2,489 research outputs found
Co-evolution of demand and supply under competition
In this paper, we derive strategies to enforce dominance in a business-to-consumer market with heterogeneous, competing products, while the market segmentation evolves through interaction of demand and supply. By using evolutionary economic notions, we extend operations management studies on manufacturing facing demand diffusion. We arrive at a synthesis of a Forrester delay manufacturing model and a technology substitution-diffusion model and show that the actual operationalization of product attractiveness, reflecting what consumers deem important, as well as the responsiveness of production capacity scaling greatly determine the market dynamics and asymptotic outcome. We obtain analytic results on absolute dominance in case of the constant inherent attractiveness of products, say technical performance, and numerical results on instability and quasi-stability in case of more encompassing definitions of attractiveness involving price and service level. We conclude, in general, that in establishing market dominance, firms should focus on timely entry to capture first-buyers, high responsiveness and predatory pricing. Scale advantages and resilience through responsiveness are essential in obtaining and subsequently retaining the market share when other firms already provide or are about to enter with technically superior products. We also hint on how to extend our model to study several other issues on industry dynamics
Toward meso-level product-market network indices for strategic product selection and (re)design guidelines over the product life-cycle
Many methods to arrive at a product-market choice through selection and (re)design assume stationary demand and a stable range of products to pick and maximize profit trading off operational performance in manufacturing versus (under)servicing certain market segments. The determination and decisiveness in the product-market choice and marketing and manufacturing strategies are likely to be different when anticipating technological change and (ensuing) shifts in demand and competition of which the timing and direction is often uncertain. As the product life-cycle pattern describes such changes in market, technology and competition over time, we can use the stylization thereof to derive strategic and forward-looking product selection and (re)design decisions. We introduce the notion of a meso-level product-market network and two indices to quantify features of that network. We then relate index values over time to phases in the meso-level product life-cycle to derive micro-level, forward-looking product selection and (re)design guidelines that anticipate developments in the industry.We also uncover the different roles of the marketing and engineering departments in the various product life-cycle phases. Keywords: Product-Market Network; Product Selection and Design; Network Index; Marketing-Manufacturing Interface; Technological Change; Product Life-Cycl
A value network development model and implications for innovation and production network management
In managing their value network, firms have to balance current and future value concerns and own and network partners’ concerns. Firms generate immediate value through manufacturing and selling the current generation of products together with other firms in its production network and generate future value by developing a new generation of products with other firms and research institutes in its innovation network. Product innovation and production often take place simultaneously and recurrently. We take the discernible production and innovation activities to occur in co-evolving network layers. We formulate a biplex value network development model that lays out the temporal pattern of production and innovation activities in the value network. We introduce terminology to pinpoint temporal interactions between the innovation and production activities. We study several exemplary complications in the cross-table of inter- and intragenerational interactions versus interactions within and across network layers
Socio-cultural factors, gender roles and religious ideologies contributing to Caesarian-section refusal in Nigeria
Inequity in the Utilization of Maternal-Health Care Services in South Asia: Nepal, India and Sri Lanka
Dynamics and equilibria under incremental horizontal differentiation on the Salop circle
We study product differentiation on a Salop circle when firms relocate incrementally due to bounded rationality. We prove that, under common assumptions on demand, firms relocate only when two or more firms target the same niche. In any other case, there is no incentive for any firm to relocate incrementally. We prove that all distributions in which firms are sufficiently far apart in product space are unstable Nash equilibria. We prove, in particular, that the classical equidistant distribution is an unstable Nash equilibrium that cannot emerge from another distribution. However, we show that if each firm is engaged in head-on rivalry with one other competitor, the industry converges to a ’equidistantesque’ equilibrium of clusters of rivals
?Who am I to say?? Dutch care providers? evaluation of psychosocial vulnerability in pregnant women
Titan's atmosphere as observed by Cassini/VIMS solar occultations: CH, CO and evidence for CH absorption
We present an analysis of the VIMS solar occultations dataset, which allows
us to extract vertically resolved information on the characteristics of Titan's
atmosphere between 100-700 km with a characteristic vertical resolution of 10
km. After a series of data treatment procedures, 4 occultations out of 10 are
retained. This sample covers different seasons and latitudes of Titan. The
transmittances show clearly the evolution of the haze and detect the detached
layer at 310 km in Sept. 2011 at mid-northern latitudes. Through the inversion
of the transmission spectra with a line-by-line radiative transfer code we
retrieve the vertical distribution of CH and CO mixing ratio. The two
methane bands at 1.4 and 1.7 {\mu}m are always in good agreement and yield an
average stratospheric abundance of %. This is significantly less
than the value of 1.48% obtained by the GCMS/Huygens instrument. The analysis
of the residual spectra after the inversion shows that there are additional
absorptions which affect a great part of the VIMS wavelength range. We
attribute many of these additional bands to gaseous ethane, whose near-infrared
spectrum is not well modeled yet. Ethane contributes significantly to the
strong absorption between 3.2-3.5 {\mu}m that was previously attributed only to
C-H stretching bands from aerosols. Ethane bands may affect the surface windows
too, especially at 2.7 {\mu}m. Other residual bands are generated by stretching
modes of C-H, C-C and C-N bonds. In addition to the C-H stretch from aliphatic
hydrocarbons at 3.4 {\mu}m, we detect a strong and narrow absorption at 3.28
{\mu}m which we tentatively attribute to the presence of PAHs in the
stratosphere. C-C and C-N stretching bands are possibly present between 4.3-4.5
{\mu}m. Finally, we obtain the CO mixing ratio between 70-170 km. The average
result of ppm is in good agreement with previous studies.Comment: 51 pages, 28 figure
Inequity in the Utilization of Maternal-Health Care Services in South Asia: Nepal, India and Sri Lanka
To review the inequities in utilization of Skilled Birth Attendants (SBA) and institutional delivery services using “Three Delays framework” to categorize and explain socio economic determinants in Nepal, India and Sri Lanka.
Design: This is an article review which adopted narrative synthesis (a mixed method approach). Literature search was conducted from a relevant database including: Scopus, ProQuest and PubMed. The search was performed using developed list of search terms to find out published papers from Nepal, India and Sri Lanka. The paper also used data from Nepal Demographic Health Survey (NDHS, 2011), National Family Health Survey, India (NFHS, 2006) and Sri Lanka Demographic Health Survey (DHS, 2007).
Findings: From 438 articles, sixteen studies were included, from Nepal, India and Sri Lanka. Findings were organised under three delays themes: (1) deciding to seek health care by women and/or her family, (2) Reaching health care facility and (3) Receiving adequate and appropriate health care at the facility. The evidence from these studies showed wide variation in use of maternal health services exist both between and within respective countries. These differences are affected by education, distance, lack of transportation, cost of transportation and cost of delivery at hospitals.
Key conclusions: This study has shown high variations in the use of maternal health care services in South Asian countries. Nepal and India had lower access and higher inequalities in utilization of SBAs at delivery and institutional delivery by socio-economic determinants compared with Sri Lanka
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