product and price competition in a duopoly this paper examines the role of consumer preferences costs and price competition in determining the competitive product strategy of a firm in the model studied here there are two identical firms competing on product quality and price they face consumers who prefer a higher quality product to a lower quality product but differ in how much they are willing to pay for quality the consumers can also choose a substitute if they don t like the product price offerings of the two firms for the firms a higher quality product costs more to produce than a lower quality product the paper shows that the equilibrium strategy for each firm should be to differentiate its product from its competitor with the firm choosing the higher quality choosing the higher margin as well this differentiation however is not efficient that is it is possible to choose two other products and offer them at prices that cover their marginal cost and still satisfy consumers needs better in the aggregate a monopolist by contrast would differentiate his product line efficiently this suggests that cannibalization has different effects on product strategy than competition the paper also shows that if one firm enters the market first then it can defend itself from later entrants and gain a first mover advantage by preempting the most desirable product position

buyer initiated vs seller initiated information revelation sales presentations are the core of the selling process where salespeople provide information to prospects one challenge is that the amount of information available to be potentially communicated may exceed salespeople s ability to communicate or customers ability to process there is limited bandwidth between the firm and customers one important decision then is which information should customers see what the firm chooses to tell customers may be informative in itself when constrained to a seller initiated information revelation format where the firm chooses which feature to show the firm never finds it optimal to offer more features than it is able to inform customers about consequently customers never find credible a claim that the product has all features the important implication is that price alone cannot serve as a signal of quality in this setting in contrast a buyer initiated information revelation format where customers decide which information to receive increases the probability of a sale and also results in the production of higher quality products in a competitive setting by adopting buyer initiated information revelation firms are able to attain positive profits this is due to the fact that customers infer the product s quality from the price along with the information revelation format customers know that at some prices firms find it profitable to produce high quality products and at other lower prices this is not the case thus customer empowerment leads to higher profits

market performance with multiproduct firms we revisit the fundamental issue of market provision of variety associated with chamberlin spence and dixit stiglitz when firms sell multiple products both products and firms are horizontally differentiated we propose a general nested demand framework where consumers first decide upon a firm then which variant to buy and how much the nested ces is a special case we use it to determine the market s biases when firms compete in product ranges and prices the market system attracts too many firms with too few products per firm firms restrain product ranges to relax price competition but this exacerbates over entry

a model of product line design and introduction sequence with reservation utility abstract cannibalization is a major concern for a firm when designing a product line in addition external options from outside the firm s product line may also play a significant role in this paper we investigate the impact of external options represented by reservation utility on product line design and introduction sequence we find that a heterogeneous reservation utility defines the relative attractiveness of segments and corresponding product line b reservation utility makes it more favorable to introduce products sequentially rather than simultaneously c aggregating segments is an effective way to mitigate cannibalization when it becomes too difficult to manage with different values of reservation utility across multiple segments and d introducing products in a non monotone order of quality can improve profit from simultaneous introduction when the value of reservation utility of a middle segment is particularly high

on strategic community development this paper examines strategic behavior of developers who through offering different congested public good packages and revenue fiscal schemes compete for residents who are differentiated by income there is an endogenous determination of numbers and sizes of communities developers have an incentive to strongly differentiate their public good offerings in terms of pricing strategies developers exhibit sharply contrasting behaviors in low income communities housing consumption is subsidized once lots are priced in high income communities housing consumption is generally taxed

bidimensional vertical differentiation in markets where product quality is important more than one characteristic is usually necessary for producers to define product quality standard theory maintains that i in a duopoly there will be a quality leader no matter whether the product can incorporate one or two vertical attributes ii differentiation pertains only to one attribute by contrast in our set up there are also equilibria where the quality leader is better in two attributes and others where there is cross leadership namely a situation where each firm designs a product to dominate the other in one characteristic applications to minimum quality standards and tax subsidy on quality products are sketched showing spill over effects from one to the other quality dimension

strategic analysis of diffusion of renewable energy in the nordic countries abstract today there are concerns related to security of energy supply growing energy demands limitations of fossil fuels and threats of disruptive climate changes to overcome the challenges diversification and utilization of renewable energy resources are defined as the main strategies however successful diffusion of renewable energy requires consideration to many factors including social economic and technical ones nordic countries are among the leading countries on successful development of renewable energy and energy efficiency this research in the frame of a strategic conceptual analysis studies the policies and achievements of the nordic region in their development of renewable energy the framework consists of four layers including dimensions characters objectives and key schemes

