Competitive diffusion process of repurchased products in knowledgeable manufacturing

This paper presents a diffusion model to explain the competitive diffusion of the repurchased products in knowledgeable manufacturing. The acute market competition accelerates the products’ improvement, which requires that the manufacturing enterprises be highly capable of rapid reaction by means of knowledgeable manufacturing. To forecast the diffusion behavior effectively enables the realization of knowledgeable manufacturing system (KMS) which targets T (time), Q (quality), C (cost), S (service), and E (environment). Various diffusion models have emerged since Bass model was firstly proposed in 1969. A nonlinear model of the repurchased competitive products is proposed on the basis of the product diffusion analysis. By taking the frequently purchased products as example, the stability of the model is examined in light of the qualitative theory of differential equations and proved by the approximate linearization method. As the qualitative analysis reveals, between the two frequently purchased products competing in the same market, one undoubtedly occupies a fixed market share while the other may finally be eliminated from the market. A special case of the problem is that both products are one-time-purchased. With the corresponding model given, the qualitative analysis shows that either of the products occupies a market share, the size of which is determined by the product’s competitive strength and the new product’s time-to-market. A system dynamics model is then established and simulated by vensim. The result is consistent with that of the qualitative analysis.