System Architecture Dynamics The case of Japanese Car Navigation Systems

This paper attempts to clarify how the integration of software and hardware is related to product systems and product development organization in the growing electronic equipment market in the IT age. As a framework for analyzing the effect of integration, we will examine the influence of software on product functions, product development organization and product innovation by introducing the concept of system architecture, which represents the nature of a system, and is defined as a combination of hardware and software. As a particular case, Japanese car navigation market is analyzed. Regarding system architecture, we discuss how both software and hardware have open architecture dynamics, how those dynamics have several trajectories, and have a major impact not only on cooperation between product development structure and external organization, but also on innovation.

Modularization for Product Competitiveness - Analysis of Modularization in the Digital Camera Industry -

Focusing on the digital camera industry with high Japanese competitiveness in IT industry, entrants are analyzed in detail as to how growth was achieved after the period of market introduction and particularly from the view of modularization and platform strategies of leading companies. As a result, the involvement of indicators such as product production, development lead-time, and price with the strategies of modularization and platform was analyzed.Product Development, Modularity, Product Platform, Vertical Integration, Product Strategy

The Marketing-product Development Interface - Information Acquisition for Product Development -

In the traditional company marketing approach, marketing people concentrated on how to sell the enormous volume of products, and how to achieve specific quotas based on the human relationships with clients built up by individual salesmen. On the other hand, the main concern of today's leading companies is "intelligent marketing". Here, a "total solution-oriented business" is important, which not only involves selling products, but also gathering information from clients and making business proposals to clients. Here, by focusing particularly on marketing as a link to the market, we shall show that if there is poor interfacing with product development, this marketing strategy will not succeed. The question and topic addressed by this research was the marketing-product development interface in the context of what product strategy we should introduce in an uncertain market. The hypotheses we introduced were based on two points. First, concerning the hypothesis that "marketing information is useful in product development", the answer was negative. Next, concerning the hypothesis that "the value of marketing information varies depending on the product development process", the hypothesis was corroborated, and we found that the information required for new product development does have different requirements for each process and new product type. We found that new product development processes and new product types are intimately related to the need for acquiring information and the effect of decision-making.

Perceptions of Customers as Sustained Competitive Advantages of Global Marketing Airline Alliances: A Hybrid Text Mining Approach

Over the past several decades, the aviation industry has been reshaped, centering on global alliances, and these have grown exponentially. However, it is still not clear whether they are achieving sustained competitive advantages, and what are the specific competitive advantages of the three alliances (oneworld, SkyTeam, Star Alliance) arising on the customer side. This study aims to examine whether global alliance groups outperform the non-alliance group, how the three alliances differ regarding passengers' perceptions, and what their competitive advantages are. A hybrid text mining analysis was adopted as this study's method. Frequency tests, t-tests, one-way analysis of variance tests, and three-step mediated regression analyses were performed using 6393 ordinal and word-of-mouth (WOM) data. We found that the degree of passengers' perceptions of alliances was low, the non-alliance group outperformed the alliance groups, and there were no significant differences between alliances on service rating and sentiment score. Only oneworld has competitive advantages that link to passengers' service rating and sentiment score. These findings imply that alliances could not ensure competitive advantages that derive from customers' perceptions, and although passengers partly perceived several selling points, their differentiation strategies are not successful

Trends of Corporate Mission Statements: From pursuing profit to distinctive and social value

A mission statement has a significant meaning as the initial and essential step in a company’s strategic planning process. Previous studies have pointed out the necessity of monitoring and longitudinal study of corporate mission statements as they should be continuously revised against changes in companies’ strategies and business environment. This study aims to shed light on what types of strategies and values are currently highlighted in companies’ mission statements in comparison with the findings of a well-known previous study. Therefore, this study conducted a content analysis of 491 Fortune 500 companies’ mission statements. As a result, we found that “philosophy” is mostly highlighted and “profitability” is not emphasized in contemporary companies’ mission statements. Compared to the past study, these findings imply that there have been dramatic changes in the content of corporate mission statements. Besides, this study divided 491 Fortune 500 companies into two groups, high performers and low performers, according to their Fortune ranking and investigated significant differences between high and low performers using t-tests. The high performers were found to more often highlight “selfconcept” and “public image” than low performers. However, the difference in mean scores between high and low performers has become smaller than in the past finding. In particular, there is no statistical difference in mission statement component numbers between high and low performers. These findings can provide futher understanding about changes of companies’ strategic emphasis and the nature of corporate mission statements. This study provides a comparative insight for practitioners making company mission statements