Taking industry structuring seriously: A strategic perspective on product differentiation
从企业和行业层面正式分析了产品差异化作为行业结构化工具的作用，探讨了企业协作差异化决策的条件、差异化对价格竞争下市场结果的影响，以及差异化带来的正负外部性，对实证研究、战略理论和教学有启示。
Given legal impediments to consolidation and collusion, firms often resort to product differentiation to attain market power. This paper provides a formal analysis of product differentiation as a tool for such industry structuring at both the firm and industry level. We examine: how industry structure differs when firms collaborate on their differentiation decisions, and when the profitability of such collaboration is greatest; how an individual firm's differentiation decisions affect subsequent market outcomes under price competition, such as margin, market share, and profit; how mere differentiation differs from a ‘differentiation advantage’; and how changing a firm's differentiation affects its rivals through both positive externalities (by restraining rivalry) and negative externalities (by shifting competitive advantage). Our results have implications for empirical research, strategy theory, and pedagogy.