the principle of minimum differentiation holds under sufficient heterogeneity the so called principle of minimum differentiation stated by hotelling has been challenged by many authors this paper restores the principle by showing that n firms locate at the center of the market and charge prices higher than the marginal cost of production when heterogeneity in consumers tastes is large enough

quantitative methods in credit management a survey many static and dynamic models have been used to assist decision making in the area of consumer and commercial credit the decisions of interest include whether to extend credit how much credit to extend when collections on delinquent accounts should be initiated and what action should be taken we survey the use of discriminant analysis decision trees and expert systems for static decisions and dynamic programming linear programming and markov chains for dynamic decision models since these models do not operate in a vacuum we discuss some important aspects of credit management in practice e g legal considerations sources of data and statistical validation of the methodology we provide our perspective on the state of the art in theory and in practice

defensive marketing strategies this paper analyzes how a firm should adjust its marketing expenditures and its price to defend its position in an existing market from attack by a competitive new product our focus is to provide usable managerial recommendations on the strategy of response in particular we show that if products can be represented by their position in a multiattribute space consumers are heterogeneous and maximize utility and awareness advertising and distribution can be summarized by response functions then for the profit maximizing firm it is optimal to decrease awareness advertising it is optimal to decrease the distribution budget unless the new product can be kept out of the market a price increase may be optimal and even under the optimal strategy profits decrease as a result of the competitive new product furthermore if the consumer tastes are uniformly distributed across the spectrum a price decrease increases defensive profits it is optimal at the margin to improve product quality in the direction of the defending product s strength and it is optimal at the margin to reposition by advertising in the same direction in addition we provide practical procedures to estimate 1 the distribution of consumer tastes and 2 the position of the new product in perceptual space from sales data and knowledge of the percent of consumers who are aware of the new product and find it available competitive diagnostics such as the angle of attack are introduced to help the defending manager this article was originally published in marketing science volume 2 issue 4 pages 319 360 in 1983

deconstructing the pioneer s advantage examining vintage effects and consumer valuations of quality and variety several studies have demonstrated an order of entry effect on market share suggesting that pioneers outperform later entrants however other research has pointed out the limitations of these studies and found evidence that many pioneers fail or have low market share given this background the purpose of this research is to understand the conditions under which pioneers are more likely and also less likely to have an advantage we propose a game theoretic model that includes important sources of pioneer advantages as well as disadvantages specifically we incorporate a pioneer advantage due to preemption in markets with heterogeneous tastes in addition we incorporate a potential pioneer disadvantage due to technology vintage effects where later entrants utilizing improved technology can have lower costs and higher quality the model allows us to evaluate the extent of vintage effects necessary to overcome a pioneer s advantage key relationships are found between the magnitude of the pioneer advantage or disadvantage and consumer valuations of product attributes e g variety and quality we empirically validate the model with vintage effect data in 36 product categories and measures of consumer valuations of product variety and quality for 12 of these 36 categories the results show that pioneers do better in product categories wherevariety is more important and worse in categories where productquality is more important pioneers in categories with high vintage effects are shown to have lower market shares and higher failure rates similar results appear when analyzing persistence of market leadership over time further validating our model s major implications we also present two case studies that illustrate key elements of the model

an equilibrium analysis of defensive response to entry using a coupled response function model we determine the optimal response to competitive entry in a market characterized by a market share attraction model the response of an incumbent is limited to changes in prices advertising and distribution expenditures brand positions are assumed to be fixed we also assume that the entrant s position is chosen exogenously and that the sales potential of the market is constant after proving the existence of a unique nash equilibrium we show that the optimal response depends on the relative market share of the incumbents the response by nondominant brands with market shares less than 50 mirrors the prediction by decoupled response function models reduce price advertising and distribution spending for the dominant brand having a market share of 50 the response is to reduce price and increase marketing spending this finding explains previous empirical results that could not be addressed by the decoupled models

