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

81 NTU Management Review Vol. 29 No. 1 Apr. 2019 Exploratory products: Initial demand for exploratory products is relatively low. For higher-volume products, buyers either manufacture them in-house or work with pure OEM manufacturers. For this type of product, organizational learning is the key motive for decision makers to consider dual BMs. Exploratory products face “things captured by terms such as search, variation, risk taking, experimentation, play, flexibility, discovery, innovation” (March, 1991). Their main purpose is to create more business opportunities in the following exploitation stage (Lavie et al., 2010). We found that AV-Firm significantly redesigned the product’s features and re-verified its functionality and reliability. In Table 4, Delta requested a redesign of the document camera’s image quality, with very few bad pixels allowed. As an OEM buyer has a much higher brand value, it needs to thoroughly verify products’ features and quality before selling them. Thus, AV-Firm improved its knowledge of image technology and enhanced quality to the Japanese standard. The ex-president explained: “ After learning this technology, our branded products sold very well. In the beginning we didn’t care about Delta’s order volume, but only about its technology guidance. ” In another example, Beta verified AV-Firm’s video conferencing product. The RD technical director explained: “ Beta pointed out several features that had been ignored such as the handling of infrequently used protocols. So, we adopted these improvements. ” Comparing with learning, motivation for long-short term outcomes and resource pooling would be secondary. Most buyers have strong marketing power and can sell OEM goods quickly and in large volume through existing channels. Suppliers need this short- term OEM revenue and the cross-signal effect for its brand business. The effect of resource pooling is limited because volume for new exploratory products is not significant without scalability. In summary, organizational learning is the most important strategic goal for capturing additional product knowledge to transition products from exploration into exploitation. Using buyers’ superior marketing power, suppliers can boost short-term outcomes faster. However, resource pooling synergy is not significant because of low volumes. Therefore, we suggest the following proposition concerning decision motivations for exploratory products. Proposition 3: Firms that adopt a dual business model for an exploratory product are more likely to be motivated by learning through cooperating with prominent OEM buyers, while long-short term outcomes and resource pooling synergies are secondary.