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Full-Text Articles in Business

The Demand And Supply-Side Impact Of The Kimberly-Clark, Scott Paper Products Merger In The Facial Tissues Category, Andre Bonfrer, Jagmohan S. Raju Dec 2003

The Demand And Supply-Side Impact Of The Kimberly-Clark, Scott Paper Products Merger In The Facial Tissues Category, Andre Bonfrer, Jagmohan S. Raju

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

We investigate how market behavior changed in the facial tissues category, following the 1995/1996 Kimberly-Clark merger with Scott Paper Products in the paper products industry. The facial tissues category is of interest because the US Department of Justice (DOJ), anticipating reduced competition after the merger, imposed a consent decree, requiring that Scotts’ facial tissues brands be licensed out to a third party. We utilize a two-stage budgeting demand system developed by Deaton and Muellbauer (1980a), coupled with general form supply-side first order conditions to compare demand and competitive behavior before and after the merger. Our findings indicate that the merger …


Kill A Brand, Keep A Customer, Nirmalya Kumar Dec 2003

Kill A Brand, Keep A Customer, Nirmalya Kumar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Kill a Brand, Keep a CustomerMost brands don't make much money. Year after year, businesses generate 80% to 90% of their profits from less than 20% of their brands. Yet most companies tend to ignore loss-making brands, unaware of the hidden costs they incur.That's because executives believe it's easy to erase a brand; they have only to stop investing in it, they assume, and it will die a natural death. But they're wrong. When companies drop brands clumsily, they antagonize loyal customers: Research shows that seven times out of eight, when firms merge two brands, the market share of the …


To Pester Or Leave Alone: Lifetime Value Maximization Through Optimal Communication Timing, Xavier Dreze, Andre Bonfrer Dec 2003

To Pester Or Leave Alone: Lifetime Value Maximization Through Optimal Communication Timing, Xavier Dreze, Andre Bonfrer

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The marketing literature has long acknowledged the importance of a customer’s lifetime value in customer relationship management. More recently, researchers have turned their attention to the links between satisfaction and both customer acquisition and retention strategies. In this paper, we are interested in understanding the impact of communication frequency on customer retention and ultimately on lifetime value. We develop a theoretical framework for managing a customer database and addressing the tradeoffs between value extraction and customer retention. An empirical application of this framework is conducted for permission-based email marketing in the entertainment industry. This application recognizes the customization ability underlying …


The Enhancement Bias In Consumer Decisions To Adopt And Utilize Product Innovations, Shenghui Zhao, Robert J. Meyer, Jin K. Han Oct 2003

The Enhancement Bias In Consumer Decisions To Adopt And Utilize Product Innovations, Shenghui Zhao, Robert J. Meyer, Jin K. Han

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The ability of consumers to anticipate the value they will draw from new product generations that expand the capabilities of incumbent goods is explored. Drawing on previous research in affective forecasting, the work explores a hypothesis that consumers will frequently overestimate the benefits they envision drawing from new added product features and underestimate the learning costs required to realize those benefits. This hypothesis is tested using a computer simulation in which subjects are trained to play a Pacman-like arcade game where icons are moved over a screen by different forms of tactile controls. Respondents are then given the option to …


Store Brands: Who Buys Them And What Happens To Retail Prices When They Are Introduced?, Andre Bonfrer, Pradeep K. Chintagunta Oct 2003

Store Brands: Who Buys Them And What Happens To Retail Prices When They Are Introduced?, Andre Bonfrer, Pradeep K. Chintagunta

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In this paper we study store brand demand behavior by examining a panel of household level and store-level data in five stores located in a competing market area. We seek to address three fundamental questions from this data. First, is there a link between store loyalty and brand loyalty? Second, does store loyalty raise store brand choice probabilities? Third, if a store brand is introduced into a category, what happens to the retail prices of the incumbent brands in the category? We find that store loyalty is negatively associated with brand loyalty, and that store loyalty increases the likelihood of …


Reasoning About Competitive Reactions: Evidence From Executives, David B. Montgomery, Marian Chapman Moore, Joel E. Urbany Sep 2003

Reasoning About Competitive Reactions: Evidence From Executives, David B. Montgomery, Marian Chapman Moore, Joel E. Urbany

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Much of the empirical research on competitive reactions describes how or why rivals react to a firm’s past actions, but stops short of examining whether managers attempt to predict such reactions, which we call strategic competitive reasoning. In three exploratory studies, we find evidence of managers’ thinking about competitors’ past and future behavior, but little incidence of strategic competitive reasoning. Competitive intelligence experts and other experienced managers assessment of the results suggests the relatively low incidence of strategic competitor reasoning is due to perceptions of low returns from anticipating competitor reactions more than to the high cost of doing so. …


Operationalizing Technology Improvements In Product Development Decision-Making, Shantanu Bhattacharya, V. Krishnan, Vijay Mahajan Aug 2003

Operationalizing Technology Improvements In Product Development Decision-Making, Shantanu Bhattacharya, V. Krishnan, Vijay Mahajan

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Achieving competitive advantage and price premiums in many technology-based markets requires the incorporation of current technology in new products. To do so, firms in hyper-competitive environments increasingly plan and design their products concurrent with the independent development and validation of underlying technologies. Simultaneous validation of a core technology has important implications for a company's product positioning and launch sequence decisions making these traditional marketing decisions relevant to operations managers. Prior research has shown that to minimize cannibalization in the absence of such improvements in technology, a firm should not launch low-end products before high-end products. However, concurrent evolution of technology …


Reactions To Perceived Inequity In U.S. And Dutch Interorganizational Relationships, Lisa K. Scheer, Nirmalya Kumar, Jan-Benedict E. M. Steenkamp Jun 2003

Reactions To Perceived Inequity In U.S. And Dutch Interorganizational Relationships, Lisa K. Scheer, Nirmalya Kumar, Jan-Benedict E. M. Steenkamp

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In an empirical examination of inequity in interorganizational relationships, we found similarities and differences in Dutch and U.S. automobile dealers' reactions to inequity in their relationships with their automobile suppliers. As predicted by equity theory, both positive and negative inequity have detrimental effects on the reactions of Dutch firms. In contrast, U.S. firms do not react negatively to positive inequity; only negative inequity has deleterious effects.


Profits In The Pie Of The Beholder, Daniel Corsten, Nirmalya Kumar May 2003

Profits In The Pie Of The Beholder, Daniel Corsten, Nirmalya Kumar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

In the early 1990s, grocery suppliers and retailers joined forces to streamline operations - an initiative called "efficient consumer response." Today, suppliers feel like they're not getting their fair share of the profits from ECR. But they stand to lose more if they give up on it, the authors say.


The Integrated Networks Model: Explaining Resource Allocations In Network Markets, Judy K. Frels, Tasadduq Shervani, Rajendra Kumar Srivastava Jan 2003

The Integrated Networks Model: Explaining Resource Allocations In Network Markets, Judy K. Frels, Tasadduq Shervani, Rajendra Kumar Srivastava

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

The last decade has witnessed a shift from a focus on the value created by a single firm and product to an examination of the value created by networks of firms (or product ecosystems) in which assets are comingled with external entities. The authors examine these market-based assets in the context of network markets and propose an Integrated Networks model in which three types of networks-user, complements, and producer-add value or enhance the attractiveness of the associated focal product. The authors empirically test the proposed model by surveying information technology professionals on their resource allocation decisions regarding the Unix and …