Diffusion Of New Products Research Articles

Discover opinion leader in online social network using firefly algorithm

Nowadays, with the widespread access to web 2.0, the social network plays an unbelievable role in knowledge sharing and diffusion of new products. People can share their views and can visit other's opinion about the particular material, news, products, artifacts and, trends, etc. anywhere, anytime, and anywhere. An Opinion leader is a critical person who can change, modify and transform other's view by their knowledge and proficiency. In this article, an innovative approach is proposed to discover the top-N local and global opinion leader within the community and social network respectively. Initially, we identified the community structure within the social network using the modified Louvain method and next identified the opinion leader using a modified firefly algorithm in each community. We also determined the global opinion leader within the same social network using the same firefly algorithm. The proposed approach is exceptionally supportive to expert and intelligent system because it competently discovered the local optimum concurrently in each subgroup of the social network. All the users can update its attractiveness value without any supposition, and as soon as the distance among the user's increases, the other users can automatically create another subgroup in the network and form the local community. In addition, as the population size in the network increases, the entire users measure their prominence simultaneously. Therefore, there is no consequence on computational time and accuracy of the algorithm. Thus, the proposed algorithm is superlative suitable for discovering the opinion leader in the local community and globally in the social network. For legalized the proposed approach, we implemented our proposed method on synthesized as well as on real dataset. Finally, we concluded that both the recommended procedures are much better concerning the accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score with the widely used standard Social Network Analysis (SNA) measures.

Consumer preferences for outdoor sporting equipment made of bio-based plastics: Results of a choice-based-conjoint experiment in Germany

Within sports industry a lot of plastic is used. A rapid diffusion of new products causes a lot of plastic waste and substantial environmental problems, which could be reduced in part through the use of bio-based plastics produced from renewable biomass raw materials. Consumer interest in bio-based plastics is currently limited by the small range of bio-based plastic products, a lack of experience with bio-based plastics and high prices. In this study the preferred attributes of a bio-based plastic drink bottle for bicycles and a running shoe with a bio-based sole were identified using a choice-based-conjoint analysis (CBC). Members of a German online panel were surveyed in November 2014. The analysis of seven attributes for both of the products revealed that origin of the raw materials was the most important factor, with respondents having a clear preference for the use of raw materials cultivated in Germany. Respondents also preferred products containing a high percentage of bio-based plastic, products associated with a large reduction of CO2-emissions and products not involving the use of plastic softeners. A general interest in the bio-based sample products could be identified, but the respondents rejected a high price premium. The importance of domestically cultivated raw materials is consistent with findings of previous studies investigating primarily foodstuff. The insights of this study could form the basis of a promising strategy to promote consumer products made of bio-based plastic.

New trends in the system regulating the market of bank services

The severity of the last financial crisis for the European financial markets, the economy, and society makes the scientists and financial analysts start to seek answers with great openness not only to the question of how to reduce its negative effects in the future, but also of how the system regulating financial institutions will look like in the future. The article discusses three options of the positions on the future regulatory tendencies: theoretical alternative, option presented in reports and expert studies, and the version arising from observations of the current practices of functioning of the European banks. The aim of the article is to confront the views on the future trends in the regulation of the banking sector from theoretical, consulting point of view, and the view formulated on the basis of evalua-tion of banking practices.

The Role of Demand in Fostering Product vs Process Innovation: A Model and an Empirical Test

While the extant innovation literature has provided extensive evidence of the so-called demand-pull effect, the possible diverse impact of demand evolution on product vs process innovation activities has not been yet investigated. This paper develops a formal model predicting a larger inducing impact of past sales in fostering product rather than process innovation. This prediction is then tested through a dynamic microeconometric model, controlling for R&D persistence, sample selection, observed and unobservable individual firm effects and time and sectoral peculiarities. Results are consistent with the model and suggest that an expansionary economic policy may benefit the diffusion of new products or even the emergence of entire new sectors.

Diffusion of New Products with Recovering Consumers

We consider the diffusion of new products in the discrete Bass-SIR model, in which consumers who adopt the product can later “recover” and stop influencing their peers to adopt the product. To gain insight into the effect of the social network structure on the diffusion, we focus on two extreme cases. In the “most-connected” configuration, where all consumers are interconnected (complete network), averaging over all consumers leads to an aggregate model, which combines the Bass model for diffusion of new products with the SIR model for epidemics. In the “least-connected” configuration, where consumers are arranged in a circle and each consumer can be influenced only by the neighbor to the left (one-sided 1D network), averaging over all consumers leads to a different aggregate model which is linear and can be solved explicitly. We conjecture that for any other network, the diffusion is bounded from below and from above by that on a one-sided 1D network and on a complete network, respectively. When consumer...

