Creative Contributory Contests to Spur Innovation in Sexual Health: 2 Cases and a Guide for Implementation

Sexual health campaigns are often designed “top-down” by public health experts, failing to engage key populations. Using the power of crowdsourcing to shape a “bottom-up” approach, this note describes two creative contributory contests (CCC) to enhance sexual health campaigns. We provide guidance for designing CCCs to improve HIV and other STD testing

Inferring Market Structure from Customer Response to Competing and Complementary Products

We consider customer influences on market structure, arguing that market structure should explain the extent to which any given set of market offerings are substitutes or complements. We describe recent additions to the market structure analysis literature and identify promising directions for new research in market structure analysis. Impressive advances in data collection, statistical methodology and information technology provide unique opportunities for researchers to build market structure tools that can assist “real-time” marketing decision-making.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/46981/1/11002_2004_Article_5088105.pd

The Dynamic Pricing of Next Generation Consumer Durables

Learning curve effects, aspects of consumer demand models (e.g., reservation price distributions, intertemporal utility maximizing behavior), and competitive activity are reasons which have been offered to explain why prices of new durables decline over time. This paper presents an alternative rationale based on the buying behavior for products with overlapping replacement cycles (i.e., next generation products). A model for consumer sales of a new durable is developed by incorporating the replacement behavior of a previous generation product. Pricing strategies for two product generations are investigated analytically and with numerical methods. Results indicate that durable replacement behavior leads to a wider set of optimal pricing strategies than previously obtained. Several empirical illustrations of industry pricing practices for successive product generations are also shown to be consistent with the theoretical results. Finally, various areas for future research are outlined.installed base, replacement behavior, technology substitution

High-Definition Television: Assessing Demand Forecasts for a Next Generation Consumer Durable

High-Definition Television promises to be the next generation of television. This technology has broad implications for consumer markets, as well as the underlying manufacturing, technology development, and R&D activities of firms. Under increasing pressure from various groups, the U.S. government must make major policy and funding decisions based on its assessment of the likely demand for HDTV. Three published reports which forecast sales of HDTV after its scheduled introduction in the mid-1990s are available. Unfortunately, these forecasts offer widely differing perspectives on HDTV's potential. This paper presents an approach that links product segmentation (based on historical demand parameters, and marketing and manufacturing related variables) and demand forecasting for new products. The published HDTV forecasts are then assessed using this segmentation scheme. Differing from the Congressional Budget Office's earlier evaluation, this analysis indicates that one report is consistent with historical data from the home appliance industry.technology policy, consumer electronics, marketing, manufacturing

Brand Loyalty and Marketing Strategy: An Application to Home Appliances

In the academic literature, the modelling of brand choice and switching behavior has a long history for frequently purchased packaged goods. Comparable efforts with consumer durable goods, however, are generally absent. This paper presents an application of the brand switching model proposed by Colombo and Morrison (1989) to a set of four major home appliances. Appliance brand loyalty, however, is shown to be a function of the timing of replacements, a factor that has not entered into the modelling of packed goods. As a result, the brand switching matrices are analyzed over the replacement cycle. This application illustrates how a brand switching analysis can be used to assess the relative competitive position of a firm in terms of the primary customer sources that a brand attracts.consumer durable, replacement cycle, brand switching