demonstrate its usefulness.

Trademark Recognition Based on Hu Modified Invariant Moments

Trademark represents the quality of the goods and the manufacturer's reputation, which is an important symbol of goods; automatic trademark recognition has a wide range of application prospects in many fields such as e-commerce, advertising and logistics transportation. In target recognition algorithm, the most critical is to extract the target feature. Because of the moment feature has better invariant characteristics; it is widely used in image feature extraction. In this paper we use Hu modified moments and the minimum distance classifier for trademark recognition, the experimental results show that the modified moments have higher recognition rate than the original Hu moments, this method can improve the recognition rate of the target image, it is conducive to trademark recognition.

Approaches for Identifying Consumer Preferences for the Design of Technology Products: A Case Study of Residential Solar Panels

This paper investigates ways to obtain consumer preferences for technology products to help designers identify the key attributes that contribute to a product's market success. A case study of residential photovoltaic panels is performed in the context of the California, USA, market within the 2007–2011 time span. First, interviews are conducted with solar panel installers to gain a better understanding of the solar industry. Second, a revealed preference method is implemented using actual market data and technical specifications to extract preferences. The approach is explored with three machine learning methods: Artificial neural networks (ANN), Random Forest decision trees, and Gradient Boosted regression. Finally, a stated preference self-explicated survey is conducted, and the results using the two methods compared. Three common critical attributes are identified from a pool of 34 technical attributes: power warranty, panel efficiency, and time on market. From the survey, additional nontechnical attributes are identified: panel manufacturer's reputation, name recognition, and aesthetics. The work shows that a combination of revealed and stated preference methods may be valuable for identifying both technical and nontechnical attributes to guide design priorities.

Product Liability versus Reputation

The Tort system and especially Product Liability is a socially costly tool to provide manufacturers with incentives for safety. Recently, it has been argued that reputation could, to a significant extent, constitute a cheaper alternative to Product Liability. Our paper departs from the sometimes overlooked fact that reputation is not for free, but requires to implement market sanctioning mechanisms that are costly for consumers and manufacturers. We show that Product Liability positively affects the functioning of manufacturer's reputation by reducing its costs. Thus, to an important extent, reputation and Product Liability are not substitutes but complements. We also specifically show the effects of different relevant legal policies in Product Liability, and namely that negligence reduces reputational costs more intensely than strict liability, and that legal and Court errors in determining liability interfere with the reputational cost reduction function of Product Liability.

Quality Assurance Testing for Magnetization Quality Assessment of BLDC Motors Used in Compressors

Quality assurance (QA) testing of mass-produced electrical appliances is critical for the reputation of manufacturer since defective units will have a negative impact on safety, reliability, efficiency, and performance of the end product. It has been observed at a brushless dc (BLDC) compressor motor manufacturing facility that improper magnetization of the rotor permanent magnet is one of the leading causes of motor defects. A new technique for postmanufacturing assessment of the magnetization quality of concentrated winding BLDC compressor motors for QA is proposed in this paper. The new method evaluates the data acquired during the test runs performed after motor assembly to observe anomalies in the zero-crossing pattern of the back-EMF voltages for screening motor units with defective magnetization. An experimental study on healthy and defective 250-W BLDC compressor motor units shows that the proposed technique provides sensitive detection of magnetization defects that existing tests were not capable of finding. The proposed algorithm does not require additional hardware for implementation since it can be added to the existing test-run inverter of the QA system as a software algorithm.

The effect of individualism on private brand perception: a cross‐cultural investigation

PurposeThe present study has three aims: to find out whether individualism affects consumers' preference for private versus national brands; to assess the effect of individualism on the perceived importance of brand image dimensions (country‐of origin, packaging design and manufacturer reputation); and to assess the degree of cross‐cultural differences in individualism within a specific country, Israel.Design/methodology/approachA total of 400 private brand customers participated in the study. Participants were students from eight universities and colleges in Israel. Students were carefully chosen to represent diverse cultural groups, based on their mother tongue: 100 students were native speakers of Arabic, 100 native speakers of Russian, 100 native speakers of Amharic and 100 native speakers of Hebrew.FindingsIndividualism predicted the inclination to purchase store brands better than demographic variables such as age, sex and income. Culture affected the importance of country of origin, and moderated the effect of individualism on the importance of manufacturer identity..Originality/valueThe paper documents research that is unique in studying psycho‐behavioral aspects of private brand consumers from the perspective of cultural differences, a venture that has rarely been taken in the past.

Estimation of future breakdowns to determine optimal warranty policies for products with deterioration

Abstract Warranty has been played an important role not only for safeguarding the rights and interests of consumers but also for promoting the sales and reputation of manufacturers, since a good warranty policy signifies the image of high-quality products and thus becomes a powerful weapon for marketing products in increasingly competitive markets. It is obvious that a more thoughtful warranty policy of a product will attract more customers to consume the specific product, and increase the product's market share accordingly. However, an unlimited warranty for monopolizing the market is absolutely unrealistic, since the cost will significantly increase for maintaining such a warranty policy with better offers. In this paper, a Bayesian decision model for determining the optimal warranty policy for repairable products is proposed. The successive failure times of the repairable product are assumed to be drawn from a nonhomogeneous Poisson process. Both the repair costs for restoring the product to full functionality after each breakdown and the potential sales increases due to the specific warranty policy are also considered. Finally, an application case is utilized to demonstrate the feasibility and validity of the proposed approach.