The Negative Impact of Mobile Devices on Niche Product Consumption

Internet based information technology has provided the paradigm shift from Pareto principle to long tail phenomenon. However, the advent of small size mobile devices with higher search costs raises a negative question on this paradigm shift. The aim of this study is investigating the negative impact of mobile devices on niche product consumption. We collect 10 million user-device level transaction data with user profiles and content characteristics from a nation-wide e-book company in East Asia. We analyze the large size data with Pareto curve estimation and econometric modeling. As key findings, we found that smart phone users’ product sales are more concentrated than those of users with PCs or smart pads. Our empirical results support that mobile commerce markets do not follow long tail phenomenon, but follow “Pareto Principle” in terms of sales diversity because smart phone users have less willingness to purchase unpopular products than smart pad users

Social network market: Storytelling on a web 2.0 original literature site

This article looks at a Chinese Web 2.0 original literature site, Qidian, in order to show the coevolution of market and non-market initiatives. The analytic framework of social network markets (Potts et al., 2008) is employed to analyse the motivations of publishing original literature works online and to understand the support mechanisms of the site, which encourage readers’ willingness to pay for user-generated content. The co-existence of socio-cultural and commercial economies and their impact on the successful business model of the site are illustrated in this case. This article extends the concept of social network markets by proposing the existence of a ripple effect of social network markets through convergence between PC and mobile internet, traditional and internet publishing, and between publishing and other cultural industries. It also examines the side effects of social network markets, and the role of market and non-market strategies in addressing the issues

Multi-Screen Strategy for Selling Mobile Content to Customers

Our research aims to discover the role of multiple smart devices and their different screen sizes in paid content sales, thus building a multi-screen content sales strategy. Our econometric model adopts a difference-in-differences method to measure the impact of multi-screen devices on users’ content consumption through screen size effects. In a natural experiment setting, we sample 238 individual customers who registered a single smartphone with a 3- to 4-inch screen at the beginning and then added devices with a similar or larger screen. Our paper determines the parameters in existing theoretical frameworks of online consumer utility (product selection and digital content price) to determine paid content purchase behavior in a multi-screen environment. Our key findings are that the price sensitivity of content decreases as a user registers new smart devices and registering new devices with larger screens positively influences less popular content consumption more than a small screen device does

Identifying the impact of the circular economy on the Fast-Moving Consumer Goods Industry Opportunities and challenges for businesses, workers and consumers – mobile phones as an example STUDY

Mobile phones, particularly smartphones, have undergone a period of rapid growth to become virtually indispensable to today's lifestyle. Yet their production, use and disposal can entail a significant environmental burden. This study looks at the opportunities and challenges that arise from implementing circular economy approaches in the mobile phone value chain. A review of the value chain and different circular approaches is complemented by a scenario analysis that aims to quantify the potential impacts of certain circular approaches such as recycling, refurbishment and lifetime extension. The study finds that there is a large untapped potential for recovering materials from both the annual flow of new mobile phones sold in Europe once they reach the end of their life and the accumulated stock of unused, so-called hibernating devices in EU households. Achieving high recycling rates for these devices can offer opportunities to reduce EU dependence on imported materials and make secondary raw materials available on the EU market. As such, policy action would be required to close the collection gap for mobile phone devices. Implementing circular approaches in the mobile phone value chain can furthermore lead to job creation in the refurbishment sector. Extending the lifetime of mobile phones can also provide CO2 mitigation benefits, particularly from displacing the production of new devices

Product Launch in a Declining Environment: The Blu-ray Disc – Opportunities and Struggle