testing the adequacy of markov chain and mover stayer models as representations of credit behavior we summarize methodology for testing the compatibility of discrete time stochastic processes stationary and nonstationary markov chains and an extension the mover stayer model with longitudinal data from an unknown empirical process we apply this methodology to determine the suitability of these models to represent the payment behavior of a sample of retail revolving credit accounts we are led to reject stationary and also nonstationary markov chain models for our data and for our state space definition in favor of the mover stayer model the mover stayer model in contrast to markov chains incorporates a simple form of population heterogeneity stationary markov chains have been used extensively in finance literature to model payment behavior of credit accounts our empirical study suggests however that stationary markov chains may not appropriately model payment behavior it also indicates that incorporating heterogeneity in modeling payment behavior may be more important than incorporing nonstationarity

product line rivalry and market segmentation with an application to automobile optional engine pricing this paper addresses the questions whether and when the pricing practices on base products may differ from those of premium products sold with options or add ons various alternative models are considered a monopoly model a model of brand rivalry with full consumer information and a model of rivalry in which consumers are only well informed about base product prices only the brand rivalry model with limited consumer information predicts that premium products have larger percentage markups than base products provided that brand rivalry is sufficiently intense empirical evidence on base and premium product pricing in the automobile market is consistent with the limited information model and inconsistent with the other two models

the differentiation triangle the paper formalizes the observation that submarkets for high quality and low quality variants are markedly different from each other we study a simple model where variants of low quality cannot be horizontally differentiated whereas customers disagree about the value of variants in the high quality range we determine the outcome under price competition in the differentiation triangle with sequential entry when each firm can develop the vertical product line or decide to follow a niche strategy i e to develop only one variant

using game theory to model competition the article is an exposition of the basic concepts of noncooperative game theory and their application to advertising product and price competition

note competitive price and positioning strategies brand positioning and brand pricing are important strategic decisions for marketing managers such decisions are interrelated and depend upon competitive brand positions and prices however any unilateral decisions may encourage repositioning and price adjustment by competitors thus leading to either new market equilibria or a price positioning war this paper examines such price and positioning decisions in a competitive environment by extending the defender consumer model to more complex equilibria we assume that the brands are already in the market and that positions are sticky in the sense that brands cannot leapfrog one another among the insights for such incumbent brands are if prices are symmetric and held constant firms seek to reposition toward the center of the market but price advantages by central firms can mediate that central tendency such that an equilibrium exists with positive profits if brand positions are held constant the nash equilibria for prices exist and are unique and category profits the sum of brand profits are maximized for maximum brand differentiation for two and three brand markets the subgame perfect nash equilibrium where positioning decisions are made with foresight on the price equilibria causes firms to unilaterally seek maximum brand differentiation but for four or more brands greater foresight and or cooperation appears necessary to reach the point of maximum brand differentiation these results apply where the defender consumer model is an exact description of consumer response and where the competitive reaction assumptions hold in any empirical situation such forces might be softened resulting in differentiated but not maximally differentiated brands

product and price competition in a two dimensional vertical differentiation model in this paper the one dimensional vertical differentiation model shaked and sutton shaked a j sutton 1982 relaxing price competition through product differentiation rev econom stud 49 3 13 moorthy moorthy k s 1988 product and price competition in a duopoly marketing sci 7spring 141 168 is extended to two dimensions and an analysis of product and price competition is presented a two stage game theoretic analysis in which two firms compete first on product positions and then on price is conducted closed form equilibrium solutions are obtained for each stage in which competitors are unrestricted in their choices of price or product positions a significant finding of this research is that unlike the one dimensional vertical differentiation model firms do not tend towards maximum differentiation although this solution is possible under certain conditions when the range of positioning options on each of the dimensions is equal maxmin product differentiation occurs that is in equilibrium the two firms tend to choose positions which will represent maximum differentiation on one dimension and minimum differentiation on the other dimension

turf wars product line strategies in competitive markets in this paper we study product line scope and pricing decisions in a horizontally differentiated duopoly past research has shown that a firm may offer a broader product line to attract higher demand or charge a higher price or both and benefit at the expense of its competitor we show that such outcomes may be reversed especially when consumers have relatively high valuation and low heterogeneity in their preferences for the line extension we find that an equilibrium exists such that only one firm prefers to expand scope but profits may be higher for both firms even in the absence of market size expansion this is because a broader scope permits that firm to effectively price discriminate by raising prices for its core customers the competitor optimally responds by lowering prices to gain share and earn a higher profit thus higher prices for the firm expanding its product line translate into higher demand for the competing firm thus increasing profit for both we show that our results hold when firms deploy generic offensive or defensive strategies during product line expansion

