Article ID: | iaor1991888 |
Country: | United States |
Volume: | 36 |
Issue: | 10 |
Start Page Number: | 1216 |
End Page Number: | 1231 |
Publication Date: | Oct 1990 |
Journal: | Management Science |
Authors: | Kekre Sunder, Srinivasan Kannan |
Keywords: | marketing |
Strategic product line breadth decisions evoke differential responses from the manufacturing and the marketing areas: manufacturing prefers keeping process disruptions to a minimum and, as a result, discourages product proliferation; however, marketing, in its attempt to match products to heterogeneous consumer needs and gain market share, emphasizes a broader product line. The market benefits and cost disadvantages of broader product lines are systematically investigated on a large sample of over 1400 business units. The results indicate significant market share benefits and increases in firms’ profitabilty with broader product lines; moreover, widely held beliefs of increases in production costs are not empirically supported. American manufacturing firms may indeed be flexible enough to accommodate product variety without significant detrimental effects on costs.