R&D Investment Strategy and Product Line Selection under Uncertain Technology Evolution

本研究在科技演進不確定下，探討廠商如何進行研發投資與產品線決策以最大化期望利潤。科技演進的不確定性影響廠商的相對科技水準，廠商的相對科技水準同時受到研發經費的多寡及外部科技趨勢的影響，當外部技術提升，廠商沒有提升，廠商的相對科技水準下降，反之亦然。廠商的相對科技水準決定其能生產的產品性能高低，像是電腦處理器的速度或是相機的解析度等，進而影響產品線決策。產品線由不同相對科技水準的產品所組成，產品線決策是廠商決定產品線要包含哪些相對科技水準的產品及決定其價格，產品線中所提供的產品的性能水準不得超過廠商的相對科技水準上限。由於產品組合會影響消費者的行為，當人們面對不同的產品組合時會比較組合中產品的價格及性能做出購買決策，如何訂定產品價格及提供怎麼樣的產品組合是影響廠商利潤的因素。本研究利用動態規劃求解廠商的最佳期望利潤及決策，最後進行參數分析以探討不同情形下廠商的決策及其管理意涵。The research studies how a company makes its investment of research and development (R&D) and product line selection decisions to maximize its profit under an uncertain evolution trend of technology. The uncertain evolution trend of technology and the amounts of investment of R&D influence the relative technology status of a company. When the environment technology upgrades and the company doesn’t upgrade, the relative technology status of the company will decrease, and vice versa. The relative technology level determines the vertical attribute level of a product such as the resolution of a camera and process ability of central processing unit, etc. Then, the relative technology status constraints the decision of product variety, because the product line consists of the products with different relative product technology levels and the company can’t produce the product which is higher than its relative technology status. The product line selection decision includes pricing and producing which product. The customers purchasing behavior is influenced by the product variety. Consequently, the decisions, investment in R&D and product line selection, are critical to the profit of the company. This research uses nonlinear programming to solve product line selection, Logit model to describe the purchasing behavior of customers, Markov chain to model the uncertain technology evolution trend and dynamic programming model to maximize the expected profit of the company and get the correspondence decisions. Finally, the research implements the model by C# and Mathematica and analysis the results to obtain the insights of management