Increasingly ICT-based virtual products are challenging physical products and markets. Obsolescence has become a real effect for an augmented number of established industries due to the facilitation of access, consumption, and permanent, immediate availability, which dematerialised products provide. Once again, Schumpeter’s Wind of Creative Destruction intensifies organisations’ permanent struggle for survival (1950). This paper presents long-term research in the optical disc industry, which has presented the optical disc format of Blu-ray as its latest innovation. It is an example of how an established industry launches a new product for finding new opportunities, but fights desperately against market resistance. The degree of innovation, the Blu-ray represents, may not be sufficient in the overarching battle of the physical place versus the virtual space (Kotler et al. 2002, Lam. 2004, Lamont et al. 1993, Scardigli et al. 1988). As the US market research institute In-Stat highlights, the optical disc market has declined for the 10th year in sequence (Kaufhold. 2010, IFPI. 2010). Sufficient evidence is available that the replication industry of optical discs may be confronted with an endgame scenario. The market climate may already be too hostile to support this industry’s desire for a renewal of consumers’ acceptance of the physical product, here the Blu-ray disc, and to create new market opportunities in the struggle against the industry’s potential obsolescence (Harrigan et al. 1983). Despite strong efforts of promotion and powerful market approaches, the Blu-ray disc could not find inroads to markets yet making this format sustainably successful. Evidence is that after a short period of time, Blu-ray discs’ available manufacturing capacities outperform consumers’ demand by >30%, consumer and replication prices fall sharply and many of the Home Entertainment’s content providers have little or no use for this format being a commodity and based on mass production (dvd-intelligence. 2010a, Kaufhold. 2010, Killer-Korff. 2010). Therefore, as research among the replication industry indicates, it presently seems more as though the Blu-ray format may not fulfil this industry’s needs and, with reference to Abernathy et al.’s research, may not lead to the renewal of industrial dynamics in a declining marketplace (1983, 1984). Further explanation for reasons can be found in the theories of innovation based on Utterback’s, Christensen’s and Christensen et al.’s studies of disruptive and discontinuous innovation (1996, 2003, 2003, 2004). Following the paper presented at the Sixteenth Annual South Dakota International Business Conference, this paper presents research about the Blu-ray format’s market problems. The introduction of the Transilience Organisation Innovation Map provided a conceptual approach for the initial explanation of the underlying reasons (Oestreicher. 2009). Research among European replication firms since concludes for Blu-ray that innovation in technology alone is not sufficient, when innovation’s second stream of market linkages is involved (Abernathy et al. 1983, 1984). The paper presents explanations, why the Blu-ray disc may not be sufficiently strong to support the replication industry in overcoming the odds impacting their strategic opportunities in a declining and eventually disruptive environment (Lamont et al. 1993, Yoo. 1992). The research methods applied are grounded theory and case study (Goulding. 2002, Charmaz. 2009, Eisenhardt. 1989, Davies. 2006). The overall intention of this long-term research is to contribute to a theory, which may also be relevant for other industries, like the publishing industry, whose struggle against dematerialisation of content is presently starting (Picard. 2003). Key Words: Radical vs. marginal innovation, Ideal Final Result, endgame strategies, theories of innovation, Blu-ra

YouTube as a repository : the creative practice of students as producers of Open Educational Resources

In this paper we present an alternative view of Open Educational Resources (OERs). Rather than focusing on open media resources produced by expert practitioners for use by peers and learners, we examine the practice of learners as active agents, producing open media resources using the devices in their pockets: their mobile phones. In this study, students are the producers and operate simultaneously as legitimate members of the YouTube community and producers of educational content for future cohorts. Taking an Action Research approach we investigated how student’s engagement with open media resources related to their creativity. Using Kleiman’s framework of fives conceptual themes which emerged from academics experiences of creativity (constraint, process, product, transformation, fulfillment), we found that these themes revealed the opportunities designed into the assessed task and provided a useful lens with which to view students’ authentic creative experiences. Students’ experience of creativity mapped on to Kleiman’s framework, and was affected by assessment. Dimensions of openness changed across platforms, although the impact of authenticity and publication on creativity was evident, and the production of open media resources that have a dual function as OERs has clear benefits in terms of knowledge sharing and community participation.The transformational impacts for students were evident in the short term but would merit a longitudinal study. A series of conclusions are drawn to inform future practice and research

Co-opetition of TV broadcasters in online video markets : a winning strategy?

