Rival Products Research Articles

The impact of the health star rating front-of-packaging label on preferences for food products

PurposeThe Health Star Rating (HSR) is a front-of-pack labeling system that helps consumers understand the nutritional values of foods. In this study, we examined the effects of the presence (vs. absence) of an HSR label on consumer choice behavior and perception of healthiness.Design/methodology/approachIn an experimental study, we tested if the presence (vs. absence) of an HSR label provides a competitive advantage over a rival product that lacks the label, influencing purchase intentions. Participants were asked to choose among two competing products, with and without the labels, in a full factorial design.FindingsResults showed that products with an HSR label had a competitive advantage over the rival products that did not have the label. Moreover, this effect emerged more strongly for some products than others. Thus, while front-of-pack (FOP) labels can enhance sales, their impact may vary based on the specific product or brand.Originality/valueThis paper offers novel insights into the implications of HSR labels for consumer behavior and marketing strategies, particularly in the context of their potential use as a marketing tool by companies to boost sales in the food industry.

Strategic selection between technology spillover and green technology cross-licencing under cap-and-trade policy

ABSTRACT This paper examines the co-opetition strategic selection between two rival manufacturers under a cap-and-trade policy. Based on the classical Cournot game and Nash bargaining game theories, we propose a benchmark model with technology spillover effect and green technology cross-licencing models with both fixed-fee and mixed-fee modes. The results show that manufacturers have the highest outputs in the fixed-fee cross-licencing scenario, and manufacturers’ total profits in the green technology cross-licencing scenarios always outperform that in the technology spillover scenario. Moreover, when the unit carbon quota trading price is high, the technology spillover scenario has the lowest emissions. When the unit cost of governing carbon emissions-related pollution is low, social welfare in the fixed-fee cross-licencing scenario is higher than that in the mixed-fee cross-licencing scenario. Interestingly, the social welfare advantage of the mixed-fee cross-licencing scenario becomes more and more prominent as the unit cost in governing carbon emissions related pollution increases.

ЦІНОУТВОРЕННЯ ЯК ІНСТРУМЕНТ МАРКЕТИНГОВОГО ПЛАНУВАННЯ

Pricing plays a pivotal role in marketing planning, shaping the success and profitability of businesses. This annotation explores the multifaceted nature of pricing as a strategic tool in marketing, highlights various pricing strategies employed by companies. Cost-based pricing involves setting prices based on production costs and desired profit margins. Competitor-based pricing entails benchmarking prices against rival products to maintain competitiveness. Customer-based pricing focuses on determining prices based on customer preferences, perceived value, and willingness to pay. Examining these pricing approaches allows businesses to identify the most suitable strategy for their products or services. Factors such as production costs, market demand, competition, and target customer segments need to be carefully analyzed when making pricing decisions. Effective pricing strategies should strike a balance between attracting customers, maximizing revenue, and achieving profitability. By understanding pricing dynamics, businesses can optimize their marketing efforts. They can align pricing with their overall marketing objectives, differentiate their offerings, and create perceived value for customers. Moreover, pricing strategies can be adapted to accommodate changes in market conditions, customer preferences, and competitive landscapes. The research shows that the right pricing can have a significant impact on the success of a business. Improper pricing may result in loss competitiveness, low profitability or even losses. Therefore, choosing an appropriate pricing strategy is an important task for managers and marketers. When choosing a pricing strategy, companies must consider many factors, such as production costs, raw material costs, competitive prices, consumer preferences, elasticity of demand, and others. Analysis of these factors helps to establish optimal prices that satisfy the needs of customers, ensure profitability and maintain the competitiveness of the company. Additionally, it is important to note that pricing strategies are not static and may change over time.

