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

Exploring Dual Business Model Choice of Brand and OEM Businesses 70 AV-Firm also has strong segment-making capabilities for this product. It has strong product novelty with 81 patents. It invested enough resources in R&D to launch a new generation every six months, whereas platform-type providers took around two years. It had strong marketing with 150 roadshows annually from 2008-2010, and collected customer feedback for product improvement. It participated in far more roadshows than its competitors did. Now, AV-Firm is the biggest supplier in the US and Europe with around 40% market share. Also, AV-Firm flexibly handled its pricing program with a purchasing process different from platform types. The BU head of document cameras explained: “ For the platform-type, the purchase volume was 1 to 5 units per transaction, and it was always purchased by university departments. For the portable-type, the purchase volume was up to several thousand units from school district-level bids in the K-12 market. We had a flexible price program to work with resellers who competed for bids. ” In addition, AV-Firm had strong channel bonding. Around 2000, AV-Firm rolled out the first customer service program in the K-12 market to create durable relationships with customers. The VP of AV-Firm’s reseller in the US said that people do business with people they like: “ AV-Firm’s current management and sales team is reliable, outgoing, friendly, and in my opinion do a very solid job of reaching out to channel partners. ” The president of the US office explained: “ Our value is in providing a service commitment to end users and channel resellers. For defective goods, we provide hot swapping instead of a two month wait, and carry the two-way freight cost instead of one way. We are the first company to provide a 5-year warranty, instead of 1 year, to meet schools’ asset maintenance requirements. ” Thus, AV-Firm chose a brand-reliant dual BM from 2012-2015, with 83% of its average revenue generated by brand and 17% from OEM (see Figure 2).