pioneers marketing mix reactions to entry in different competitive game structures theoretical analysis and empirical illustration pioneers marketing mix reactions to new entries are recognized as important determinants of the outcome of pioneerlate mover competition particularly in price inelastic markets such as those for pharmaceuticals cigarettes and luxury goods managers in such markets are interested in better understanding when to accommodate i e decrease marketing spending or retaliate i e increase spending in nonprice marketing variables such as advertising and salesforce in addition the reallocation of marketing resources toward advertising indicated by a pull strategy or salesforce indicated by a push strategy upon entry is strategically important to managers previous theoretical research shows that pioneers should retaliate in both static and growing markets results from empirical research are mixed in that they support both accommodation and retaliation in growing markets empirical research also shows that a pioneer accommodates retaliates with its low high elasticity marketing mix variable contrary to prior research however some pioneers have successfully accommodated late movers in growing markets and in some cases have accommodated with their stronger marketing mix variables and also retaliated with their weaker marketing mix variables for example bristol myers squibb s capoten accommodated the entry of merck s vasotec in the growing ace inhibitors market with its more powerful variable salesforce but also retaliated with its less potent variable advertising moreover not much is known about how the pioneer s marketing mix allocation should change i e toward pull vs push strategies in response to new entries we seek to better explain the pioneer s reactions and predict its shift in marketing mix allocation upon new entry we note that prior research s predictions on the pioneer s reactions are based on a limited number of key factors such as product market characteristics and the pioneer s elasticities prior to a new entry in this paper we extend previous research by adding two other critical factors namely the impact of new entry on the pioneer s elasticities and margin and different competitive game structures to better predict and explain the pioneer s reactions we develop analytical results on the pioneer s reactions in price advertising and salesforce in different competitive games both nash and different leader follower games in these results we identify the conditions under which the pioneer should accommodate or retaliate or not react to a late mover s entry and shift its marketing mix allocation toward pull versus push strategies we empirically illustrate some of the analytical results using data from a pharmaceutical category we show that a pioneer who adopts a follower leader role with respect to a marketing mix variable in a static growing market and witnesses a decrease an increase in own elasticity and margin upon a new entry generally should accommodate retaliate in that variable however we are also able to show that there are cases where these general reactions don t hold thus for example it is possible for a pioneer to find it optimal to accommodate in a growing market or to retaliate even when its elasticity decreases upon entry depending on the combination of competitive game the impact of entry on elasticities and margin and market growth in this way our results point to the fact that it is necessary to look not only at one factor at a time but instead examine the combination of all the factors we explain the empirical support for both accommodation and retaliation in growing markets by showing that the pioneer should accommodate retaliate a late mover with its competitively low high elasticity marketing mix variable competitively high low elasticity variables are not are likely to be significantly reduced by a new entry in the anticipated competitive game with regard to reallocation of the pioneer s marketing mix we show that the change in the pioneer s marketing mix allocation should follow the change in the relative marketing mix effectiveness after new entry this in turn depends on the structure of competition the impact of the late mover on its elasticities and margins and the competitor s marketing mix elasticities in addition to own elasticities the results can guide managers on how factors such as competitive structure changes in elasticities and margin and market growth impact the pioneer s marketing mix decisions and on when to accommodate retaliate or not react to a late mover s entry and shift marketing mix allocation toward pull versus push strategies

the effect of sample size on european union s renewable energy investment drivers abstractmacroeconomic modelling results based on relatively varying sample sizes may lead to incoherent results such effects have not been adequately understood in the renewable energy literature regarding the european union eu this study focuses on the comparison of results obtained for renewable energy investment drivers for solar and wind energy investments on different samples of eu countries including all eu 27 former eu 15 and 11 high renewable investment eu countries the study used a random effect panel data modelling approach over the period 1995 2011 for studying the impact of the levelized cost regulation perception carbon emissions and climatic condition on wind and solar investments over the three samples the results demonstrate the importance of trustable regulation schemes to ensure that regulation will not have a significant negative effect on investment showing also the need to further extend the model to include support schemes as fundamental drivers for investment

