Product Line Design and Production Technology

Loading...
Thumbnail Image
Penn collection
Operations, Information and Decisions Papers
Degree type
Discipline
Subject
product line
segmentation
cannibalization
EOQ
scale economies
marketing-manufacturing interface
Marketing
Other Business
Other Economics
Technology and Innovation
Funder
Grant number
License
Copyright date
Distributor
Related resources
Author
Netessine, Serguei
Taylor, Terry A
Contributor
Abstract

In this paper we characterize the impact of production technology on the optimal product line design. We analyze a problem in which a manufacturer segments the market on quality attributes and offers products that are partial substitutes. Because consumers self-select from the product line, product cannibalization is an issue. In addition, the manufacturer sets a production schedule in order to balance production setups with accumulation of inventories in the presence of economies of scale. We show that simultaneous optimization of the product line design and production schedule leads to insights that differ significantly from the common intuition and assertions in the literature, which omits either the demand side or the supply side of the equation. In particular, we demonstrate that more expensive production technology always leads to lower product prices and may at the same time lead to higher quality products. Further, a less efficient production technology does not necessarily increase total production costs or reduce consumer welfare. We also demonstrate that in the presence of production technology, the demand cannibalization problem may distort product quality upward or the number of products upward, which is contrary to the standard result.

Advisor
Date Range for Data Collection (Start Date)
Date Range for Data Collection (End Date)
Digital Object Identifier
Series name and number
Publication date
2007-01-01
Journal title
Marketing Science
Volume number
Issue number
Publisher
Publisher DOI
Journal Issue
Comments
Recommended citation
Collection