Price Competition and Shifting Demand: The Relation between Palm and Coconut Oil Exports

Despite having a strong production capacity for fresh coconut, Indonesia has a certain deficiency in coconut processing, particularly coconut oil products, which is reflected in the declining market demand rates. The skyrocketing price of palm kernel oil (PKO) had been observed to impact the shifting demand for coconut oil. The cross-price competition with PKO was estimated to uncover the potential market demand for Indonesian coconut oils, especially during the periods of price discrepancies between 2020 and 2022. Thus, our study aimed to analyze the Indonesian coconut oil and palm kernel oil (PKO) market relationship as the markets reacted during the period of price volatility. This study is essential for Indonesian market evaluation, as both commodities are considered to be perfect substitute goods and are similar substances that contain high levels of lauric acid called “lauric oils”. We deployed an ARDL analysis utilizing secondary data from 1964 to 2022, focusing on the cross-price elasticity between coconut oil and PKO prices with the addition of prominent concerned variables. In the long-term estimations, the observational results indicated that the coconut oil and PKO prices had distinctive impacts on Indonesian coconut oil exports of −1.85% and 1.88%, respectively. In the short-term estimations, we found inverse values: the coconut oil price had positive impacts in the short-term period of 1.29% (D1.) and 2.35% (LD.), while the PKO had a negative impact on Indonesian coconut oil exports of −2.17%. This indicated that a PKO price reduction would increase the demand for Indonesian coconut oil exports due to the PKO price volatility and uncertainty perceived by the buyers in the short term. Our study also observed that rival producers, such as the Philippines, had a negative impact (−1.80%), representing the intense competition between Indonesia and the Philippines. Therefore, the Indonesian government has to elevate its coconut oil competitiveness to acquire the potential to expand the market and compete with other major coconut-producing countries.

Unraveling the Effect of Competing Product Reviews on Consumer Choice and the Moderating Role of Consumer–Reviewer Peer Types

Prior studies have paid little attention to the roles of online reviews of competing products on individuals’ purchase behaviors. This article contributes to the literature by unraveling the effect of competing product reviews on consumer purchase decisions. Conceptualizing competition among rival products along two dimensions of geographical space and characteristic space, we use a panel-level binary logit choice model to examine how online reviews of restaurants are related to consumers’ conversion from browsing to purchasing in the context of restaurant patronage. Our results show that a one-unit increase in average valence (volume) of spatially adjacent and feature similar alternatives reduces the odds of choosing a focal product by 77.7% (53.4%) and by 59.6%, respectively. Furthermore, we conceptualize reviewers as local peers and global peers of consumers and explore how the impact of competing product reviews can be moderated by the consumer–reviewer peer types. We find that the effect of competing product reviews along geographical and characteristic spaces is strengthened by the proportion of local peers’ reviews relative to global peers’ reviews on these competing products. These new findings on the impact of competing product reviews and the moderating role of consumer–reviewer peer types provide implications for academic research and practice.

Strategic incentives for comparative advertising investments in non-zero-sum competition and economic consequences

Persuasive advertising is viewed as an effective tool to affect willingness-to-pay of customers for a firm’s product. In their use of persuasive advertising, firms typically face the choice of whether to tout the benefits of their own products without mentioning rival products (self-promotional advertising) or make references to rival products while promoting their own products (comparative advertising). A concomitant (and intrinsic) issue in the use of comparative advertising is whether to portray rival products negatively or positively and the level of comparative intensity (the valence of comparative advertising). Although it is often criticized and disapproved of by business decision makers and its effectiveness has been a subject of contentious debate, comparative advertising is used prevalently by firms in consumer goods markets. In this paper, we examine the strategic incentives of competing firms to abandon their self-promotional advertising in favor of comparative advertising, the ways in which they choose a positive or negative valence in their comparative advertising, and the economic consequences of these decisions. We consider a simultaneous (and a leader-follower Stackelberg) game between two asymmetric firms vying for customers in a market that is not characterized by zero-sum competition. We also study the possibility that comparative advertising elicits positive or negative market externalities on the advertised product. We seek market- and channel-based explanations for why firms may opt to undertake comparative advertising (in lieu of self-promotional advertising) and use its constructive or combative form. We show that the use of comparative advertising can be an effective tactic in attaining certain objectives and when carefully executed in certain ways, and detrimental to not only the advertising firm but also the product category in other ways.

