IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/popmgt/v30y2021i1p253-275.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Performance, Reliability, or Time‐to‐Market? Innovative Product Development and the Impact of Government Regulation

Author

Listed:
  • Fei Gao
  • Shiliang Cui
  • Morris Cohen

Abstract

Consider a firm that is developing an innovative product. We study the trade‐offs associated with its product design decisions in regards to product performance (the function of the product), product reliability (whether the product will perform its function), and product time‐to‐market (the development time for the product). Specifically, while a more innovative product may deliver better product performance, without sufficient development time, the product may not be as reliable given that innovations require a time buffer to conduct many iterations of product testing and improvement. We further examine the impact of a government‐imposed minimum product reliability standard on the firm, the product, and on social welfare. We find that contrary to common belief, a minimum product reliability standard set by the government may induce more unreliable products or hurt consumer surplus and social welfare. We also find that regulation, besides being a cost burden to the firm, can serve as a credible commitment for product reliability typically not observable to the customers when they are making purchasing decisions. Correspondingly, the regulation may have the surprising effect of increasing firm profit or prompting product innovation. Our work is useful in informing regulators in different industries of how decisions concerning government regulation could impact product reliability.

Suggested Citation

  • Fei Gao & Shiliang Cui & Morris Cohen, 2021. "Performance, Reliability, or Time‐to‐Market? Innovative Product Development and the Impact of Government Regulation," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(1), pages 253-275, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:popmgt:v:30:y:2021:i:1:p:253-275
    DOI: 10.1111/poms.13266
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/poms.13266
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/poms.13266?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Daughety, Andrew F & Reinganum, Jennifer F, 1995. "Product Safety: Liability, R&D, and Signaling," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1187-1206, December.
    2. V. Krishnan & Saurabh Gupta, 2001. "Appropriateness and Impact of Platform-Based Product Development," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(1), pages 52-68, January.
    3. Giulio Ecchia & Luca Lambertini, 1997. "Minimum Quality Standards and Collusion," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(1), pages 101-113, March.
    4. Morris A. Cohen & Jehoshua Eliashberg & Teck H. Ho, 2000. "An Analysis of Several New Product Performance Metrics," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 2(4), pages 337-349, July.
    5. Işıl & Vishal V. Agrawal & Atalay Atasu, 2020. "Extended Producer Responsibility for Durable Products," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 22(2), pages 364-382, March.
    6. V. Krishnan & Karl T. Ulrich, 2001. "Product Development Decisions: A Review of the Literature," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(1), pages 1-21, January.
    7. Crampes, Claude & Hollander, Abraham, 1995. "Duopoly and quality standards," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 71-82, January.
    8. Qian Liu & Garrett J. van Ryzin, 2008. "Strategic Capacity Rationing to Induce Early Purchases," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(6), pages 1115-1131, June.
    9. Robert Aumann & Adam Brandenburger, 2014. "Epistemic Conditions for Nash Equilibrium," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: The Language of Game Theory Putting Epistemics into the Mathematics of Games, chapter 5, pages 113-136, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    10. Qian Liu & Dan Zhang, 2013. "Dynamic Pricing Competition with Strategic Customers Under Vertical Product Differentiation," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(1), pages 84-101, August.
    11. Frank M. Bass, 1969. "A New Product Growth for Model Consumer Durables," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 15(5), pages 215-227, January.
    12. Lynn O. Wilson & John A. Norton, 1989. "Optimal Entry Timing for a Product Line Extension," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 8(1), pages 1-17.
    13. Christina L. Brown & James M. Lattin, 1994. "Investigating the Relationship Between Time in Market and Pioneering Advantage," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(10), pages 1361-1369, October.
    14. Xuanming Su, 2007. "Intertemporal Pricing with Strategic Customer Behavior," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 53(5), pages 726-741, May.
    15. Uri Ronnen, 1991. "Minimum Quality Standards, Fixed Costs, and Competition," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 22(4), pages 490-504, Winter.