the prime criteria for private sector participation in renewable energy investment in the middle east case study iran abstract to have sustainable electricity generation from renewable energy resources economically competitive more privatization is needed in this sector true understanding based on transparent information is one of the salient necessities for the private sector to invest in the energy business in this article the researchers are to recognize the targeted factors considered by the private sector in order to improve their participation in the electricity generation markets from renewable sources in the middle east the results illustrate that the most important factors are governmental policies consumption markets and engineering efficiency these recognized factors then are classified from different aspects such as techno engineering business and relevant policies and the environment

the economics of product variety a survey demand for variety may arise from a taste for diversity in individual consumption and or from diversity in tastes even when each consumer chooses a single variant the full degree of variety potentially demanded will not in general be supplied because scale economies even to a small degree mean that the potential welfare or revenue gain from greater variety must be balanced against the lower unit production costs with fewer variants the economics of product variety consists essentially in analysing the effect of this balance in different situations and comparing the degree of product variety for different market structures with each other and with the optimum the survey commences with the work on market structures with single product firms generalized monopolistic competition tracing modern developments in both the chamberlinian and hotelling traditions the latter has been particularly fruitful due to the expansion of the original locational ideas into virtual spaces in product characteristics the emphasis in recent work on product variety has been on multiproduct firms in both monopolistic and oligopolistic structures including strategic market preemption although most work has been in a full information context there have been advances in product variety under imperfect information either by consumers to properties of the firms products or firms as to consumers demands

social learning in networks of friends versus strangers networks and the embedded relationships are critical determinants of how people communicate and form beliefs the explosion of social media has significantly increased the scope and impact of social learning among consumers this paper studies observational learning in networks of friends versus strangers a consumer decides whether to adopt a product after receiving a private signal about product quality and observing the actions of others the preference for the product has greater heterogeneity in the stranger network than in the friend network we show that when the network is small observing friends actions helps the consumer make more accurate inferences about quality as the network grows however the stranger network becomes more effective underlying these results are two competing effects of network heterogeneity on social learning these are the individual preference effect which allows one to make a better quality judgment when the preference element of past actions is more certain and the social conforming effect wherein private signals are underused in quality judgment as people follow others actions we find cascading is more likely to occur in the friend network than in the stranger network for a high quality firm the stranger network generates greater sales than the friend network when the network size is sufficiently large or the private signal is sufficiently accurate we also examine the existence of experts and firms using advertising to influence consumers finally we show how networks that are highly homogeneous or heterogeneous could impede observational learning

renewable energy supply chain in ostrobothnia region and vaasa city innovative framework energy and environmental technology is one of the most important debates among citizens and the government of finland as development of renewable energy utilization depends on geographical situation the policy and strategic decisions of renewable promotion should focus more on regionals studies ostrobothnia and its capital vaasa are among the best regions with high potentials of new renewable energy resources including wind power smart grids biofuels and geothermal energy in finland however high penetration of renewable energies creates challenges from supply chain viewpoint including environmental grid operators and maintain reliable service this article discusses the development and performance of renewables supply chain in ostrobothnia region and vaasa city the presented framework provides managerial insights to policy makers of governments and municipalities as well as researchers and other stockholders to consider different aspects of diffusion of renewable energy technologies in the regional levels the contributions are also beneficial for further studies related to renewable energy development sources carriers and services

the need for improved financial reporting of a developing country energy utility abstract some consideration has been given to regulatory and institutional reforms to facilitate sustainable development in electricity usage in papua new guinea but little attention has been paid to bringing about full compliance of financial reporting expectations of the country s main energy utility examining documentary evidence of the audit reports of the auditor general s office of papua new guinea this study considers the financial reporting compliance of png power for the period 2007 2013 and the means by which compliant reporting may be improved the results of the study reveal that the financial statements of png power are late and receive disclaimers of opinion from the auditor general s office which suggest that png power s stakeholders are not receiving accurate and reliable financial information to make informed decisions about sustainable development of electricity usage and planning in papua new guinea the study reveals that it would take little resources to improve png power s reporting which in turn could enhance national energy policy decision making and energy utility accountability