A Buyer Power Theory of Exclusive Dealing and Exclusionary Bundling

We develop a unified theory of exclusive dealing and exclusionary bundling. In a framework with two competing manufacturers that supply their product(s) through a monopolist retailer, we show that buyer power restores the profitability of such practices involving inefficient exclusion. The mechanism underlying this exclusion is that the compensation required by the retailer to renounce selling the rival product erodes with its buyer power. We further show that our theory holds when buyer power differs across manufacturers or when the retailer can strategically narrow (or expand) its product assortment. (JEL D42, D43, K21, L42, L60, L81)

Coopetition Strategy Choice of Duopoly Manufacturers with Key Component Technology Transfer

This paper investigates the strategic choice of key component technology transfer between two rival manufacturers. A benchmark competition model and two coopetition models (including fixed-fee licensing coopetition and two-part tariff licensing coopetition) where the manufacturers compete for end-customer demand while simultaneously collaborating on key component technology transfer through licensing. By comparing the outcomes of the competition model and coopetition models, it is shown that: (1) The optimal strategy choice for manufacturers depends on the degree of product substitution, the interfirm power relationship as well as the production cost difference of key components. Among them, the interfirm power relationship has the most significant impact on the optimal strategy choice. (2) Under certain conditions, fixed fees and two-part tariff patent licensing coopetition can achieve Pareto improvement and reduce the retail price of products, which is beneficial to both manufacturers and consumers. (3) The production cost difference of key components significantly affects whether manufacturers can achieve Pareto improvement under two coopetition models.

Impact of conflict delisting and relisting on remaining products in retail stores: Sales gains across products categories and spillovers to nearby stores

Disputes between retailers and manufacturers often result in the retailer delisting the manufacturer's products, which dramatically alters competition in the retail market. When rival products are temporarily delisted, the products remaining on retail shelves are expected to gain sales due to substitution. However, it is unclear how much sales gain of remaining products can be expected, how long the sales gain persists after the rival products are relisted, whether the sales gain varies in different product categories, and whether the sales gain spills over from the delisting retailer to nearby retailers. In this research, we exploit a natural experiment enabled by a dispute between a retail chain and a beverage manufacturer that resulted in a 4‐week delisting of all products by the manufacturer (the delisted manufacturer) across all of the retailer's U.S. stores. We focus on a manufacturer (the focal manufacturer) that directly competes with the delisted manufacturer and quantify the sales gain for this focal manufacturer during the delisting and after the relisting event. Interestingly, in a near‐duopoly market, the focal manufacturer only gained 12.2% of sales during the delisting. After the dispute was settled and competition restored, the focal manufacturer's sales fluctuated for about 2 months before returning to the pre‐delisting level. Additionally, we find a spillover in sales gain to nearby stores during the delisting, which was mainly to small‐box retail stores rather than big‐box stores. Moreover, at both delisting and nearby stores, we find the focal manufacturer's sugar‐sweetened, caffeinated, and star products gained sales during the event while other products did not. We check the robustness of our results with a machine learning nonparametric method, among a few other alternative methods, to measure the average treatment effects. Understanding the size and duration of these heterogeneous effects can help manufacturers and retailers better respond to changes in market competition and evaluate their delisting decisions.

Sourcing diversification: Strategy selection, sourcing allocation and brand power

The supply of power batteries is monopolised by a few suppliers, resulting in high purchasing costs for electric vehicle manufacturers (EVMs). Hence, some EVMs have implemented diversified sourcing strategies to seek purchase concessions and reduce their dependence on battery suppliers. Motivated by the sourcing strategies of EVMs, we develop a game-theoretic model to investigate the optimal procurement strategies of manufacturers with different brand power. The model consists of a primary supplier, an alternative supplier, and two competing manufacturers, wherein the focal manufacturer has the option of implementing dual sourcing or partial outsourcing through sourcing allocation, whereas the rival manufacturer only sources from the primary supplier. Specifically, we first study the focal manufacturer’s three procurement strategies under the primary supplier’s uniform pricing: single sourcing (the benchmark), dual sourcing and partial outsourcing. Then, we examine the primary supplier’s strategic response to the manufacturer’s sourcing diversification: maintaining uniform pricing or switching to differential pricing. By analysing the equilibrium profits, we find that compared with the situation under single sourcing, both the primary supplier and the focal manufacturer may obtain higher profits under dual sourcing or partial outsourcing. However, with an increase in the focal manufacturer’s order proportion, the primary supplier’s profit may decrease; and the focal manufacturer’s diversified sourcing strategy may hurt all the supply chain players. Furthermore, we show that when the primary supplier considers switching to differential pricing, the focal manufacturer tends to abandon the diversified sourcing and adopt single sourcing.