The Role of Demand in Fostering Product vs Process Innovation: A Model and an Empirical Test

While the extant innovation literature has provided extensive evidence of the so-called demand-pull effect, the possible diverse impact of demand evolution on product vs process innovation activities has not been yet investigated. This paper develops a formal model predicting a larger inducing impact of past sales in fostering product rather than process innovation. This prediction is then tested through a dynamic microeconometric model, controlling for R&D persistence, sample selection, observed and unobservable individual firm effects and time and sectoral peculiarities. Results are consistent with the model and suggest that an expansionary economic policy may benefit the diffusion of new products or even the emergence of entire new sectors.

Bass-SIR model for diffusion of new products in social networks.

We consider the diffusion of new products in social networks, where consumers who adopt the product can later "recover" and stop influencing others to adopt the product. We show that the diffusion is not described by the susceptible-infected-recovered (SIR) model, but rather by a new model, the Bass-SIR model, which combines the Bass model for diffusion of new products with the SIR model for epidemics. The phase transition of consumers from nonadopters to adopters is described by a nonstandard Kolmogorov-Johnson-Mehl-Avrami model, in which clusters growth is limited by adopters' recovery. Therefore, diffusion in the Bass-SIR model only depends on the local structure of the social network, but not on the average distance between consumers. Consequently, unlike the SIR model, a small-worlds structure has a negligible effect on the diffusion. Moreover, unlike the SIR model, there is no threshold value above which the diffusion will peter out. Surprisingly, diffusion on scale-free networks is nearly identical to that on Cartesian ones.

Forest Products Markets under Change: Review and Research Implications

In terms of global forest product market developments, the twenty-first century has been in many ways very different from the twentieth century—striking structural changes have taken place. The global forest sector can be interpreted to be in a phase of creative destruction—an era characterized by a major decline of a number of established products and businesses, and simultaneous emergence of new products and businesses. The forest product research field appears to be lacking the tools for formally assessing the significance and extent of the changing production and consumption patterns. That is, the mainstream of quantitative forest product market research has relied to a large extent on forest sector modelling, focusing on questions related to the impacts of policies, sufficiency of wood resources, trends in the production of primary wood products, and international competitiveness. In doing so, they have paid less emphasis on some of the equally important questions, such as value added development, employment issues, structural changes, the diffusion of new products and services, and the realistic contribution of the forest-based sector to the global sustainability challenges. When considering the importance of global forest product markets to the economy, employment and forests, and the changes taking place in the markets, the scale of research on forest product markets is alarmingly low. This review clearly points to a need to significantly increase the volume of academic research and education on the global and regional forest-based product markets.

Forecasting Life Cycles with Exponential Smoothing

We introduce an exponential smoothing model with a life-cycle trend. The trend in this model follows the density of a tilted-Gompertz distribution. When the model is used to describe a new-product diffusion, a draw from this distribution can be interpreted as a consumer's adoption time. Due to its tilting parameter, this distribution is flexible and capable of describing a wide range of shapes, including right-skewed, nearly symmetric, and left-skewed life cycles. Our model leads to new behavioral interpretations about the forces of imitation and innovation that may explain why a diffusion is skewed. The smoothing equations in the model allow its parameters to be time-varying. Consequently, the model can react to local changes in the environment. In two empirical studies, one on new-product adoptions and the other on search interest in social networks, we find that our model performs well on in-sample fitting and out-of-sample forecasting, when compared to two other leading diffusion models: the Bass and gamma/shifted-Gompertz models.

Web 2.0 as a new channel for innovation diffusion: The case study of renewable energy products

Nowadays, social web and social media are considered as new communication’ channels that enable the diffusion of new products and innovations, such as: renewable energy products. In addition, renewable energies become the new alternative source of energy that insures environmental benefits, economic returns and social welfare.Hence, we will focus in this study on the impact of the use of web 2.0 and social networks in the diffusion of renewable energy products.

The Diffusion of Legal Innovation A Mathematical Modeling Approach

Do countries adopt legal norms due to independent, top-down processes, or, do laws spread among nations in a manner which resembles the diffusion of new products and innovations in a social network? We empirically examine this question by employing an influential mathematical model frequently used for analyzing the diffusion of innovations (the Bass model). Our findings indicate that more often than not, the temporal diffusion of legal rules displays a good fit to the Bass model, and suggest that this model can serve as a new methodological tool for studying the diffusion of laws. Applying the Bass model to legal diffusion allows to quantify the influence countries exert on each other in the adoption of specific rules, provides a metric for comparing diffusion across various legal branches, allows to tentatively predict the ongoing spread of specific rules, and sheds light on legal debates in different fields.

