臺大管理論叢 NTU Management Review VOL.29 NO.1

57 NTU Management Review Vol. 29 No. 1 Apr. 2019 their bargaining power and detach from a contractual relationship if a competitive threat emerges (Kittilaksanawong, 2015), or restrict suppliers’ ability to sell own-brand products through stringent outsourcing agreements (Alcacer and Oxley, 2014). Second, suppliers may face internal management conflicts. Units in charge of brand business possess a very different mindset and culture from those providing OEM services. Brand businesses focus on creating value through product differentiation while OEM focuses on cost competitiveness. Cost-profit structures are very different, which makes it hard to consistently determine resource allocation and measure performance (Shih, 2004; Smith et al., 2010). Thus, both BMs may constrain each other in operational decisions, resulting in higher coordination costs (Markides and Charitou, 2004). Lastly, suppliers may face inconsistent identity issues among stakeholders. By simultaneously engaging in own-brand and OEM business, suppliers reveal mixed signals to OEM buyers, channel resellers, and upstream suppliers (Porter, 1980, 1996). They may also confuse employees about their identity (Santos and Eisenhardt, 2005). Such inconsistency in image and positioning may discount internal operational efficiency and external validity in business communication. Thus, the execution of dual BMs is certainly difficult though not impossible. In sum, the extant literature leaves a research opportunity for bridging the knowledge gap between conceptual discussion and ongoing reality, which motivates us to initiate an explorative study on why and how dual BMs can be deployed and realized in the complex world of co-opetition. 3. Research Methods 3.1 Case Selection Given limited exploration of this topic in the extant literature, we decided to conduct a case-based research to unravel the decision logic of why and how suppliers choose dual BMs for their products (Yin, 1994). We hence studied an embedded single case with multiple product lines within one organizational context. A single-case study provided researchers with good opportunities to draw theoretical insights from the rich content of social dynamics that are intelligible to readers (Dyer Jr and Wilkins, 1991). Furthermore, multiple product lines provided us comparative logic of replication and extension to develop theoretical insight (Eisenhardt, 1991), with each serving to confirm or disconfirm inferences drawn from the others within the same organizational context (Yin, 1994). As BMs are emerging as a unit of analysis (Zott et al., 2011) and each product in the case we