The Impact of Transportation on Pottery Industries in Roman Britain

Abstract The distribution of Roman pottery depended on the transportation system which moved it. Here we trace developments in these distributions during the Roman period in Britain to document how the transportation system developed and assess its impact on the island’s economy. We created a database with records from 775 excavations at 652 sites, and data on over two million pottery sherds. By analyzing the changing distributions of pottery from production centers, we are able to measure improvements in the Roman transportation system over time. These improvements seem to have been most rapid soon after conquest, with transport costs almost halving in the first century of Roman occupation. As the road network expanded and transportation technology improved and pottery gained access to wider markets, producers’ dominance over their local markets declined as rival products became more accessible, and certain industries dramatically increased their outputs. Production by small industries fell in our Middle and Later Roman periods.

A study on selling intergenerational products under competition

This study considers an incumbent manufacturer that sells both new and old versions of products, and competes with a rival manufacturer that sells a similar competitive product in the market. It investigates the impact that both internal and external competition between these products has on the manufacturers’ pricing strategies. We assume that the transition period is the planning time for product sales, during which the old-version products would not be replenished if they are sold out. The contribution of this study is that the equilibrium prices at different moments for the incumbent and rival manufacturers are obtained by considering both the customer purchase probability and the diffusion model in predicting the demand for each product, with the aim of maximizing the expected profits of both manufacturers. Moreover, this study also considers the scenario in which the incumbent manufacturer uses the trade-in strategy of replacing the older-generation product with the newer version, and the rival manufacturer responds with the markdown strategy of periodically reducing the price. The results show that the price reduction of the rival manufacturer is inversely related to the price of the competitive product, the price gap between the competitive product and the newer product, and the inventory cost.

Input price discrimination and strategic inventory

AbstractWe consider a two‐period model with strategic inventory and explore the welfare implications of banning input price discrimination. We find that inventory incentive is stronger under input price discrimination. Under uniform pricing, an increase in an inventory of a firm equally lowers the rival's wholesale price. It expands the rival's production, suppresses the firm's output, and weakens the incentive. We also find that the weak incentive leads to higher quantity‐weighted average wholesale and retail prices. Therefore, allowing input price discrimination alleviates double marginalization and leads to higher consumer surplus and social welfare.

An evolutionary game model for low-carbon technology adoption by rival manufacturers

An evolutionary game model for low-carbon technology adoption by rival manufacturers

What Does it Mean to be Optimally Distinct? How Organizations Configure Product Feature Dimensions

The optimal distinctiveness literature argues that products moderately different from category-based expectations conform for legitimacy and differentiate for novelty to out-compete rival products. However, most studies conceptualize optimal distinctiveness as a balance point along a single axis without considering how organizations configure multiple feature dimensions to position products. Distinguishing feature dimensions is important, because there are at least two distinct ways producers can configure feature dimensions for optimal distinctiveness: either by blending moderately differentiated feature dimensions or by combining tightly conforming and sharply differentiated feature dimensions. We study the video game industry to distinguish the game world and the game mechanics as the two key feature dimensions of games. With a dataset of 2,222 video games published on the 7th generation of game consoles, we demonstrate that games portraying a game world tightly conforming to the category schema through which gamers move with a set of game mechanics sharply differentiated from the category schema receive higher critical acclaim than rival games. Products can thus be positioned as optimally distinct not by blending moderately differentiated features, but rather by configuring high conformity and familiarity on some feature dimensions to legitimize sharp differentiation and novelty on other feature dimensions.

