Product Mix Effect Research Articles

Multiproduct Mergers and Quality Competition

We investigate mergers in markets where quality differences between products are central and firms may reposition their product lines by adding or removing products of different qualities following a merger. Such mergers are materially different from those studied in the existing literature. Mergers without synergies may exhibit a product-mix effect which raises consumer surplus, but only when the pre-merger industry structure satisfies certain observable features. Post-merger synergies may lower consumer surplus. The level of, and changes in, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index may give a misleading assessment of how a merger affects consumers. A merger may benefit some outsiders but harm others.

Farm Profit and Productivity - Analytical Study

Farm Profit change over time is first decomposed into a price effect and a quantity effect; the quantity effect is then decomposed into a productivity effect and an activity effect; in turn, the productivity effect is subdivided into a technical efficiency effect and a technical change effect, while the activity effect is divided into a scale effect, resource mix effect and product mix effect. The end result is therefore a measure of six distinct components of profit change. The methodology is used to investigate profit changes for a sample of cereal farms drawn from the Farm Business Survey in India for the period 2007 to 2013. The results of the analysis show an overall decline in profit levels for the period at the average speed of £4400 annually, with the major part of this decline attributable to a negative price effect amounting to £7000 annually on average. However, this was to some degree offset by a positive quantity effect largely driven by the positive contribution of technical change to profit growth, worth £4000 annually on average. The pattern of development and trends in productivity and profitability have been analysed to find whether Indian agriculture meets the requirements of sustainable development. The study is based on the secondary data culled from the publications of the Department of Agriculture and Department of Statistics, Govt. of India. A tremendous development and spectacular growth have been observed in agriculture during the past five decades, 1949–50 to 1999–2000. However, there has not been any spectacular modification in the technology since 1980s, leading to a continuous deceleration in the rates of growth of both production and productivity of most crops in recent years. Because of decline in yield, the economic condition of farmers has deteriorated. On the other side, non-agricultural sector has shown a growth of 6 per cent. This increasing disparity between per capita income of agricultural and non-agricultural sectors is likely to raise social disorder in the farming class. Our study used cost-benefit and econometric analysis to draw difference between productivity and profit components in the agriculture sector.

Will the Global Village Fracture Into Tribes? Recommender Systems and Their Effects on Consumer Fragmentation

Personalization is becoming ubiquitous on the World Wide Web. Such systems use statistical techniques to infer a customer's preferences and recommend content best suited to him (e.g., “Customers who liked this also liked…”). A debate has emerged as to whether personalization has drawbacks. By making the Web hyperspecific to our interests, does it fragment Internet users, reducing shared experiences and narrowing media consumption? We study whether personalization is in fact fragmenting the online population. Surprisingly, it does not appear to do so in our study. Personalization appears to be a tool that helps users widen their interests, which in turn creates commonality with others. This increase in commonality occurs for two reasons, which we term volume and product-mix effects. The volume effect is that consumers simply consume more after personalized recommendations, increasing the chance of having more items in common. The product-mix effect is that, conditional on volume, consumers buy a more similar mix of products after recommendations.This paper was accepted by Sandra Slaughter, information systems.

Non-oriented slack-based decompositions of profit change with an application to Taiwanese banking

A change in profit can originate from the output side and the input side. In the spirit of work by Tone [1] and follows Grifell-Tatjé and Lovell's [2], we propose a non-oriented slacks-based measure (SBM) model to decompose the change in the operating profit into various meaningful components: quantity effect and a price effect. The quantity effect can be decomposed into a productivity effect and an activity effect. The productivity effect is further decomposed into a technical effect and an operating efficiency effect. Both of them include an output side, which will result in a change in revenue and an input side which will result in a change in cost. The activity effect can be decomposed into a product mix effect, a resource mix effect and a scale effect. We illustrate our decompositions to the Taiwanese banking sector during the period 1994–2002 using the average of the base and current prices to evaluate these contributions. We find ignoring input side effects on the decomposition of profit changes would cause misleading results in managerial issues.

