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...

The efficient operation of a salesforce is a critical element in the profitability of many firms. Three factors play key roles: the salesforce's size, its allocation and its productivity. This gives rise to the following questions: can salesforce performance be improved by (1) hiring more...

In recent years there has been a growing stream of literature in marketing and economics that models consumers as Bayesian learners. Such learning behavior is often embedded within a discrete choice framework that is then calibrated on scanner panel data. At the same time, it is now accepted...

There is strong evidence that consumers learn from their brand consumption experiences and continuously update their brand purchase probabilities. However, in explaining why established competitive brands continuously compete through periodic price promotions, most of the existing theories do...

This work develops a diffusion model which incorporates word-of-mouth and advertising effects for two firms introducing competing brands of a new durable product. The competition between the two firms is formulated as a two-player, nonzero sum Markovian game. The firms are assumed to behave...

We start by assuming that a major benefit of many new durable products such as dishwashers and microwave ovens is time savings. Others, such as VCRs, also enhance the value of our leisure time. Using a household production framework we demonstrate that a utility maximizing individual will have a...

The dynamic evolvement of market share of a brand in a frequently purchased product category can be driven by two effects, purchase reinforcement, and advertising carryover. The first depends on the actual experience with the brand while the second on the retention of its producer's messages. We...

The sales-marketing mix relationships for brands of a product class are often modelled as a multiple equation system. Whenever sales are expressed as shares, such systems are sum-constrained and therefore singular. Singular systems can be calibrated by deleting one equation from the model and...

This paper examines the effects of advertising on the sales growth of new, infrequently purchased products. It is assumed that producer originated advertising serves to inform innovators of the existence and value of the new product while word-of-mouth communication by previous adopters affects...

A company's name is commonly considered to be an integral part of its image, just like the quality of its products or the quality of its technical services. Changing a company's name is a major policy decision contemplated by many firms and actually implemented by some each year. This paper...