Hiding or sharing? Technology upgrade, technology spillover and information asymmetry

One giant manufacturer (M1) upgrades a common supplier’s production technology through investments, while the supplier (it), holding the technology spillover information privately, may spill the upgraded technology over to a rival manufacturer (M2). This study examines whether the supplier should share the information of technology spillover with M1. We first find technology spillover hurts not only M1 but also the supplier and M2, when the production cost is high and the investment cost is low at a high level of the real technology spillover degree, no matter whether the supplier shares the technology spillover information or not. As such, it may be unwise for the supplier to implement technology spillover and unprofitable for M2 to take a free ride of technology spillover conditionally. Furthermore, when the supplier can receive more payoffs by spilling the upgraded technology over to M2 under certain conditions, it should share (hide) the technology spillover information, and such sharing (hiding) strategy may create a “win-win-win”’ outcome for the three players, if the supplier is of low (high)-spillover type and the real degree of technology spillover falls into a high range.

Significant Insights, Value Orientation and Differences Between the Mutual Fund Investment Flow and Indian Stock Market Returns – A Theoretical Assimilation

Researchers and academicians from all over the world have become interested in the study of the causal relationship between mutual fund investment flow and stock market returns in recent years. But there is currently a contradictory body of empirical data on this matter. Additionally, there are a few studies that take the case of India into account. In order to better understand the dynamics of the relationship between mutual fund investment flow and stock market returns in India from January 2000 to May 2010, the following article will do just that. The Granger causality tests are applied using the Toda and Yamamoto approach, which yields evidence of a one-way causal relationship between stock market returns and mutual fund investment flow. This suggests that the expansion of stock market activity in India draws mutual funds to the stock market. Therefore, the government and monetary authorities should take the necessary actions to reduce the volatility and increase the efficiency of the capital market. By gathering money from households and investing it in the stock and debt markets, mutual funds enable portfolio diversification and relative risk aversion. In India, a specific type of mutual fund called fixed-income funds invests in debt securities that have been issued by businesses, banks, or the government. In India, fixed-income funds are also referred to as debt funds and income funds. The goal of the current study is to assess the performance of a few selected debt or income mutual fund schemes in India based on their daily NAV using various statistical measures. In the past ten years, income schemes have become more and more popular. The securities that were purchased are referred to as the fund's portfolio. There may have been restrictions on rival products, which led to the emergence of money market and (short-term) bond funds. In this study, the performance of several mutual fund types in India was compared and studied. The results showed that equities funds outperformed income funds. The study also found that institutional fund managers can time their investments and that equity fund managers have significant market timing ability, but broker operated funds did not demonstrate this ability. Additionally, empirical research has shown that fund managers possess significant timing ability and can time their investments to match market conditions.

Low-carbon technology transfer between rival firms under cap-and-trade policies

We investigate the effects of low-carbon technology transfer between two rival manufacturers on their economic, environmental, and social welfare performance under a cap-and-trade policy. We model alternative licensing arrangements of technology transfer and evaluate the model performance from the perspectives of different stakeholders, including manufacturers, customers, and policy makers. Our findings show that the contractual choice on low-carbon technology licensing is dependent on the trade-off between the benefits gained from the licensing of technology and the consequential losses incurred from competition with a strengthened competitor, which is influenced by a combination of factors, including internal technological abilities, the interfirm power relationship, external market competition, and the carbon emission control policy. Among them, the interfirm power relationship is most influential in determining the optimal contractual decision. In addition, we extend the analysis of technology licensing strategies to different carbon emissions caps with additional cost incurred from purchasing emission allowances through auction, and a two-period model considering emissions cap reduction, respectively. Finally, our analyses show it is critical for policy makers to develop appropriate emissions control policies to promote the agenda of a sustainable, low-carbon economy.

