Impacts of trade-in program on duopoly competition with product quality differentiation and secondhand market

Considering the existence of the secondhand market and the implementation of trade-in program,the competition models between two manufacturers who produce the same products at various qualities are developed by the Nash game,and the impacts of the trade-in program from the perspectives of the demands,profits,marginal profits of manufacturers and the net costs of consumers are investigated.It finds that the trade-in program has different impacts when it is implemented by different manufacturers.When the low-quality manufacturer implements the program,it is always beneficial to himself and consumers but harmful to the high-quality manufacturer.However,when the program is implemented by the high-quality manufacturer,it can be beneficial to the low-quality manufacturer as well as to the implementer but harmful to consumers if the transaction cost of the consumer selling the used product in the secondhand market is low enough.Furthermore,with the increase in transaction cost,it also becomes harmful to the low-quality manufacturer and beneficial to consumers,which is the same as in the case that the low-quality manufacturer implements the trade-in program.The impacts of related parameters on the demands,marginal profits of manufacturers and the net costs of consumers are also analyzed.

Cause-related Marketing Strategy in Supply Chain Considering Quality Differentiation

Cause-related marketing(CRM),as an organic combination of marketing and corporate social responsibility(CSR),has been widely used in the supply chain.However,the existing literature rarely studies the CRM strategy the in the supply chain.This paper explores the pricing decisions and CRM strategy of supply chain members by examining a supply chain system consisting of a manufacturer and a retailer,where the manufacturer produces two quality differentiated products.By developing a Stackelberg model for three scenarios,including the No CRM strategy,CRM strategy for the high-quality product,and CRM strategy for the low-quality product,this paper finds that the CRM strategy will result in higher wholesale and sales prices for the cause-related product.In addition,consumers’pro-sociality and the degree of product quality differentiation are critical to the manufacturer’s choice of CRM strategy.When the quality difference differs significantly,the manufacturer should implement CRM for the high-quality product in a market with low consumer pro-sociality and for the low-quality product in a market with high consumer pro-sociality;when the product quality difference is slight,the manufacturer should choose to implement CRM for the low-quality product regardless of consumer’s pro-sociality.Furthermore,the model is extended to that the retailer implements the CRM strategy and a retailer-led supply chain.The results indicate that CRM strategy in the supply chain is not influenced by the implementing entity or the supply chain leader.

Mixed Market Competition in a Quality Differentiated Duopoly Model An Approach to Banking Sector

This paper attempts to develop a theoretical framework to investigate the competitive implications of quality choices of financial institutions whereby they charge prices to consumers based on their willingness to pay for the service qualities in the mixed market scenario under vertical product differentiation model. Initially, it analyzes benchmark equilibrium solutions of monopoly and duopoly to establish the degree of quality differentiation between two private banks in an uncover market configuration. Further, it estimates the quality differentiation between private and public banks, and examines the interaction between two market structures keeping public bank as both leader and follower, and then measures the social welfare from different prospectives. The explicit operation of two stages Nash equilibrium game forecasted that public banks＇ monopoly seems to be still better than a private banking, and it is socially optimal. The outcome demonstrates a significant importance of vertical quality differentiation for policy implication in banking industry and provides an insight on the reasons of particular co-existence of public and private banking services in the specified location. In this context, it is concluded that the presence of public banks in banking industries is a crucial condition for obtaining the higher range of social welfare.

A novel satellite-equipped receiver for autonomous monitoring of GNSS navigation signal quality

Global navigation satellite system(GNSS) comes with potential unavoidable application risks such as the sudden distortion or failure of navigation signals because its satellites are generally operated until failure. In order to solve the problems associated with these risks, receiver autonomous integrity monitoring(RAIM) and ground-based signal quality monitoring stations are widely used. Although these technologies can protect the user from the risks, they are expensive and have limited region coverage. Autonomous monitoring of satellite signal quality is an effective method to eliminate these shortcomings of the RAIM and ground-based signal quality monitoring stations; thus, a new navigation signal quality monitoring receiver which can be equipped on the satellite platform of GNSS is proposed in this paper. Because this satellite-equipped receiver is tightly coupled with navigation payload, the system architecture and its preliminary design procedure are first introduced. In theory, code-tracking loop is able to provide accurate time delay estimation of received signals. However, because of the nonlinear characteristics of the navigation payload, the traditional code-tracking loop introduces errors. To eliminate these errors, the dummy massive parallel correlators(DMPC) technique is proposed. This technique can reconstruct the cross correlation function of a navigation signal with a high code phase resolution. Combining the DMPC and direct radio frequency(RF) sampling technology, the satellite-equipped receiver can calibrate the differential code bias(DCB) accurately. In the meantime, the abnormities and failures of navigation signal can also be monitored. Finally, the accuracy of DCB calibration and the performance of fault monitoring have been verified by practical test data and numerical simulation data, respectively. The results show that the accuracy of DCB calibration is less than 0.1 ns and the novel satellite-equipped receiver can monitor the signal quality effectively.

In-house or Outsourcing R&D?Manufacturer Technology Strategy in the Presence of Market Follower Encroachment

Facing the threat of market follower encroachment,this paper constructs game theoretical models based on different channel structures and market structures,investigates following manufacturer's encroachment strategy and technology strategies,and discusses the impact of following manufacturer's strategy on quality decisions.The results show that encroachment always improves consumer surplus by slashing prices when leading manufacturer adopts in-house R&D(IRD);otherwise,it results in lower consumer surplus with mild competition if leading manufacturer is at a technological disadvantage.Furthermore,the technology strategies of following manufacturer are related to their R&D capabilities.The superior one is outsourcing R&D(ORD)for the manufacturers when their R&D capability is weak,otherwise,IRD is optimal.In a word,the leading manufacturer always prefers IRD under certain conditions,while the following manufacturer always prefers ORD.In addition,encroachment restrains quality innovative motivation under fixed or quality-sensitive R&D costs,but can improve quality level when consumers have a higher reference dependency for quality;meanwhile,the following manufacturer adopting ORD is always beneficial to quality improvement.