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1、产品差异化与企业发展-外文翻译 外文翻译原文 Title: PRODUCT DIFFERENTIATION AND ECONOMICPROGRESS Material Source: THE QUARTERLY JOURNAL OF AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS 12 Author: RANDALL G. HOLCOMBE In neoclassical theory, product differentiation provides consumers with a variety of different products within a particular industry,
2、 rather than a homogeneous product that characterize spurely competitive markets. In reality, firms do not differentiate their products to make them different, or to give consumers variety, but to make them better, so consumers would rather buy that firms product rather than the product of a competi
3、tor. When product differentiation is seen as a strategy to improve products rather than just to make them different, product differentiation emerges as the engine of economic progress. In contrast to theneo classical framework, where product differentiation imposes a cost on the economy in exchange
4、for more product variety, in reality product differentiation lowers costs, creates better products for consumers, and generates economic progress. In the neoclassical theory of the firm, product differentiation enhances consumer welfare by offering consumers greater variety, but that benefit is offs
5、et by the higher average cost of production for monopolistically competitive firms. In the neoclassical framework, the only benefit of product differentiation is the greater variety of products available, but the reason firms differentiate their products is not just to make them different from the p
6、roducts of other firms, but to make them better. By improving product quality and bringing new products to market, product differentiation is the engine of economic progress. The economics literature has clearly recognized the benefits that product differentiation brings with it in the form of a gre
7、ater variety of products, but has not recognized the role that the process of product differentiation plays in generating economic progress. The neoclassical theory of the firm differentiates competitive firms from monopolies and considers many variants in between, but assumes that the market struct
8、ure is exogenous, even while demonstrating the advantages to firms of having market power. In contrast to this theoretical world, real world firms can take actions to produce market power for themselves, so market structure is not exogenous. The most effective competitive strategies for firms consis
9、t of finding ways to differentiate their products and otherwise give themselves some degree of market power, not minimizing the cost of producing a homogeneous product, as the neoclassical competitive framework suggests. This entrepreneurialelement of the competitive firm?which is necessary for the
10、firm to survive?is missing from the neoclassical framework.1 The profit-imizing srategy that neoclassical theory describes for competitive firms will not imize firm profits in a real-world competitive environment. Seeking economic profits by gaining market power is the profit-imizing competitive str
11、ategy. Product differentiation refers to the products features, performance, consistency, durability, reliability, repair of, style and design differences. That is an enterprise of products, quality, performance was significantly better than similar products manufacturer, to form own market. Competi
12、tors for the same industry, the product is basically the same core values, the difference is in performance and quality, to meet the basic needs of the customer situation, to provide customers with unique product differentiation strategy is the goal This has been recognized in managerial economics t
13、extbooks at least since Porter1980, but product differentiation as a competitive strategy has not migrated into the mainstream of neoclassical microeconomics. Managerial economics focuses on profit-imizing strategies for firms rather than on implications for the economy as a whole. In microeconomic
14、theory textbooks, pure competition, which is the market structure that imizes social welfare, rules out product differentiation by assumption. Neoclassical economics recognizes the advantages of product variety that product differentiation brings with it but also argues that markets with differentia
15、ted products do not produce at minimum average total cost. There is a trade-off of higher cost for more variety. But this literature looks at product differentiation in a static framework, ignoring a larger advantage of product differentiation: it brings with it improvements in products that generat
16、e economic progress. In the real world, product differentiation results in innovation, which generates economic progress and leads to lower average costs, not higher ones, as the neo-classical model indicates. While it is true that the product variety generated by product differentiation increases welfare, the economic progress that results from product differentiation is much more important to social welfare than the variety that pro
