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Customers in business-to-business markets are sellers of goods and services on their own. Thus, business-to-business suppliers may exert an influence on their customers’ buying decisions when performing marketing activities toward the customers of the customers by employing the concept of “multistage marketing”. Multi-stage marketing involves all sales-related measures which are aimed at the subsequent market stages (“customers of the customer”) which follow one or several primary customers in order to influence the buying behavior of these primary customers. Although the positive impacts of such activities are known, business-to-business companies often exclude the customers further along in the downstream supply chain from their marketing plans. But in a business-to-business context, the demand is always derived from buying decisions made further down the supply chain. The primary customers buy products or services because they want to use them – directly or indirectly – for either the production or the sale of other goods and services. Hence, derived demand, which can be traced to the end-user's primary demand, can be seen as the basis of multistage marketing.

The most common form of multistage marketing is ingredient (co-)branding, which occurs when a marketer providing an ingredient or component to an OEM advertises the ingredient to the customer of the assembled product. In addition to ingredient branding, this chapter identifies several other forms of multistage marketing and examines the underlying dimensions and processes of the phenomenon. The design of a marketing strategy using the concept of multistage marketing and its preconditions are discussed on a theoretical basis and are illustrated through concrete examples. The chapter provides a number of best practice examples in order to elucidate the issues concerning multistage marketing and its application in a company's marketing strategy serving business-to-business markets.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a new approach for detecting the small sustained process shifts in multistage systems with correlated multiple quality characteristics.

The authors propose a new multivariate linear regression model for a multistage manufacturing system with multivariate quality characteristics in which both the auto-correlated process outputs and the correlations occurring between neighboring stages are considered. Then, the multistage multivariate residual control charts are constructed to monitor the overall process quality of multistage systems with multiple quality characteristics. Moreover, an overall run length concept is adopted to evaluate the performances of the authors’ proposed control charts.

In the numerical example with cascade data, the authors show that the detecting abilities of the proposed multistage residual MEWMA and MCUSUM control charts outperform those of Phase II MEWMA and MCUSUM control charts. It further demonstrates the usefulness of the authors’ proposed control charts in the Phase II monitoring.

The research results of this paper can be applied to any multistage manufacturing or service system with multivariate quality characteristics. This new approach provides quality practitioners a better decision making tool for detecting the small sustained process shifts in multistage systems.

Once the multistage multivariate residual control charts are constructed, one can employ them in monitoring and controlling the process quality of multistage systems with multiple characteristics. This approach can lead to the direction of continuous improvement for any product or service within a company.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibility of identifying market segments in multistage markets and assessing whether their alignment could provide a useful managerial approach to find competitive advantage and better understand market opportunities.

Using data from a pilot project, need-based market segments from different market stages were identified and their potential alignment evaluated. The data were not designed to test hypotheses, nor were they originally intended to be used to align segments. Nevertheless, they provided a unique opportunity to explore multistage segmentation and segment alignment in a business-to-business (B2B) setting.

Overall, the findings of this exploratory study should encourage both academics and practitioners to continue to explore the possibility of studying and aligning multistage market segments. The possibility of aligning segments was demonstrated using visual alignment based on managerial judgment of data and alignment based on a combined cluster analysis of customers across the multistage markets.

First, the market research was not specifically designed to formulate and test hypotheses about the feasibility of aligning segments in multistage markets – it is an exploratory study. The research was based on a pilot project, and the survey-derived databases were conveniently available for analysis. While sample sizes were small, they are typical of many B2B markets. Second, to more effectively study complex relationships in multistage markets, it would have been desirable to include a more comprehensive set of needs. Each market stage has not only a set of their own perceived needs but also a set of perceptions of the needs of other stages. Third, as in many B2B studies, the data used in this pilot project were based on single informants.

A common complaint among firms is that B2B market segmentation does not really work that well for them. An unexplored reason for this may be that true market segmentation does not stop with one’s direct customer, but should also include the customer’s customer and so on, in a multistage market segmentation structure. One implication of the research presented here suggests that better understanding the segmentation structure in a multistage market can enlighten the opportunities and risks of implementing such a strategy. Multistage market segmentation alignment may lead to innovative positioning and message levers for the sales force to use as an argument to gain advantage according to common and unique aligned segment needs.

