41 research outputs found
Design, fabrication, and characterization of optical coatings made of low- and tunable-refractive-index materials
No full textDecember 2010School of EngineeringPh
Improved power conversion efficiency of polycrystalline Si solar cells by nanostructured broadband and omni-directional antireflection coatings
No full text1
Conductive distributed Bragg reflector fabricated by oblique angle deposition from a single material
No full text1
Three essays on retailer brand introduction, quality information disclosure and distribution channel
No full textItem marked as restricted to the 'UIUC Users [automated]' Group (id=2) by Seth Robbins ([email protected]) on 2012-09-18T21:21:22Z
Item is restricted until 2014-09-18T21:21:01ZRestriction data tranferred 2014-07-01T11:35:14-05:00
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Group with Access UIUC Users [automated]
Release Date: 2014-09-18 16:21:01 UTC
Reason: Author requested U of Illinois access only (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD systemU of I Only Restriction Lifted for Item 34786 on 2014-09-18T10:00:36Z.This dissertation consists of three essays studying the impact of retailer store brand introduction to the upstream manufacturer, channel quality disclosure and the overall distribution channel efficiency. Chapter 2 studies the retailer brand introduction strategy with consumer evaluation cost. In the market place, there is a growing trend for retailers to introduce premium store brands to complement manufacturer brands. In this chapter, I study the effects of a retailer premium brand on the profitability of a manufacturer and a retailer when consumers do not have full information about the brands and have to incur a cost to evaluate the products. I show that a manufacturer can benefit when the retailer introduces a retailer brand, and the benefit may increase with the rising popularity of the retailer brand. This happens when the introduction of a retailer brand motivates the retailer to induce consumer evaluation and the manufacturer can take advantage of that to charge a high wholesale price for the manufacturer brand. Depending on the level of consumer evaluation cost, a retailer brand is more likely to be introduced in either a decentralized or a centralized channel. Furthermore, consumer welfare can be higher in a decentralized channel than in a centralized channel.
Chapter 3 studies the benefits of a decentralized channel with voluntary quality disclosure. Traditional distribution channel literature suggests that a centralized channel structure is more efficient than a decentralized channel structure. In this chapter, I find that a decentralized channel can some- times outperform a centralized channel structure, and the aggregated chan- nel profit in a decentralized channel can be higher disregarding the negative impact from channel double marginalization. This occurs when the product quality information is private and the manufacturer incurs a substantial cost to disclose product quality information. I also show that the distribution of product quality plays a role in shaping consumer beliefs about product quality, leading to a more efficient decentralized channel performance.
Chapter 4 combines chapter 2 and chapter 3 to study the quality disclosure strategy with a store brand introduction. In chapter 3, I study a manufac- turer’s strategy to disclose product quality with a passive retailer. In this essay, I extend the model to investigate the strategic quality disclosure from both a manufacturer and a retailer when the retailer introduces a retailer brand. I find that a manufacturer has reduced incentive to conduct quality disclosure with a store brand introduction. This incentive is also affected by asymmetric disclosure costs as well as the average retailer brand quality. Unlike in the competition case, the retailer chooses a disclosure strategy to leverage the sales for both manufacturer brand and the retailer, leading to a higher incentive to disclose when the disclosure costs are the same. The profit and channel efficiency implications are also discussed.Item withdrawn by Mark Zulauf ([email protected]) on 2012-06-19T19:47:36Z
Item was in collections:
University of Illinois Theses & Dissertations (ID: 1)
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Three essays in sustainable operations management with implications for the triple bottom line
No full textWe are in a state of overshoot; the human population today consumes natural resources at a rate that exceeds what the planet can sustainably provide in the long term (Meadows et al., 2004). Two key causes of this overshoot are the overconsumption of natural resources, and the reluctance or inability of society to remedy this overconsumption through the appropriate use and deployment of technology and management practices. In this light, the work contained in this dissertation is intended to explore potential solutions that operations management can provide to mitigate the impact of these two causes of overshoot. Therefore, in the spirit of the Triple Bottom Line (3BL) framework for sustainability, we evaluate environmental and social, along with the economic implications of strategic and operational decisions in the contexts of natural resource management and green product development in this dissertation.
Freshwater is an invaluable resource to all life on earth. Groundwater reservoirs, an important source of freshwater, are drying up across the United States and the globe, creating a severe mismatch in the supply and demand of freshwater. Two new management paradigms have cropped up in recent years to remedy this mismatch: water trading and privatization. The first essay in this dissertation explores the impact of these paradigms on groundwater management and the ensuing 3BL implications.
Voluntary green product development has emerged as a viable alternative to the traditional 'command and control' approach for environmental regulation. The second essay in this chapter addresses a producer's problem of labeling its product to communicate its environmental attributes that are otherwise invisible to consumers. The key objectives of this essay are to identify the efficacy of external ecolabeling agencies and the role of producer credibility in stimulating green product development and its resulting benefits from a 3BL perspective.