    16. Ximin (Natalie) Huang & Atalay Atasu & L. Beril Toktay, 2019. "Design Implications of Extended Producer Responsibility for Durable Products," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 2573-2590, June.
    17. Boom, Anette, 1995. "Asymmetric International Minimum Quality Standards and Vertical Differentiation," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(1), pages 101-119, March.
    18. Chialin Chen, 2001. "Design for the Environment: A Quality-Based Model for Green Product Development," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 47(2), pages 250-263, February.
    19. Erica Plambeck & Qiong Wang, 2009. "Effects of E-Waste Regulation on New Product Introduction," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(3), pages 333-347, March.
    20. David F. Drake, 2018. "Carbon Tariffs: Effects in Settings with Technology Choice and Foreign Production Cost Advantage," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 20(4), pages 667-686, October.
    21. Morris A. Cohen & Jehoshua Eliasberg & Teck-Hua Ho, 1996. "New Product Development: The Performance and Time-to-Market Tradeoff," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(2), pages 173-186, February.
    22. Vernon N. Hsu & Kaijie Zhu, 2011. "Tax-Effective Supply Chain Decisions Under China's Export-Oriented Tax Policies," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 13(2), pages 163-179, November.
    23. Kinshuk Jerath & Sang-Hyun Kim & Robert Swinney, 2017. "Product Quality in a Distribution Channel with Inventory Risk," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(5), pages 747-761, September.
    24. K. Sridhar Moorthy & I. P. L. Png, 1992. "Market Segmentation, Cannibalization, and the Timing of Product Introductions," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 38(3), pages 345-359, March.
    25. Vishal V. Agrawal & Stylianos Kavadias & L. Beril Toktay, 2016. "The Limits of Planned Obsolescence for Conspicuous Durable Goods," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 18(2), pages 216-226, May.
    26. Kilsun Kim & Dilip Chhajed, 2002. "Product Design with Multiple Quality-Type Attributes," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 48(11), pages 1502-1511, November.
    27. Xuanming Su & Fuqiang Zhang, 2009. "On the Value of Commitment and Availability Guarantees When Selling to Strategic Consumers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 55(5), pages 713-726, May.
    28. Guoming Lai & Laurens G. Debo & Katia Sycara, 2010. "Erratum to "Buy Now and Match Later: Impact of Posterior Price Matching on Profit with Strategic Consumers"," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 12(2), pages 370-370.
    29. Gérard P. P. Cachon & Pnina Feldman, 2017. "Is Advance Selling Desirable with Competition?," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(2), pages 214-231, March.
    30. Gilvan C. Souza & Barry L. Bayus & Harvey M. Wagner, 2004. "New-Product Strategy and Industry Clockspeed," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(4), pages 537-549, April.
    31. Guoming Lai & Laurens G. Debo & Katia Sycara, 2010. "Buy Now and Match Later: Impact of Posterior Price Matching on Profit with Strategic Consumers," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 12(1), pages 33-55, December.
    32. Fei Gao, 2020. "Cause Marketing: Product Pricing, Design, and Distribution," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 22(4), pages 775-791, July.
    33. Xuanming Su & Fuqiang Zhang, 2008. "Strategic Customer Behavior, Commitment, and Supply Chain Performance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(10), pages 1759-1773, October.
    34. Karthik Ramachandran & V. Krishnan, 2008. "Design Architecture and Introduction Timing for Rapidly Improving Industrial Products," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 10(1), pages 149-171, December.
    35. Ted Klastorin & Weiyu Tsai, 2004. "New Product Introduction: Timing, Design, and Pricing," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 6(4), pages 302-320, August.
    36. Yossi Aviv & Amit Pazgal, 2008. "Optimal Pricing of Seasonal Products in the Presence of Forward-Looking Consumers," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 10(3), pages 339-359, December.
    37. Gökçe Esenduran & Atalay Atasu & Luk N. Van Wassenhove, 2019. "Valuable e-waste: Implications for extended producer responsibility," IISE Transactions, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 51(4), pages 382-396, April.
    38. Serguei Netessine & Terry A. Taylor, 2007. "Product Line Design and Production Technology," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(1), pages 101-117, 01-02.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Zheng, Wei & Li, Bo & Song, Dongping & Li, Yanran, 2023. "Innovative development strategy of a risk-averse firm considering product unreliability under competition," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 172(C).
