Mechanism of Changing a Product Concept

The purpose of this paper is to examine the hypothesis explaining the mechanism in the case, where the product is deleted or reduced the fundamental function of the product through the product concept changes in the digital camera industry. This paper points out not owning the fundamental technology might cause the change of the product concept. Casio could create new competitive factor so that this paper discusses a possibility of the mechanism of changing the product concept. Keywords—Casio, digital camera, mechanism, product concept, product development process. I. RESEARCH QUESTION HE purpose of this paper is to examine the hypothesis explaining the mechanism in the case, where the product is deleted or reduced the fundamental function of the product through the product concept changes in the digital camera industry. When a dominant design is formed at the introductory period of industry, it is said that the generating frequency of the product innovation decreases and the generating frequency of a process innovation increases [1]. Therefore, it is assumed after dominant design formation that a company competes at a single dimension. However, without the competition performed among companies remaining only in a single dimension, firms looks for the source of a new competitive advantage. This paper shows the mechanism which changes from a single competition dimension. When competition at a single dimension is developed, some researchers show that it becomes price competition [2]. It is common in such a competition situation to reduce cost by reducing product functions or suppressing a performance level. However, although the phenomenon of deleting and reducing the fundamental function of a product is seen in the case of this paper, it is not for cost reduction. It is for pursuing a different competition dimension. Although there are researches which deal with two or more dimensions until now, there are few papers in which the process until it converts into other dimensions was shown in detail. Especially, it is difficult to devise competition at a new dimension by reducing the prime function of a product. This paper tries to clarify the process through case analysis. This paper takes up Casio Computer which developed the digital camera "EX-S1" put on the market in 2002 as the case study. A digital camera is equipment which records the photoed still picture as digital information, and consists of an image sensor equivalent to the "eye" of a camera, and an optical lens which makes a photographic subject image optically to it. These are playing the fundamental function of the digital Kiyohiro Yamazaki is with Chukyo University, Nagoya, Aichi, Japan (e-mail: [email protected]). camera. It is said that "QV-10" which Casio put on the market in 1995 is a dominant design of a digital camera, and a digital camera came to be considered as an alternate product of a film camera after that. Since "QV-10" had 25mega pixels CCD and a single focus lens, the photoed image quality was not able to be said to be enough when comparing with the image quality of the film camera. Therefore, each entry company thought that improvement in this photograph function led to strengthening of competitive power, raised the pixel of the image sensor, and has performed technical development which improves the magnification of optical zoom. For example, the pixel of the image sensor mounted in the digital camera was about 35 mega pixels in 1995, and over 100 mega pixels appeared in 1997. After that, the digital camera have had 2 mega pixels in 1999, 3 mega pixels and 4 mega 5 mega pixels in 2000, and 6 mega pixels in 2002. Thus, the digital camera mounting one image sensor after another with a high pixel count is put on the market. Also after that, this tendency is keeping on and this is one of the factors which maintain the competitive power of Japanese companies highly. Moreover, the large magnification of the lens also progressed. Although there was a product mounting a single focus lens at the beginning, the product which mounting optical zoom immediately was put on the market. However, raising such product performance is not only necessarily connected with competitive advantage. The speed of the improvement in product performance is quicker than the improvement speed of the capability for a customer to be able to use the function [3]. Therefore, when product performance exceeds a customer's demand standard, the customer's product evaluation is diversified. It is a product price which especially a customer thinks as important, and low-pricing of products comes to progress. The average unit price of the digital camera was 44,800 yen in 1999 was falling to 32,500 yen in 2002. The fall of this average product unit price is caused by the cost fall of a device. The scale of the digital camera market has been expanding quickly since 1995, therefore the experience curve effect works to device production, and the cost per one unit of devices had fallen. Moreover, the price had fallen with devising product deployment. The case of a digital camera uses the almost same case among several models. And Casio developed the product which attached the difference to the pixel count of an image sensor, or the magnification of optical zoom. The image sensor of 2 mega pixel CCD, 3 mega pixel CCD, and 4 mega pixel CCD was mounted in the same exterior and Casio could have arranged from the low price goods using a cheap device to the high price goods with the newest device. Thus, the price of product fell by giving a clear-cut solution to a part of photograph function. Mechanism of Changing a Product Concept