Product Repositioning by Merging Firms*
研究了66起消费品行业并购案例，发现合并后企业产品总数净减少，且倾向于在组合边缘增减产品，导致内部产品相似度上升，支持成本协同与核心能力理论。
We examine merging firms' additions and removals of products for a sample of 66 mergers across a wide variety of consumer packaged goods markets. We find that mergers lead to a net reduction in the number of products offered by merging firms. Merging firms tend to both drop and add products at the periphery of their joint product portfolios, with the net effect of increasing within‐firm product similarity. These results are consistent with theories of the firm that emphasize cost synergies among similar types of products or managerial core competencies linked to particular segments of the product market.