Joao Quariguasi Frota Neto

Understanding the market for remanufactured products: what can we learn from online trading and Web search sites?

Notwithstanding the interest it elicits from academics and practitioners, relatively little is known about the market for remanufactured products. Research, still in its infancy, has focused almost entirely on what affects willingness to pay, and our understanding of other key marketing questions, such as what drives search intensity for remanufactured products and the number of remanufactured products on offer, is limited. This paper fills this knowledge gap. Focusing on the online market for remanufactured electrical and electronic products, we empirically test whether product-specific and market-specific determinants affect search intensity and number of remanufactured products on offer, that is number of listings. We use as inputs online search traffic, product-specific data collected from various other online sources and relevant eBay listing data. Our analysis supports the hypotheses that search intensity for remanufactured products is associated with search intensity for price and elapsed time since the launch of new counterpart products. Number of remanufactured products listed is associated with number of listings for new counterparts and two product-specific characteristics: presence of moving parts and whether the product is used for personal hygiene. We discuss several implications of our findings for remanufacturers and policy-makers as well as directions for future research.

When do changes in consumer preferences make forecasts from choice-based conjoint models unreliable?

Forecasting the sales or market share of new products is a major challenge as there is little or no sales history with which to estimate levels and trends. Choice-based conjoint (CBC) is one of the most common approaches used to forecast new products’ sales. However, the accuracy of forecasts based on CBC models may be reduced when consumers’ preferences for the attributes of products are labile. Despite this, there is a lack of research on the extent to which lability can impair accuracy when the coefficients estimated in CBC models are assumed to be constant over time. This paper aims to address this research gap by investigating the prevalence of lability for consumer durable products and its potential impact on the accuracy of forecasts. There are reasons to expect that lability may be particularly evident where a product is subject to rapid technological change and has a short product life-cycle. We carried out a longitudinal survey of the preferences of 161 potential consumers relating to four different types of products. We established that for both functional and innovative products: (i) the CBC models vary significantly over time, indicating changes in consumer preferences and (ii) such changes may cause large differences in forecasts of the probabilities that consumers will purchase particular brands of products. Hence employing models where coefficients do not change over time can potentially lead to inaccurate market share forecasts for high-tech, short life-cycle products that are launched even a short time after the choice-based modelling has been conducted.

On the Attractiveness of Product Recovery: The Forces that Shape Reverse Markets

Summary Product recovery is a major contributor for implementing sustainable business practices. Within such operations, which are either driven by legislation or economic rationales, practitioners face strategic issues concerning reverse market entry and positioning. Although the complexity of acting on reverse markets is widely acknowledged, a comprehensive framework to facilitate decision making in this area is lacking. In an attempt to fill that gap, we develop a model that supports original equipment manufacturers’ (OEMs’) assessment of the attractiveness of reverse markets. We identify, from a comprehensive literature analysis, in-depth interviews, and engagement with a dozen companies from different countries, factors that influence key characteristics of reverse markets, and consolidate this lengthy list into a comprehensive model intuitively applicable to business practice. The model combines five forces that drive reverse markets: access to recoverable products; threat of independent recovery companies’ (IRCs’) market entry; rivalry for recoverable products; adverse effects on core business; and remarketing opportunities. We propose for each a set of attributes that influences its power and direction. To demonstrate the efficacy of the model, we apply it in two industry settings: recovery of white goods in the United Kingdom and paper recycling in Germany. The present research enables OEMs to understand the structure and forces that drive reverse markets, identify levers to influence those markets, anticipate market developments, and formulate resilient strategies for product recovery.

The Shareholder Wealth Effects of Modern Slavery Reporting Requirements

We examine the shareholder wealth effects of the adoption of the UK Modern Slavery Act (MSA) in 2015. The MSA’s Transparency in Supply Chains clause introduced new reporting requirements mandating certain firms to provide an annual statement outlining their actions to tackle modern slavery in their business and supply chains. An event study of stock price reactions of UK firms covered by the MSA to eight events associated with its adoption provides no evidence of abnormal stock returns. We do, however, uncover significant cross-sectional differences in stock price reactions, with results suggesting that the MSA provides a competitive advantage to firms with a demonstrated track record of addressing slavery risk. By contrast, we do not find evidence of an impact of firms’ pre-regulatory Corporate Social Responsibility disclosure on stock price reactions. Our findings highlight the economic value for companies of maintaining socially responsible sourcing practices, and inform the current policy debate on the importance of greater transparency in corporate supply chains.