Deconstructing the Pioneer's Advantage: Examining Vintage Effects and Consumer Valuations of Quality and Variety

“The pioneering strategy may be riskier than the follower strategy because the pioneer may face significantly greater uncertainty and greater costs compared to later entrants (e.g. Wernerfelt and Karnani, 1987; Bohlmann et al., 2002; Boulding and Christen, 2003).”

“” Bohlmann et al. (2002, p. 1177) said that “ technology improves over time … As technology advances, later entrants can utilize a more recent and efficient vintage of technology than an earlier entrant who has committed to older technology … vintage effects will benefit later entrants … We refer…”

“…effects often benefit an early incumbent that can influence customer preference formation for a longer time period, later entrants can gain advantage through superior differentiation on prod - uct attributes important to and recognizable by customers (Bohlmann et al., 2002; Zhang & Markman, 1998).”

“research has shown, later entrants into a market space characterized by fast-moving technology can outcompete early movers with more sophisticated products using the latest technology (Bohlmann et al., 2002; Kretschmer and Claussen 2016).”

“This is done to account for “vintage effects” in high-velocity technology environments, whereby rapid technology evolution may render first entrant knowledge obsolete and erode its competences faster than that of later entrants, prompting users to shift toward the later entrant products that feature newer technology (…”

“Considerable theoretical and empirical research [ 2 , 16, 17, 22, 26, 29, 33] has been done to investigate the effects of the market entry order on long-term market share.”

“What’s more, based on the consumer awareness, firms could invest more in high-value products [64, 65] or merely imitate early entrants with lower costs [66, 67].”

“, [34], [35]), and technological entrepreneurial rents are often short-lived.”

“(1991): «The Resource-based Theory of Competitive Advantage: Implications for Strategy Formulation», California Management Review, volumen 33 (3), páginas 114-135.”

“The FMA literature (Robinson and Min, 2002; Robinson et al., 1992; Robinson and Fornell, 1985; Golder and Tellis, 1993; Bohlmann et al., 2002; Chatterjee and Sugitar, 1990) tends to consider the strategy of pioneering new markets to lead to long-term success and argue that pioneering firms or first movers view new mar…”

“…able to preempt valuable perceptual space (i.e., the positioning most preferred by customers) to its potential advantage, as demonstrated in numerous FMA studies drawing from RBV and economic theory of demand (Bohlmann et al. 2002; Carpenter and Nakamoto 1990; Lieberman and Montgomery 1998).”

“To capture vintage effects (Bohlmann et al., 2002), we included app age by calculating the time elapsed since the application’s launch.”

“Similarly, Bohlmann et al. (2002) analyze the sequential entry of firms into downstream markets and empirically show that the negative effect of declining IT costs on the profit of the pioneer is more pronounced in product categories where quality is a key differentiator.”

“The entrant has a cost advantage over the incumbent, and the entrant’s development cost is normalized to zero; numerous examples have been reported in the popular press and literature on the follower’s cost advantage (Bohlmann et al., 2002; Boulding and Christen, 2001).”

“Bohlmann et al. (2002, p. 1177) said that “technology improves over time. . .”

“Consequently, pioneers play a crucial role in product and market development, patenting, and influencing later entrants (Bohlmann et al., 2002; Boulding & Christen, 2009; Gao & McDonald, 2022; Mitchell & Skrzypacz, 2015).”

“However, the literature can be divided into two main streams areas: marketing (Bohlmann et al., 2002; Brynjolfsson et al., 2003; Hui, 2004 & Shankar, 2006) and operations management (Bennet & Forrester, 1994; Berry & Cooper, 1999; Thyssen et al., 2006; Vaagen & Wallace, 2008; Scavarda et al., 2009;…”

“…behavior of DMs within these types of scenarios products are generally restricted to vectors of two characteristics, both in the economic (Malerba, Nelson, Orsenigo & Winter, 2007) and the operational research and management (Bohlmann, Golder & Mitra, 2002; Lee, J. & Lee, J. N., 2009) literatures.”

“However, to the best of our knowledge, existing literature remains missing in this important link except for [11] venturing more in these lines.”

“Bohlmann et al. (2002) show that pioneers in categories with large vintage effects generally have lower market shares and higher failure rates.”

“The papers that study on entrant strategies include, pioneers do better in product categories where variety is more important and worse in categories where product quality is more important [7].”