Are workers musicians? Kesha Sebert, Johanna Wagner and the gendered commodification of star singers, 1853–2014

AbstractThe legal history of pop singer-songwriter Kesha Sebert has brought to light serious problems of gender and power in the US recording industry: it remains male dominated to its core. These contemporary problems have specific historical origins. Contextualising the 2008–2014 lawsuit between two rival producers over the exclusive right to Kesha's labour power suggests that elements of Victorian gender relations and class war were baked into the doctrine on which that 21st century case turned. Drawing empirically on court documents, and analytically on perspectives from history and sociology as well as feminist legal scholarship, this paper explains the persistent vitality of a ‘gendered erotic triangle’ in music production. By contextualising Kesha's gendered legal triangulation, and analysing a seemingly technical quibble about the interpretation of a statute of (temporal) limitation, this paper frames the commodification of singers’ labour power as central to a gendered project of class domination.

Une amitié nécessaire : entraide et fraternité dans le champ des comic books québécois (1984-1995)


 
 
 
 Depuis leur apparition dans les années 1930, les comic books américains se présentent comme des œuvres collectives sur lesquelles travaillent à relais un nombre variable d’intervenants : le scénariste, le dessinateur, l’encreur, le coloriste, le lettreur et l’éditeur, principalement. Imposée par le rythme de publication (généralement mensuel) de ces imprimés fasciculaires, la création en équipe devient alors un gage de productivité. Ayant prouvé son efficacité, cette méthode de travail est aussi adoptée par la majorité des producteurs québécois qui se lancent dans l’édition de comic books à partir des années 1980. Or, dans ces cas, la collaboration dépasse parfois le partage du travail entre les créateurs à l’emploi d’une même maison d’édition. En effet, le péritexte des œuvres et la correspondance des éditeurs indiquent qu’un esprit de collégialité unit les producteurs rivaux, qui échangent idées et conseils au sujet de leurs séries respectives. Ce faisant, ils contribuent indirectement au contenu des comics publiés par leurs compétiteurs.
 Cela dit, on peut s’interroger quant aux motifs donnant lieu à cette entraide. De l’amitié entre collègues à l’opportunisme commercial, quels sont les enjeux propres au champ des comics québécois que révèle cette apparente fraternité ? Quelles sont les conditions favorisant les échanges de services entre éditeurs, scénaristes et illustrateurs ? Bref, comment s’explique la collaboration entre producteurs concurrents évoluant au sein d’un même marché? Cet article répondra à ces questions afin de mieux éclairer la dimension sociale liée à la production de comic books sériels au Québec et au Canada. Il révèlera que la collaboration entre agents évoluant dans le champ des comics québécois (et parfois dans les champs canadien-anglais et américain) vise à consolider la place occupée par les éditeurs indépendants dans le milieu restreint qu’ils tentent d’investir. La fraternité qui les réunit est bienvenue et nécessaire dans la mesure où elle encourage des relations d’ordre transactionnel plutôt que conflictuel, transformant des concurrents potentiels en instances publicitaires ou légitimantes, voire en partenaires créatifs. Une alliance se crée, de telle sorte que tous tirent profit d’une collégialité faisant office de défense contre la domination du marché par les géants de l’édition de comic books.
 
 
 
 
 Cela dit, on peut s’interroger quant aux motifs donnant lieu à cette entraide. De l’amitié entre collègues à l’opportunisme commercial, quels sont les enjeux propres au champ des comics québécois que révèle cette apparente fraternité? Quelles sont les conditions favorisant les échanges de services entre éditeurs, scénaristes et illustrateurs? Bref, comment s’explique la collaboration entre producteurs concurrents évoluant au sein d’un même marché? Cet article répondra à ces questions afin de mieux éclairer la dimension sociale liée à la production de comic books sériels au Québec et au Canada. Il révèlera que la collaboration entre agents évoluant dans le champ des comics québécois (et parfois dans les champs canadien-anglais et américain) vise à consolider la place occupée par les éditeurs indépendants dans le milieu restreint qu’ils tentent d’investir. La fraternité qui les réunit est bienvenue et nécessaire dans la mesure où elle encourage des relations d’ordre transactionnel, plutôt que conflictuel, transformant des concurrents potentiels en instances publicitaires ou légitimantes, voire en partenaires créatifs. Une alliance se crée, de telle sorte que tous tirent profit d’une collégialité faisant office de défense contre la domination du marché par les géants de l’édition de comic books.