The impotence of price controls: Failed attempts to constrain pharmaceutical expenditures in Greece

Background: While the prices of pharmaceuticals are relatively low in Greece, expenditure on them is growing more rapidly than almost anywhere else in the European Union. Objective: To describe and explain the rise in drug expenditures through decomposition of the increase into the contribution of changes in prices, in volumes and a product-mix effect. Methods: The decomposition of the growth in pharmaceutical expenditures in Greece over the period 1991–2006 was conducted using data from the largest social insurance fund (IKA) that covers more than 50% of the population. Results: Real drug spending increased by 285%, despite a 58% decrease in the relative price of pharmaceuticals. The increase in expenditure is mainly attributable to a switch to more innovative, but more expensive, pharmaceuticals, indicated by a product-mix residual of 493% in the decomposition. A rising volume of drugs also plays a role, and this is due to an increase in the number of prescriptions issued per doctor visit, rather than an increase in the number of visits or the population size. Conclusions: Rising pharmaceutical expenditures are strongly determined by physicians’ prescribing behaviour, which is not subject to any monitoring and for which there are no incentives to be cost conscious.

Will the Global Village Fracture into Tribes: Recommender Systems and their Effects on Consumers

Personalization is becoming ubiquitous on the World Wide Web. Such systems use statistical techniques to infer a customer’s preferences and recommend content best suited to him (e.g., “Customers who liked this also liked…”). A debate has emerged as to whether personalization has drawbacks. By making the web hyper-specific to our interests, does it fragment internet users, reducing shared experiences and narrowing media consumption? We study whether personalization is in fact fragmenting the online population. Surprisingly, it does not appear to do so in our study. Personalization appears to be a tool that helps users widen their interests, which in turn creates commonality with others. This increase in commonality occurs for two reasons, which we term volume and product mix effects. The volume effect is that consumers simply consume more after personalized recommendations, increasing the chance of having more items in common. The product mix effect is that, conditional on volume, consumers buy a more similar mix of products after recommendations.

Productivity and farm profit – a microeconomic analysis of the cereal sector in England and Wales1

This article implements the profit change decomposition methodology developed by Grifell-Tatjé and Lovell (1999). Profit change over time is first decomposed into a price effect and a quantity effect; the quantity effect is then decomposed into a productivity effect and an activity effect; in turn, the productivity effect is subdivided into a technical efficiency effect and a technical change effect, while the activity effect is divided into a scale effect, resource mix effect and product mix effect. The end result is therefore a measure of six distinct components of profit change. The methodology is used to investigate profit changes for a sample of cereal farms drawn from the Farm Business Survey in England and Wales for the period 1982 to 2000. The results of the analysis show an overall decline in profit levels for the period at the average speed of £4400 annually, with the major part of this decline attributable to a negative price effect amounting to £7000 annually on average. However, this was to some degree offset by a positive quantity effect largely driven by the positive contribution of technical change to profit growth, worth £4000 annually on average.

Profits and Productivity

In this study we consider the linkage between productivity change and profit change. We develop an analytical framework in which profit change between one period and the next is decomposed into three sources: (i) a productivity change effect (which includes a technical change effect and an operating efficiency effect), (ii) an activity effect (which includes a product mix effect, a resource mix effect, and a scale effect), and (iii) a price effect. We then show how to quantify the contribution of each effect, using only observed prices and quantities of products and resources in the two periods. We illustrate our analytical decomposition of profit change with an empirical application to Spanish banking during the period 1987–1994.

DIRECT LABOUR COST ALLOCATION FOR A MULTI‐PRODUCT HOSPITAL LAUNDRY

Abstract:This paper discusses the application of correlation and regression methods to the analysis of productivity and allocation of costs in a laundry serving several hospitals, with several types of laundry being processed in the same production line. In particular, it is shown how the methods can be used to allocate the direct labour costs between the types of laundry. Analysis of residuals also permits investigation of temporal and product mix effects upon productivity. The regression paradox is discussed in relation to this problem, and it is shown that productivity is not a uniquely defined concept, because there is a difference between production being predicted from labour input and labour input being predicted from required production. Potential application of the model to other multi‐product processes is discussed.