    2. Demirci, Ece Zeliha & Erkip, Nesim, 2024. "Integrating efforts for product development and market penetration," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 312(3), pages 927-937.
    3. Chen, Yuting & Zhang, Rong & Liu, Bin, 2022. "New product financing decision: Crowdfunding, bank or supply chain?," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 249(C).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ilan Lobel & Jigar Patel & Gustavo Vulcano & Jiawei Zhang, 2016. "Optimizing Product Launches in the Presence of Strategic Consumers," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 62(6), pages 1778-1799, June.
    2. Yen-Ting Lin & Ali K. Parlaktürk & Jayashankar M. Swaminathan, 2018. "Are Strategic Customers Bad for a Supply Chain?," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 20(3), pages 481-497, July.
    3. Ali K. Parlaktürk, 2012. "The Value of Product Variety When Selling to Strategic Consumers," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 14(3), pages 371-385, July.
    4. Liang, Xiaoying & Ma, Lijun & Xie, Lei & Yan, Houmin, 2014. "The informational aspect of the group-buying mechanism," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 234(1), pages 331-340.
    5. Mehmet Sekip Altug & Tolga Aydinliyim, 2016. "Counteracting Strategic Purchase Deferrals: The Impact of Online Retailers’ Return Policy Decisions," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 18(3), pages 376-392, July.
    6. Chen, Chialin & Liu, Lucy Qian, 2014. "Pricing and quality decisions and financial incentives for sustainable product design with recycled material content under price leadership," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 147(PC), pages 666-677.
    7. Arian Aflaki & Pnina Feldman & Robert Swinney, 2019. "Becoming Strategic: Endogenous Consumer Time Preferences and Multiperiod Pricing," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 68(4), pages 1116-1131, July.
    8. Yossi Aviv & Mike Mingcheng Wei & Fuqiang Zhang, 2019. "Responsive Pricing of Fashion Products: The Effects of Demand Learning and Strategic Consumer Behavior," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(7), pages 2982-3000, July.
    9. Ye, Taofeng & Yang, Huiqiang, 2020. "Price and Quality Management with Strategic Consumers: Whether to Introduce a High or Low Product Variant," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 386(C).
    10. Fei Gao & Xuanming Su, 2017. "Omnichannel Retail Operations with Buy-Online-and-Pick-up-in-Store," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(8), pages 2478-2492, August.
    11. Shining Wu & Qian Liu & Rachel Q. Zhang, 2015. "The Reference Effects on a Retailer’s Dynamic Pricing and Inventory Strategies with Strategic Consumers," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 63(6), pages 1320-1335, December.
    12. Chang Hwan Lee & Tsan‐Ming Choi & T.C.E. Cheng, 2015. "Selling to strategic and loss‐averse consumers: Stocking, procurement, and product design policies," Naval Research Logistics (NRL), John Wiley & Sons, vol. 62(6), pages 435-453, September.
    13. Chen Tian & Tiaojun Xiao, 2017. "Profit of a Supply Chain versus its Decentralization in the Presence of Strategic Customers," International Journal of Information Technology & Decision Making (IJITDM), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 16(06), pages 1647-1670, November.
    14. Dong, Junfeng & Wu, Desheng Dash, 2019. "Two-period pricing and quick response with strategic customers," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 165-173.
    15. Cuihong Li & Fuqiang Zhang, 2013. "Advance Demand Information, Price Discrimination, and Preorder Strategies," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 15(1), pages 57-71, September.
    16. Mingzheng Wang & Mengru Ma & Xiaohang Yue & Samar Mukhopadhyay, 2016. "A capacitated firm’s pricing strategies for strategic consumers with different search costs," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 240(2), pages 731-760, May.
    17. Liao, Shuangqing & Seifert, Ralf W., 2015. "On the optimal frequency of multiple generation product introductions," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 245(3), pages 805-814.
    18. Liu, Jingchen & Zhai, Xin & Chen, Lihua, 2018. "The interaction between product rollover strategy and pricing scheme," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 201(C), pages 116-135.
    19. John R. Birge & Rodney P. Parker & Michelle Xiao Wu & S. Alex Yang, 2017. "When Customers Anticipate Liquidation Sales: Managing Operations Under Financial Distress," Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, INFORMS, vol. 19(4), pages 657-673, October.
    20. Liu, Jingchen & Zhai, Xin & Chen, Lihua, 2019. "Optimal pricing strategy under trade-in program in the presence of strategic consumers," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 1-17.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:popmgt:v:30:y:2021:i:1:p:253-275. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1937-5956 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.