product differentiation with multiple qualities abstract we study subgame perfect equilibria of the classical quality price multistage game of vertical product differentiation each of two firms can choose the levels of an arbitrary number of qualities consumers valuations are drawn from independent and general distributions the unit cost of production is increasing and convex in qualities we characterize equilibrium prices and the effects of qualities on the rival s equilibrium price in the general model equilibrium qualities depend on what we call the spence and price reaction effects for any equilibrium we characterize conditions for quality differentiation

stochastic financial analytics for cash flow forecasting abstract accurate cash flow forecasting is essential for successful management of firms and it becomes especially critical during uncertain market and credit conditions without accurate cash flow forecasting a firm may fail to meet its short term obligations and risk bankruptcy accurate cash flow forecasting can be limited by a number of factors including changes in macro economic conditions that influence liquidity in the economy customer payment behavior that can vary from time to time as well by industry and dynamics of the particular supply chain itself we develop stochastic financial analytics for cash flow forecasting for firms by integrating two models 1 markov chain model of the aggregate payment behavior across all customers of the firm using accounts receivable aging and 2 bayesian model of individual customer payment behavior at the individual invoice level as the stochastic dynamics of cash flow evolves every day the forecast can be updated every time an invoice is paid the proposed model is back tested using empirical data from a small manufacturing firm and found to differ 3 6 from actual monthly cash flow and differs approximately 2 4 compared to actual annual cash flow the forecast accuracy of the proposed stochastic financial analytics model is found to be considerably superior to other techniques commonly used furthermore in computer simulation experiments the proposed model is found to be largely robust to supply chain dynamics including when subjected to severe bullwhip effect the proposed model has been implemented in excel which allows it to be easily integrated with the accounts receivable aging data making it practicable for small and large firms

operational research and financial management abstract the use of operational research in financial management is reviewed its application to both short term problems of cash management and long term problems of capital investment is critically examined the contribution that operational research has made to modern theories of finance and their use is explored and differences in orientation are discussed the increasing complexity of financial management problems facing many corporations is providing more opportunities for the operational researcher whose role in this area is being reappraised

defensive marketing strategies an equilibrium analysis based on decoupled response function models the entry of a new product attacker into a competitive market is likely to provoke responses from some or all of the existing products defenders this paper investigates the development of optimal defensive strategies based on an understanding of the possible reactions of all the defenders to an optimal attack following lane lane w j 1980 product differentiation in a market with endogenous sequential entry bell j econom 11 1 spring 237 260 we assume that n products each enter sequentially with perfect foresight on subsequent entry then based on new technology an unanticipated attacker enters the n defenders respond in price but not position according to lane s model once this equilibrium is obtained advertising and distribution response functions scale sales we show that under these decoupled response function models of advertising and distribution uniformly distributed tastes and nonincreasing market size the optimal defense for all existing brands is to decrease their respecti

product positioning under price competition this paper presents a consumer based methodology for new product pricing and positioning in the face of price competition the price competition is modelled as a nash equilibrium for which two complementary approaches are employed an analytical approach of duopoly provides qualitative insights into the competitive behavior and a numerical approach of general oligopoly provides quantitative solutions under a wide variety of market scenarios the optimal product positioning is formulated as a stackelberg nash leader followers equilibrium which can be solved numerically using recent advances in the field of variational inequalities a small example concerning analgesics is used to illustrate this methodology

note on the cyert davidson thompson doubtful accounts model the results of the classical cyert davidson and thompson cdt model for estimating the allowance for doubtful accounts could be made more valuable by correcting one flaw the cdt model rests on the total balance method of aging dollars and as presented its answers cannot wisely be applied to estimate real dollar amounts notably the steady state distributions derived by the model tend to underestimate actually paid dollar amounts

perceptual position and competitive brand strategy in a two dimensional two brand market brand positioning and competitive reaction are important determinants of optimal brand strategy analyses of brand strategy have focused on optimal pricing and positioning issues using either empirical models of perceptions and preferences game theory to examine competition or both however the important issues of advertising and distribution strategy have not been fully addressed this paper analyzes competition and strategy between two brands that compete in a two dimensional market with advertising and distribution spending in addition to prices and product positions in particular for a unimodal taste distribution of ideal points we show how optimal competitive nash equilibrium marketing mix levels and profits depend on the positions of both brands brands can reposition to increase profit and under what conditions these strategies imply minimum versus maximum differentiation positioning equilibria and how the intensity of advertising and distribution competition affect equilibrium brand positions