An examination of NPD models in the context of business models

Most prior new product diffusion (NPD) models do not specifically consider the role of the business model in the process. However, the context of NPD in today's market has been changed dramatically by the introduction of new business models. Through reinterpretation and extension, this paper empirically examines the feasibility of applying Bass-type NPD models to products that are commercialized by different business models. More specifically, the results and analysis of this study consider the subscription business model for service products, the freemium business model for digital products, and a pre-paid and post-paid business model that is widely used by mobile network providers. The paper offers new insights derived from implementing the models in real-life cases. It also highlights three themes for future research.

The impact of dual-market on supply chain configuration for new products

Given a firm’s supply chain network, the key objective of supply chain configuration (SCC) is to determine a subset of supply chain partners to be involved in development, sourcing, production, distribution and support of a new product at the highest level of efficiency and expected responsiveness. Current literature on SCC realises the importance of considering the demand dynamics associated with the new product diffusion (NPD). However, these studies assume one-segment market for new products, a single homogenous consumer segment. Recent research in marketing indicates that such simplification might be fatal because a diverse and significant number of product categories may experience a dual-market structure, namely early and main markets, and generate a different demand dynamics. The objectives of this study are to: (i) develop a hybrid optimisation model, capturing both SCC decisions and the demand dynamics of dual-market NPD process; (ii) based on real-world data for a host of electronic product categories, various SCC networks and NPD demand dynamics, examine the new integrated optimisation model under one- and two-segment market; and (iii) present relevant managerial implications and guidelines for supply chain and marketing managers. Our extensive comparative computational experiment with 26 categories of consumer electronic products show that on average the relative net profit may improve significantly, when the market is considered as two-segment.

Empirical study of “double threshold” modified model on new product diffusion

The innovations actually diffuse among social network nowadays. Individual heterogeneity, interactions between individuals and network topology influence a lot. We established a “double threshold” modified model and took the number of neighbors, neighbors' adoption and the cost-benefit parameters as crucial influencing factors. The diffusion of DaLingTong (CDMA450) products in MeiShan city of SiChuan province during 2004 to 2007 has been used to verity the model on Matlab. The validation results fit the actual diffusion pattern of DaLingTong (CDMA450) products very well. The results indicate that there exists a “tipping point (threshold)” in the process of innovation diffusion. If the initial adoption quantity is larger than the tipping point, then the product will spread to a large portion of people, otherwise is will collapse to zero. The model can effectively predict the diffusion of new products, and can influence the diffusion process by changing the value of the parameters.

Regional Flaps in Head and Neck Reconstruction: A Reappraisal

Starting from our experience with 45 consecutive cases of regional pedicled flaps, we have underlined the effectiveness and reliability of a variety of flaps. The marketing laws as applied to surgical innovations are reviewed to help in the understanding of why regional flaps are regaining wide popularity in head and neck reconstruction. From January 2009 to January 2014, 45 regional flaps were harvested at San Paolo Hospital to reconstruct head and neck defects. These included 35 pectoralis major muscular and myocutaneous flaps, 4 lower trapezius island or pedicled flaps, 3 supraclavicular flaps, 2 latissimus dorsi pedicled flaps, and 1 fasciocutaneous temporal flap. The basic literature of marketing regarding the diffusion of new products was also reviewed. Two myocutaneous pectoralis major flaps were complicated by necrosis of the cutaneous paddle (one complete and one partial). No complete loss of any of the 45 flaps was observed. At 6 months of follow-up, 2 patients had died of multiple organ failure after prolonged sepsis. The 43 remaining patients had acceptable morphologic and functional results. Regional and free flaps appear to compete in many cases for the same indications. From the results of the present case series, regional flaps can be considered reliable reconstructive choices that are less expensive than their free flap alternatives. The "resurrection" of regional flaps can be partially justified by the changes in the global economy and the required adaptation of developed and developing countries.