This article focuses on TV broadcasters adopting co-opetition strategies for launching online video services. It is claimed that the emergence of online video platforms like YouTube and Netflix is driving TV broadcasters to collaborate with their closest competitors to reduce costs and reach the necessary scale in the global marketplace. The article sheds light on online video platforms that were developed following a co-opetition strategy (Hulu and YouView). The establishment of joint ventures in online video, however, has been scrutinised by competition authorities which fear that collaboration between close competitors lessens rivalry and reduces consumer choice. Therefore, several co-opetition projects (among others BBC’s Kangaroo and Germany’s Gold) have been prohibited by competition authorities

Sustainability in design: now! Challenges and opportunities for design research, education and practice in the XXI century

Copyright @ 2010 Greenleaf PublicationsLeNS project funded by the Asia Link Programme, EuropeAid, European Commission

The Internet of Things Will Thrive by 2025

This report is the latest research report in a sustained effort throughout 2014 by the Pew Research Center Internet Project to mark the 25th anniversary of the creation of the World Wide Web by Sir Tim Berners-LeeThis current report is an analysis of opinions about the likely expansion of the Internet of Things (sometimes called the Cloud of Things), a catchall phrase for the array of devices, appliances, vehicles, wearable material, and sensor-laden parts of the environment that connect to each other and feed data back and forth. It covers the over 1,600 responses that were offered specifically about our question about where the Internet of Things would stand by the year 2025. The report is the next in a series of eight Pew Research and Elon University analyses to be issued this year in which experts will share their expectations about the future of such things as privacy, cybersecurity, and net neutrality. It includes some of the best and most provocative of the predictions survey respondents made when specifically asked to share their views about the evolution of embedded and wearable computing and the Internet of Things

Disruptive Technology: Approaches to Escape a Discontinuous Environment

Disruptive technologies have erased and continue to extinct previously successful industries. Scholars’ studies consider ICT as a major cause for various industries, as, e.g., analogue photography, typewriters, VHS-cassettes and so on. They have become obsolete as its effect. Despite the creation of new industries at the same time, the environment for old industries results frequently in obsolescence. Especially, as research tends to hold, impact on organisations increases, when new technologies effectuate an additional shift in consumer behaviour. Opportunities for established firms become likely discontinuous then. The replication industry of optical discs is a specific industry sector within the wider Home Entertain-ment Industry manufacturing the present dominant design of the physical mass product, DVD and CD. However, ICT-based dematerialised, virtual products threaten the replication industry’s future, which may become obsolete, since more and more consumers adopt virtual downloads as their preference. This paper studies the approaches of selected industry’s incumbents to be innovative themselves to escape their emergent disruptive environment. Based on primary and secondary research, it addresses their adopted opportunities of accessing new growth paths through extended technology management and the development of a future-oriented direction by additional technologies and augmented services to escape the environment of decline and exit. The purpose of the underlying long-term research is to study, how do replicators (as an example for declining industries) respond to the threat of disruptive innovation and whether their (strategic) behaviour may serve as a model for other industries facing similar scenarios. This research is undertaken qualitatively using a single case study from which excerpts are presented. The present findings provide evidence that after a long time of reluctance, replicators have started to develop further resources and capacities to identify new and additional ways supporting them in their struggle for survival. But these findings show as well a pattern that approaches to future orientation may not be sufficient, since 1. They do not resolve the dilemma of competing with products and services committed to the physical place against a shifting consumer behaviour pattern addressing the virtual space. 2. Constraints, like e.g., staff, physical facilities, skills and path-dependent reasons further marginal, or in Abernathy et al.s’ understanding regular innovation or re-engineering fighting against radical innovation by both, technological impact and market linkages (1983, 1984). 3. The established customer-supplier relationships may be of disadvantage, since hindering replicators to have direct access to the point of consumption. These indicators suggest that disruptive innovation will be stronger in the end and many present efforts may be in vain