The aim of this research was to determine if strategic marketing options will grow the sales of finer grade vermiculite.

The aim of this research was to determine if strategic marketing options will grow the sales of finer grade vermiculite.

This research is to understand the business strategy of making products luxurious. Owing to more and more serious poverty gaps in our social and economic environment, ¡§M¡¨ type society becomes an important issue for everyone. ¡§M¡¨ type society makes the rich people being richer and the poor people being poorer,. This phenomenon will affect consumer behaviors and whole market environment. According to the study of AC Nielson¡]2006¡^, more than 50% people in Taiwan tend to save more money in daily life for buying more their favorites or luxury goods instead. In this situation, companies should take special strategies to face this challenging new impact in the market. Therefore, the strategy of making products luxurious is one of best choices to try. For solving this situation, many companies have made their products luxurious successfully such as Acer (Ferrari notebook products), Toyota (Lexus automobile), and Giant (bike). These firms develop from middle market position to high market position, and make their product price more expensive, more high quality and more luxurious. Furthermore, their luxury products sold successfully in their target segments. All these cases are successful examples showing the effects of strategy of making products luxurious, accordingly this research sort out the precise strategies and methods through these successful case studies. Through using multiple cases study method, this research discusses the practicable ways to do the strategy of making products luxurious. Moreover, this research also goes through the conceptions of product positioning, the definition of luxury, product strategy, product line extended to build the conceptual model for this study. In the end, this research has integrated the some results. The key factor of the strategy of making products luxurious is offering high quality than the same type products. Next, the brand is the second important factor, a firm that make this strategy successfully must has a good brand image, not a ¡§luxury brand¡¨ image. Customers can get the good experience through products quality and performance. Therefore combining these results the research concludes that the products quality and performances are the core factors of the strategy of making products luxurious.

Abstract The research focus on the study the market segmentation and product strategy of ultra-high purity anhydrous liquefied ammonia. Liquefied ammonia gas has wide applications in current industrial markets, ultra high purity ammonia gas is a key process material in light emission diode, solar cell and integrated circuit industries. How to develop a new generation NH3 purification process, select multi-type high pressure containers with global logistic supply ability, and qualified international standard iso-container supply system are key successful factors to develop a competitive product promotion and marketing strategy. The research can help domestic green product manufacturers improve their final products market value. Based on expert interview records and secondary data collection, Michael Porter¡¦s five forces model was used to analyze external technical environment challenges and the SWOT analysis was used to analyze the interior condition of special gas. The result shows that the ultra-high purity ammonia gas is facing a highly dynamic environment. The internal human resource management, manufacturing process update flexibility, and diversity in product mix are key factors that affect the relationship between gas suppliers and customers in electronics. Therefore, specialty gas providers need to have a comprehensive gas manufacturing capability, adequate storage capability, and global operational channel in order to meet the need of end customers. Moreover, the speed and capability of the supply system is the key to the future product strategy of high purity ammonia gas.

This doctoral dissertation titled "Product Strategies in Supply Chains" consists of three essays. In this dissertation, I study firms' strategic decisions regarding design of products and product lines in different supply chain contexts. I focus on firms' strategic interactions with supply chain members, including consumers and suppliers, in dynamic environments. The first essay (Chapter 2) studies how the cost structure of and information asymmetry about an OEM's in-house option affect her choice of product design quality in a decentralized supply chain where the supplier specifies contract terms. The second essay (Chapter 3) examines the effect of product returns and their potential refurbishing on intertemporal product strategy and profit of a firm facing strategic consumers. We also examine the effect of product returns on the time inconsistency problem faced by the firm. The third essay (Chapter 4) investigates the impact of competition from a third-party remanufacturer on product strategy and profit of an OEM in the presence of strategic consumers. Motivated by general perception among practitioners and the extant literature showing the competition from third-party remanufacturers as undesirable for the OEM, we specifically examine whether competition from a third-party remanufacturer is always undesirable for the OEM.

Abstract The Finnish chemical forest industry has undergone a profound structural change over the past two decades. The basic industry is increasingly focusing its product development investments on its own products and operations while the development of processes and process machinery is left to specialised companies. At the same time the purchases of the pulp and paper industry are becoming larger: there is a shift from single device purchases to larger functional units. This research studies the Finnish process machinery industry serving the needs of the pulp and paper industry and its product development environment and strategies, and evaluates the ability of selected case companies to design integrated process solutions. Particularly the role of measurement and automation technology in these solutions is under closer scrutiny. Aspects of product life cycles and technology management, together with various procedures and operating models for innovation and product development processes, are discussed on the basis of the literature. The empirical part of the research was carried out as a case study with several Finnish companies manufacturing machinery and equipment for the chemical forest industry. The results show that the strategies of the studied industry are still very much dominated by the traditional emphasis on machinery design and construction. The change in the customers' purchasing behaviour towards ever larger units and functions is reflected particularly as increasingly large delivery projects. The units required by the customers are put together in the project phase, using parts and components developed in isolation from each other. There is very little evidence of actual product development, design or producing of integrated process solutions. In those cases where the design work has explicitly aimed at an integrated functional unit, the result has been a process that the customer can easily purchase and where the supplier's expertise in processes and process control is already included in the package. Designing integrated process solutions takes more than technical expertise and capability: the strategy, organisation, and product development process of the supplier company must support the integration of different technologies and expertise areas in the product. Instead of the traditional serial product development it is imperative that the questions of process design, process machinery, and process control are treated and solved simultaneously. The in-house expertise and networking of research and development must be promoted in such a way that the capabilities necessary to include the required technologies and expertise areas in a product project are already available when the product is being specified and designed.