User Innovation in Techniques: A Case Study Analysis in the Field of Medical Devices

Users are the primary source of new techniques, i.e. systematic activities by which a complex task is accomplished. Even though user‐generated techniques are a pervasive phenomenon which can be observed in many different contexts, existing research on user innovation has focused on product and service innovations. We focus on this important area of user innovation by studying four cases in the field of medical devices to analyse the processes by which users generate and diffuse new techniques as well as the interdependencies between user‐generated techniques and subsequent changes to product use and product innovation. Our findings suggest that user innovation in techniques triggers product innovation by users and manufacturers. Therefore, users' contributions to total innovation output are much higher than previously considered. Additionally, the diffusion of techniques differs significantly from the diffusion of new products. It can only be achieved with the involvement of diffusion agents and their interpersonal interaction and joint performance of the technique with possible adopters. As the diffusion of a technique is often a prerequisite for the diffusion of any related product, companies are forced to re‐think their marketing strategies.

The Relevance of Network Structure for the Diffusion of New Products with Network Externalities: An Agent Based Simulation

Recent studies suggest that diffusion patterns are affected by different types of underlying social networks (Garcia, Zhao and Calatone (2003), Valente (1995)). Especially small world networks were found to be superior with respect to diffusion speed compared to lattice or random networks (Cowan and Jonard (2004), Delre, Jager and Janssen (2005), Alkemade and Castaldi (2005)). These past studies, however, analyzed the effects on diffusion only with a very limited set of parameters. The aim of this paper is to systematically vary model parameters within certain ranges and to test the performance of different underlying network structures.

Competitive diffusion of new prescription drugs: The role of pharmaceutical marketing investment

We investigate the impact of marketing interventions on the diffusion of new products in a competitive setting. We develop a family of trial–repeat diffusion models to identify the longitudinal effects of marketing efforts, and complement this with a cross-sectional analysis to identify the between-drug effects. We believe that we are the first to consider both longitudinal and cross-sectional marketing effects in a trial–repeat diffusion context. The models are calibrated on 34 drugs in three therapeutic categories using monthly data. Our longitudinal analyses demonstrate that the trial rate responds positively to increases in own marketing expenditures but is affected negatively by competitors' expenditures. We show how these within-drug analyses provide opportunities for accelerating the diffusion process by reallocating marketing expenditures over time. The cross-sectional analyses demonstrate that pharmaceutical marketing has both an informative and a persuasive influence on the diffusion of new drugs. We find that direct-to-consumer advertising does not affect the trial nor repeat rates during the first months after introduction. We illustrate the managerial relevance of our results and find that a reallocation of marketing budgets does not alter the saturation level, but can help in attaining this level faster. We show that this has a great effect on sales, market share and ROI.

Optimal inventory policies for successive generations of a high technology product

In today's era of globalization, periodically new products with better value and added features are introduced into the market. The rapid technological breakthroughs are creating significant risks of obsolescence at the product level. It creates enormous challenges to coordinate between technology management and inventory control policies. Due to the dynamic nature of the market, it becomes essential to integrate technological substitution along with diffusion of new products while formulating economic ordering policies for technological products. The literature of estimating and forecasting innovation diffusion patterns for technology product is fairly rich. In recent years these models were applied extensively to derive economic order policies under different economic situations. Unfortunately study on impact of technology substitution on economic order policies is still scarce. The proposed model acknowledged the relationship between substitution rates of product categories and the inventory policies. In this paper an attempt has been made to generate economic inventory policies for technology products under the condition of its diminishing demand. The model is based on the assumption that technological advancements do not essentially imply that existing generation products will be withdrawn from the market immediately. The results are very encouraging and the findings are consistent with the idea that optimal EOQ policies are highly receptive towards the dynamics of the product substitutions and hence it is imperative to identify the trend. A simple solution procedure in the form of algorithm is presented to determine the optimal cycle time and optimal order quantity using the cost function.

An Inventory Decision Model When Demand Follows Innovation Diffusion Process under Effect of Technological Substitution

The concept of marketing literature, especially innovation diffusion concept, plays a pivotal role in developing EOQ models in the field of inventory management. The integration of marketing parameters, especially the idea of diffusion of new products with the inventory models, makes the models more realistic which is most essential while building the economic ordering policies of the products. Also, because of rapid technological development, the diffusion of technology can also be viewed as an evolutionary process of replacement of an old technology by a new one. Therefore, the effect of technological substitution along with the diffusion of new products must be taken into account while formulating economic ordering policies in an inventory model. In this paper, a mathematical model has been developed for obtaining the Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) in which the demand of the product is assumed to follow an innovation diffusion process as proposed by Fourt and WoodLock (1960). The idea of effect of technological substitution of products has been incorporated in the demand model to make the economic ordering policies more realistic. A numerical example with sensitivity analysis of the optimal solution with respect to different parameters of the system is performed to illustrate the effectiveness of the model.