The process may be applied to social institutions in addition to commercial organizations.

While it is obvious that market segmentation can be applied to any single market of customers, the question of applying it to complex multistage markets needs additional exploration. The original idea in this paper is that the potential for strategically aligning multistage markets and segments can have both conceptual and managerial implications for establishing competitive advantage and more efficient and effective resource allocation. The paper shows that that such alignment is possible; however, research and research methods in this area are nascent and will require continued step-by-step learning about these complex market structures to build up to a more definitive understanding of the processes involved to guide future research and managerial thinking.

In the context of sequential multistage utilitarian service processes, the purpose of this study is to develop and validate propositions to study the impact of service quality (SQ) perceptions developed in intermediate stages, along with the impact of service gestalt characteristics, such as peak and end experiences, on quality perception at each stage and on overall service quality (OSQ) perception. The cascade phenomenon (interdependency between process stages) is considered in the evaluation of OSQ perception of customer, who experiences service through a series of planned, distinct and partitioned sequential stages.

In this paper, a conceptual framework is used to evolve the propositions. Subsequently, propositions are tested in three different utilitarian service contexts wherein customer survey was conducted for feedback on attributes at each stage, summary perception evaluations of each stage and OSQ evaluation of multistage process. Peak experiences, considered for OSQ evaluation, were defined by a suitable statistical technique. Ordinal logistic regression with nested models is the technique used for analyzing the data.

This work reveals significant cascade effect of summary evaluation of intermediate stages on the subsequent stage. Peak customer experience (negative or positive) is observed to be marginally significant on intermediate stage and OSQ evaluation. In addition, OSQ is observed to be influenced by summary perception evaluations of intermediate stages, which leads to better model adequacy. Finally, among all the stages, end stage performance is observed to have a significant impact on the overall multistage SQ.

The findings suggest that in view of the cascade effect of intermediate stages, managers need to allocate resources to ensure that all stages are performing at an adequate level instead of only focusing on improving peaks and end effects of customer experiences. The proposed approach is easy to implement and suitable for evaluating SQ and OSQ in varied multistage sequential utilitarian service environment.

An integrated approach for evaluation of SQ in sequential multistage utilitarian service processes is proposed from the perspective of cascade effect of intermediate stages and peak and end effects on OSQ perception.

In a multistage process, the final quality in the last stage not only depends on the quality of the task performed in that stage but is also dependent on the quality of the products and services in intermediate stages as well as the design parameters in each stage. One of the most efficient statistical approaches used to model the multistage problems is the response surface method (RSM). However, it is necessary to optimize each response in all stages so to achieve the best solution for the whole problem. Robust optimization can produce very accurate solutions in this case.

In order to model a multistage problem, the RSM is often used by the researchers. A classical approach to estimate response surfaces is the ordinary least squares (OLS) method. However, this method is very sensitive to outliers. To overcome this drawback, some robust estimation methods have been presented in the literature. In optimization phase, the global criterion (GC) method is used to optimize the response surfaces estimated by the robust approach in a multistage problem.

The results of a numerical study show that our proposed robust optimization approach, considering both the sum of square error (SSE) index in model estimation and also GC index in optimization phase, will perform better than the classical full information maximum likelihood (FIML) estimation method.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are few papers focusing on quality-oriented designs in the multistage problem by means of RSM. Development of robust approaches for the response surface estimation and also optimization of the estimated response surfaces are the main novelties in this study. The proposed approach will produce more robust and accurate solutions for multistage problems rather than classical approaches.

When a process experiences an out-of-control condition, identification of the change point is capable of leading practitioners to an effective root cause analysis. The change point addresses the time when a special cause(s) manifests itself into the process. In the statistical process monitoring when the chart signals an out-of-control condition, the change point analysis is an important step for the root cause analysis of the process. This paper attempts to propose a model approaching the artificial neural network to identify the change point of a multistage process with cascade property in the case that the process is modeled properly by a simple linear profile.

In practice, many processes can be modeled by a functional relationship rather than a single random variable or a random vector. This approach of modeling is referred to as the profile in the statistical process control literature. In this paper, two models based on multilayer perceptron (MLP) and convolutional neural network (CNN) approaches are proposed for identifying the change point of the profile of a multistage process.

