Strategy Research For Technology Competition And Innovation Of Key Equipment Based On Demand Heterogeneity

Equipment manufacturing industry is the basic, strategic industry which provides technology equipment for the national economy and national defense, and the level of its development reflects the level of industrialization, ability of technology innovation and comprehensive strength of a country. And the technological level of key equipment product, the core of the equipment manufacturing industry, not only matter the development of the entire equipment industry, but also the security of national economic construction and national defense. Enhancing the capability of independent innovation of key equipment enterprises is the only way to build "innovative" countries.Past innovative research on equipment manufacturing industry is mainly focused on the exploration of innovation resources, innovation capabilities, while ignoring the important impact of the demand environment on technology competition, innovation strategy; on the other hand, traditional research on product innovation theories of mass manufacture are based on the perspective of "technology supply". But it doesn't apply to technology innovation mode of key equipment products, which is based on "customized production" and market-driven. Therefore, this paper attempts to construct a model base on demand heterogeneity of the key equipment product to analyze the impact demand heterogeneity of the key equipment product on competition and innovation in order to give suggestion.First of all, this paper summarizes the relevant theories about innovation of equipment manufacturing and research for innovation issues from the perspective of demand innovation, then pointes out that this paper studies on technological competition of the key equipment from the demand-based perspective. Secondly, based on theory of Complex products and systems, this paper analyze innovative features of key equipment products. And then study the demand structure of key equipment products in term of "preferences overlap", "preference overlap symmetry", "decreasing marginal utility", to analyze their impact on the innovation of key equipment. Finally, this paper, based on the perspective of demand build a model for analyze of impact of the demand heterogeneity of key equipment on its technological competitiveness, and then give suggestions for the development of Chinese key equipment.This paper argues that the customers of "customization production" key equipment products show a high heterogeneity in the performance of the product. And when trading off between the product performance and price, they are often concerned more about the former. Therefore, the law of decreasing "marginal utility", "willingness to pay" from the improvement of product performance, is not obvious to these customs. Theses determine the competition of such products concentrate on the improvement of product performance, and product innovation tends to be ladder-like "quality innovation".