新产品定位决策对市场结构的影响——基于中国轿车行业产品层面数据的实证分析

Impact of New Product Development Behavior on Industry Structuring——Evidence from China's Automobile Industry

企业的新产品定位决策表现出两方面特征,一是路径依赖,二是差异化合谋。寡头企业为了避免成为反垄断调查的目标,通过协调产品差异化的方式,形成比价格合谋更加隐蔽的合谋。本文收集了中国轿车企业1998—2013年生产的530种车型的信息,通过属性价格模型构造产品空间,对新车型定位决策进行分析。本文的主要发现如下:1轿车企业的新产品定位决策表现出"路径依赖"特征,即新车型贴近本企业的已有车型;2轿车企业的新产品定位决策表现出"差异化合谋"特征,即新车型远离竞争对手的已有车型;3企业资源对"路径依赖"特征和"差异化合谋"特征存在调节作用;4本土企业与外资企业在"路径依赖"方面没有差异,但在"差异化合谋"方面存在显著差异,外资企业比本土企业表现出更明显的"差异化合谋"倾向。本文的结论意味着,尽管汽车产业政策对外资进行了很多限制,但差异化合谋行为使得轿车行业中的外资纽带越来越紧密,而内资纽带则越来越松散。

Finn＇s new product development behavior exhibits two kinds of features： one is path dependence and the other is collusion on differentiation. Oligopoly firms can cooperate on product differentiation to enforce collusion which is hard to detect by antitrust authorities. This paper analyzes new product development behavior of China＇s automobile makers using a dataset containing prices, sales and product characteristics of 530 car models during 1998-2013. The results are as follows：① The new product development behavior of all firms exhibits ＂path dependence＂ feature, which implies firms tends to introduce new models near exist own ones; ②The new product development behavior of all firms exhibits ＂differentiation collusion＂ feature which implies it tends to introduce new models far away from exist rival ones; ③The resources of finns moderate the effects of ＂path dependence＂ and ＂differentiation collusion＂ features; ④The new product development behavior of local finns is different from their foreign counterpart on ＂differentiation collusion＂ features, which can be a key to understand how China＇s automobile industry evolves its market structure.