Dr. Amini Published in International Journal of Production Research

For release:  June 25, 2015

Dr. Mehdi Amini, professor of Marketing and Supply Chain Management, recently had his paper entitled "The impact of dual market on supply chain configuration for new products" published in the International Journal of Production Research. The paper was co-authored with Haitao Li, professor of Logistics and Operations Management at the University of Missouri-Saint Louis.

The research focused a hybrid optimization model that simultaneously captures supply chain configuration (SCC) decisions and the demand dynamic of dual-market new product diffusion (NPD) process. Also, the paper presented managerial implications and guidelines for supply chain and marketing managers.

Twenty-six categories of consumer electronic products were examined to show the relative net profit for the supply chain partners improved when the market is considered dual- rather than single-segment. One of the key findings of the study was the presumption of single-market significantly increased the total supply chain costs and hence reduced the product life-cycle net profit by 31 percent.

This research helped to benefit supply chain partners by presenting a more precise understanding of the demand dynamics of the early market, the main market, and aggregate market level, allowing the partners to be able to configure a supply chain to meet the demand dynamics with adequate supplies of inventories and levels of services across the supply chain. Next, the partner organizations could accurately differentiate between the relative impact of a single- versus dual-market on relevant SCC costs, revenue, and profit. Thirdly, when a new product is passed from the early adopters' stage to the mainstream, marketing practitioners will have a better understanding of developing more effective and adaptive strategies and tactics to enhance the likelihood of the new product success in concert with SCC. Lastly, Dr. Amini's research generalized the outcomes to real-world instances are readily available due to the fact that the modeling effort of the study assumed flexible supply chain network structure rather than a special structure.