nash equilibrium in duopoly with products defined by two characteristics this article analyzes the analogue ofhotellingls duopoly model when products are dejned by two characteristics using the assumptions of the original model of hotelling we show that demand and projt functions are continuous for a wide class of utility functions when the utilityfunction is linear in the euclidean distance in the space of characteristics a noncooperative equilibrium in prices exists for all symmetric locations ofjirms this is in contrast to the result in the one characteristic model where a noncooperative equilibrium exists only when products are very diferent the noncooperative equilibria are calculated and fully characterized in contrast with the one dimensional model of hotelling where equilibrium prices were constant irrespective of distance of symmetric locations here equilibrium prices tend to zero as the distance between products approaches zero

aggregation and imperfect competition on the existence of equilibrium we present a new approach to the theory of imperfect competition and apply it to study price competition among differentiated products the central result provides general conditions under which there exists a pure strategy price equilibrium for any number of firms producing any set of products this includes products with multi dimen sional attributes in addition to the proof of existence we provide conditions for uniqueness our analysis covers location models the characteristics approach and probabilistic choice together in a unified framework to prove existence we employ aggregation theorems due to prekopa 1971 and borell 1975 our companion paper caplin and nalebuff 1991 introduces these theorems and develops the application to super majority voting rules we present a new approach to the theory of imperfect competition and apply it to study price competition among differentiated products the central result is that there exists a pure strategy price equilibrium for any number of firms producing any set of products in addition to the proof of existence we provide conditions for uniqueness our model both unites diverse strands of the earlier literature and opens up uncharted areas for future analysis in particular we expand the traditional one dimensional framework to allow for multi dimen sional product differentiation our approach involves twin restrictions on consumer preferences one on individuals preferences the other on the distribution of preferences across society these are generalizations of the restrictions supporting 64 majority rule presented in caplin and nalebuff 1988 to prove existence we apply a new technique of aggregation this technique is valuable in a variety of other problems in the companion paper we use the aggregation result to generalize our earlier work on 64 majority rule and to characterize the relationship between the distribution of human capital and the distribution of income caplin and nalebuff 1991 there are additional applications in statistics and in search theory we begin with a brief review of the early literature on imperfect competition describing in more detail the existence problem and previous solutions section 3 presents our twin assumptions and shows that they cover many standard cases in section 4 we introduce the aggregation theorem and use it in the analysis of demand functions the proof of existence of equilibrium is in section

new brand positioning and pricing in an oligopolistic market the positioning and pricing of a new brand requires knowledge about the relationship of both demand and cost with potential attribute locations and prices this paper addresses this problem and illustrates it in the context of the automobile market multi attribute expected utility theory which allows for consumer uncertainty about the brands is used to model individuals behavior attribute weights are estimated from market survey data on brands attributes and preferences using linmap as an estimation procedure expected utility is then updated using the multinomial logit model and choice data to account for the observation that stated preferences do not perfectly reflect the eventual choice it is hypothesized that when faced with an actual choice price may become more important to the consumer while other attributes may become more or less important than is reflected in stated preferences the resulting estimated choice probabilities are aggregated to form demand functions facing each brand which depend on all brands prices and attribute space locations assuming there is a price equilibrium in the existing market and that firms have the same variable cost function variable costs as a function of a brand s attribute levels are estimated given the demand and cost functions facing each firm including the potential new entrant the profit maximizing positioning and pricing of a new brand is analyzed using a game theoretic approach a solution is sought under the assumption that incumbents react to entry by changing their prices possible approaches to the translation of the perceptual attribute positioning of the new brand to physical and engineering attributes are reviewed improvements and future extensions of the study are discussed

business structure in renewable energy industry key areas abstract diffusion of renewable energy utilization is difficult because of its entrepreneurial nature and related technological investment political and market uncertainties therefore evaluation of business structure based on traditional business models is difficult in this industry although many countries have actively developed renewable energy technologies by both governments and private sector business professionals are not still assured about participation and investment understanding the areas of business structure that lead to successful commercialization of renewable technologies has suitable research scope in this industry the objective of this article is to identify key areas of business structure to allow newcomers to enter successfully in the renewable energy industry from engineering policy and business aspects the innovative analysis leads to identification of seven sides of renewable energy business