英语求助，麻烦那为高手帮我翻一下，急！！！！！
Our approach to sustainability starts on the supply
side with product market competition and
improving technologies. The novelty is that we
introduce an explicit treatment of how technology
improvements affect consumer choice among competing
offers. This leads us to focus on demandside
drivers: marginal utility from performance
improvements, consumer taste for quality, and the
extent of consumer heterogeneity. We combine
these elements in a simple model that allows us to
address a wide range of issues related to the sustainability
of competitive advantage. By explicitly
linking resources and utility, we have attempted
to complement the traditional focus in strategy on
competition and value capture with a focus on consumers
and value creation.
At the level of firm resources, we show how
competitive advantage can erode not only because
imitation undermines the uniqueness of resources,
but also because consumer valuation of firm differences
declines due to the effects of decreasing
marginal utility. At the level of firm positions, we
show that strategic heterogeneity is rooted not only
in differences between firms’ internal resources,
but also in the extent of consumer heterogeneity
in the firms’ demand environment.
While DMU and consumer heterogeneity are
characteristic of many (though perhaps not all) settings,
they have been largely ignored in strategy
studies. We note that the assumptions of DMU and
consumer heterogeneity are critical to our results
and without them most of our observed patterns
would disappear. This, of course, is precisely the
point: to highlight the role of demand-side elements
in determining sustainability, and to assure
that these demand-side threats are not overlooked.
We thus hope, first, to encourage the field to be
more sensitive to their existence; and second in
those settings where DMU and consumer heterogeneity
are important, to develop intuitions regarding
their effects on sustainability.
Incorporating a demand-based perspective into
empirical research will enrich the hypotheses that
can be tested in both cross-sectional and longitudinal
studies. Although new tools will be needed
to characterize the demand environment, many
have already been developed for the purpose of
constructing quality-adjusted price indices (e.g.,
Griliches, 1961; Trajtenberg, 1990) and in the new
empirical industrial organization literature (e.g.,
Berry, Levinsohn, and Pakes, 1995). These tools
can provide the inputs that would be used to study
strategy questions.
One limitation of our approach is that firms are
assumed to engage in intense (i.e., Bertrand) price
competition and thus we cannot address changes in
the intensity of rivalry. This is a substantive limitation
because technological progress and DMU
might affect the intensity of rivalry in some settings.
Similarly, firm choices regarding market
entry and resource portfolios could also impact
the extent of rivalry. While these interactions are
beyond the scope of the current paper, we highlight
them as potential avenues for future research.
There are two additional elements in this paper
that we think are a promising basis for future theoretical
work. First, the formalization of competitive
advantage as superior value creation provides a
simple and yet compelling foundation for strategy
theorizing. A natural way to build on this foundation
is to incorporate firm actions that shape value
creation. Our analysis of resource strategy is one
step in this direction. Second, a focus on the interaction
between consumer heterogeneity and firm
strategy offers a promising avenue for building
a richer theory of firm–environment fit. In this
paper, we focus on the link between consumer
heterogeneity and strategic diversity. Future work
along this trajectory might fruitfully explore how
firms should respond to consumer heterogeneity by
their market segmentation choices, and relatedly,
their market diversification decisions.
The interactions between firm strategy and the
demand context suggest new dimensions along
which to consider firm strategy. In particular,
important features of demand are subject to influence
by firms. For example, Intel responded to
decreasing marginal utility for processing power
by investing billions in venture capital directed
at suppliers of complements that would increasedemand for processing power. In addition to investing
in complements, firms can influence thresholds
for acceptable performance through advertising,
standard setting, and regulation. This raises the
question of how firms’ resource allocation processes
should incorporate the possibility for such
demand-side strategies (see Adner, 2004, for further
discussion).
The fit between a firm and its environment has
been a fundamental concern in strategy since the
inception of the field. Over time, a tendency has
developed to equate environmental analysis with
competitor analysis.We hope to have demonstrated
the value of focusing attention not just on firm
resources and competition, but on the demand
environment as well.