The final essay in this dissertation explores the phenomenon of pre-competitive collaboration between firms in the context of green product development. In it, we identify the motivation for and the 3BL implications of horizontal R&D collaboration between competing supply chains as well as vertical collaboration within a supply chain through cost-sharing.Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'Closed Access', the embargo will last until 2017-08-01The student, - Karthik Murali, accepted the attached license on 2015-07-14 at 22:49.The student, - Karthik Murali, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2015-07-15 at 00:41.This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2015-07-15 at 11:02.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #8469 on 2015-09-29 at 15:06:13Made available in DSpace on 2015-09-29T21:08:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2
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Previous issue date: 2015-07-15Embargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 89569
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Reason: Author requested closed access (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD systemLimited Restriction Lifted for Item 89569 on 2017-09-30T09:15:24Z
Polarization anisotropy in the light emission of blue GaInN/GaN light-emitting diodes grown on (0001) oriented sapphire substrate
No full text1
Temperature-dependent light-output characteristics of GaInN light-emitting diodes with different dislocation densities
No full text
Three essays on product design for the environment
No full textDesign is a powerful instrument by which the world is forged to satisfy the needs of mankind. As the awareness and pursuit of sustainability increases, we have seen the transition from “design for needs” to “design for environment”. Design for the Environment (DfE) requires manufacturers to focus on conserving and reusing resources, minimizing waste, and reducing hazard during a design process. DfE includes, but not limited to Design for Recovery and Benign by Design. Manufacturers are facing the challenge and opportunity of incorporating DfE into their businesses. Eco-conscious product design is critical for the success of businesses, and, therefore, has been an important research focus. This dissertation presents a design approach to help manufacturers maximize profits through optimal eco-conscious product design, and to seek insights for policy makers and managers into inducing product design for the environment. The focus of this dissertation is the interaction between product design for the environment with market segmentation, inter-divisional coordination, and regulatory policies.
This dissertation presents two studies on Design for Recovery. The first study analyzes the effects of remanufacturable product design on market segmentation and trade-in prices. By identifying the system and market parameters under which it is optimal for a manufacturer to design a remanufacturable product, the study demonstrates that entering a remanufactured-goods market in and of itself does not necessarily translate into environmental friendliness. In addition, this study develops and compares several measures of environmental efficiency, and concludes that emissions per revenue can serve as the best proxy for emissions as a metric for measuring overall environmental stewardship.
The second study investigates the impact of decentralization of manufacturing and remanufacturing operations within a firm on product design, pricing, and profitability, and seeks inter-divisional incentive mechanism to achieve firm-wide coordination. This study shows that decentralization and divisional conflict not only result in lower firm profit and product sales, but also create a hurdle for remanufacturable product design. Thus, an inter-divisional incentive mechanism is suggested to facilitate coordination between two profit-maximizing divisions. The study signifies a two-part coordination scheme (a transfer price and a fixed lump sum), through which a decentralized firm can achieve first-best total profit and production quantity; in addition, the manufacturing division is incentivized to design new products to be remanufacturable.
The last study focuses on Benign by Design. In this essay, an innovative pharmaceutical company decides whether to adopt green pharmacy in response to the regulatory policy of the pharmaceutical stewardship and/or patent term extension, as well as the competition from a generic company. One the one hand, the patent term extension can encourage the innovative company to invest in green pharmacy, and the regulator can induce green pharmacy with short extended term when market competition is intensive. On the other hand, a pharmaceutical company will neither go green nor bear all the compliance cost in the presence of the take-back regulation because the compliance cost is traditionally independent of the choice of green pharmacy. Results show that although adding the take-back regulation on top of the patent term extension generally reduces firm profit and requires a longer term extension, such combined policy can excel the single policy of patent term extension under certain circumstances. In addition, a modified take-back policy that associates compliance cost with the firm's choice of green pharmacy is better than the patent term extension when the competition intensity is relatively high.Submission published under a 24 month embargo labeled 'U of I only', the embargo will last until 2017-05-01The student, Tianqin Shi, accepted the attached license on 2015-04-17 at 13:41.The student, Tianqin Shi, submitted this Dissertation for approval on 2015-04-17 at 13:59.This Dissertation was approved for publication on 2015-04-20 at 13:08.DSpace SAF Submission Ingestion Package generated from Vireo submission #7922 on 2015-07-22 at 14:18:12Made available in DSpace on 2015-07-22T22:33:32Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2
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Previous issue date: 2015-04-20Embargo set by: Seth Robbins for item 79872
Lift date: 2017-07-22T22:34:16Z
Reason: Author requested U of Illinois access only (OA after 2yrs) in Vireo ETD systemU of I Only Restriction Lifted for Item 79872 on 2017-07-23T09:15:32Z
