Broader product line: A necessity to achieve success?

Broader product line: A necessity to achieve success?

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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: ,
Keywords: marketing
Abstract:

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.

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