Companies are dependent on continuously provide the market with new products to keep its market position and profitability level. The companies examined in this thesis are two bigger Swedish enterprises that have a long history in a mature business-to-business context providing industrial goods to the market. This work examines how users are involved in the different innovation and product development activities. The problem is to understand how business-to-business companies co-operate with stakeholder and users, when in the product life cycle that is done, and who are the ones doing the actual innovation. The methodological approach for the work was deductive, building a theory including innovation, strategy and user theories that was empirically tested and followed by an analysis and conclusion of the found evidence. Key findings: Most if not all innovations in mature market are routine ones. There is lack of strategic focus due to micromanagement that shifts focus rapidly. Innovations are often found in the beginning and in the end of the product life cycle. Mature markets tend to utilize a more closed innovation model as opposite to an open model. Users are not heavily involved in the actual innovation process. Stickiness and tacit knowledge is quite big in large corporation event though there is said to be a strategic focus on the customers. Implications: More involvement of users, especially lead users, will lead to more innovations. Utilising strategic buckets of different sizes for spreading the resources on different innovation types (routine/disruptive/discontinuous) to become successful

In this dissertation I focus on two considerations that influence the product strategy of a firm. The first is consumers’ choice and its influence on a firm’s product offering, and the second is the interaction between durable products and their contingent consumables. First, I study the assortment planning problem for a firm; I illustrate the complexity of solving this product selection problem, present simple solutions for some commonly used choice models, and develop heuristics for other practically motivated models. Second, I study the incentives of a durable goods monopolist when she can lock-in consumers through a contingent consumable. Adopting a lock-in strategy has two interesting effects on the incentives of a durable goods manufacturer. On one hand, by locking-in consumers to its consumable, a durable goods monopolist can curb its temptation to reduce durable prices over time, thereby mitigating the classic time inconsistency problem. On the other hand, lock-in will create a hold-up issue and adversely affect consumers’ expectations of future prices for the consumable. My research demonstrates the trade-off between time inconsistency and hold-up, and derives insights about the conditions under which a lock-in strategy can be effective. I further analyze the trade-off between time inconsistency and hold-up associated with lock-in in the presence of consumable stock-piling. My findings indicate in the presence of consumer stock-piling, lock-in has an effect similar to that of competition in the consumables market: they help to dampen the hold-up problem that arises from lock-in and at the same time increase the manufacturer’s incentive to reduce durable prices over time. / text

The research has investigated the traditional bakery¡¦s marketing strategy. In recent years, traditional bakery store has impacted by the introduce of western diet culture and people being used to having western bakery food. Using the case of Wu Chi Bakery, as a well-known bakery store in local, it has faced the difficulty. The framework of the research is according to the developing procedure of marketing strategy. To understand the marketing environment of the bakery industry and the marketing strategy of the Wu Chi Bakery. The conclusions as below: 1. Product strategy: Characteristics of the product is the most important factor when consumer have to decide whether to purchase. 2. Promotion strategy: Service and introduction is the most efficiency way to promote the product. 3. Channel strategy: Using selective distribution strategy to expand channels. 4. Price strategy: To unify the price, using single-price strategy ,except for bulk purchase. According to the conclusions, suggestions are as below: 1. Taking advantage of being specialty. 2. Enlarging channels. 3. Varying the product line. 4. Combined with related industries.

This thesis discusses development of a future visioning system model that can be adopted to create new product concepts for consumer electronics companies operating in a highly competitive business environment. The research work investigates consumer electronic product companies and their market environment to identify problematic issues and indicates that a proactive new product strategy which opens new markets through developing concept-led products is a strategic priority, thus the concept development stage in new product development process is in need of improvement. An evaluation of existing concept development tools for the purpose of proactive product strategy is presented and concludes that future visioning procedure is the most appropriate tool. To develop a future visioning system model as a concept development tool, the theoretical future visioning system models are analysed and mapped to extract essential structure and contents of future visioning procedure. The consequent future visioning system model is then revised according to the findings and suggestions from the field research work which investigated four major consumer electronics product companies in practice. The findings also validates the necessity of adopting a proactive product strategy and evaluates acceptability of the future visioning system model for practical use. The final future visioning system model is defined after the opinions of the design managers are considered and applied. The major suggestions from the research findings are: (1) Executing proactive product strategy can be a valuable strategic tool (2) A new process is necessary for the companies to create one-step-ahead product (3) Future visioning system is recommended as an advanced approach that creates new product concept. (4) Future visioning system model should consist of eight stages: project initiation, environmental scanning, future visioning, generating product concepts, scenario planning, concept testing, concept visualisation, and finalized concepts. (5) Product concepts can be generated from future vision by applying backcasting. (6) Scenario planning should be used in the future visioning system model as a concept testing tool providing objective validating criteria. (7) Executing a future visioning system model creates new roles for the designer such as information integrator, process moderator, and futurist.