The capability of the proposed models are evaluated and compared using several numerical scenarios. The numerical analysis of the proposed neural networks indicates that the two proposed models are capable of identifying the change point in different scenarios effectively. The comparative sensitivity analysis shows that the capability of the proposed convolutional network is superior compared to MLP network.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first time that: (1) A model is proposed to identify the change point of the profile of a multistage process. (2) A convolutional neural network is modeled for identifying the change point of an out-of-control condition.

Optimized three-dimensional (3D) fracture networks are crucial for multistage hydrofracturing. To better understand the mechanisms controlling potential disasters as well as to predict them in 3D multistage hydrofracturing, some governing factors, such as fluid injection-induced stratal movement, compression between multiple hydraulic fractures, fracturing fluid flow, fracturing-induced microseismic damaged and contact slip events, must be properly simulated via numerical models. This study aims to analyze the stratal movement and microseismic behaviours induced by multistage propagation of 3D multiple hydraulic fractures.

Adaptive finite element–discrete element method was used to overcome the limitations of conventional finite element methods in simulating 3D fracture propagation. This new approach uses a local remeshing and coarsening strategy to ensure the accuracy of solutions, reliability of fracture propagation path and computational efficiency. Engineering-scale numerical models were proposed that account for the hydro-mechanical coupling and fracturing fluid leak-off, to simulate multistage propagation of 3D multiple hydraulic fractures, by which the evolution of the displacement, porosity and fracture fields, as well as the fracturing-induced microseismic events were computed.

Stratal movement and compression between 3D multiple hydraulic fractures intensify with increasing proximity to the propagating fractures. When the perforation cluster spaces are very narrow, alternate fracturing can improve fracturing effects over those achieved via sequential or simultaneous fracturing. Furthermore, the number and magnitude of microseismic events are directly proportional to the stratal movement and compression induced by multistage propagation of fracturing fracture networks.

Microseismic events induced by multistage propagation of 3D multiple hydraulic fractures and perforation cluster spaces and fracturing scenarios that impact the deformation and compression among fractures in porous rock matrices are well predicted and analyzed.

Numerical simulations of a multistage multiphase pump at different operating conditions were performed to study the variational characteristics of flow parameters for each impeller. The simulation results were verified against the experimented results. Because of the compressibility of the gas, inlet volume flow rate qi and inlet flow angle ß_i for each impeller decrease gradually from the first to the last stage. The volume flow rate at the entrance of the pump q, rotational speed n and inlet gas volume fraction (IGVF) affect the characteristics of qi and ß_i.

The hydraulic design features of the impellers in the multistage multiphase pump are obtained based on the flow parameter characteristics of the pump. Using the hydraulic setup features, stage-by-stage design of the multistage multiphase pump for a nominal IGVF has been conducted.

The numerical simulation results show that hydraulic loss in impellers of the optimized pump is substantially reduced. Furthermore, the hydraulic efficiency of the optimized pump increases by 3.29 per cent, which verifies the validation of the method of stage-by-stage design.

Under various operating conditions, q_i and ß_i decrease gradually from the first to the fifth stage because of the compressibility of the gas. For this characteristic, the fluid behavior varies at each stage of the pump. As such, it is necessary to design impellers stage by stage in a multistage rotodynamic multiphase pump.

These results will have substantial effect on various practical operations in the industry. For example, in the development of subsea oilfields, the conventional conveying equipment, which contains liquid-phase pumps, compressors and separators, is replaced by multiphase pumps. Multiphase pumps directly transport the mixture of oil, gas and water from subsea oilwells through a single pipeline, which can simplify equipment usage, decrease backpressure of the wellhead and save capital costs.

Characteristics of a multistage multiphase pump under different operating conditions were investigated along with features of the inlet flow parameters for every impeller at each compression stage. Our simulation results have established that the change in the inlet flow parameters of every impeller is mainly because of the compressibility of the gas. The operational parameters q, n and IGVF all affect the characteristics of qi and ß_i. However, the IGVF has the most prominent effect. Lower values of IGVF have an insignificant effect on the gas compressibility. Higher values of IGVF have a significant effect on the gas compressibility. All these characteristics affect the hydraulic design of the impellers for a multistage multiphase pump. In addition, the machining precision should also be considered. Considering all these factors, when IGVF is lower than 10 per cent, all the impellers in the pump can be designed uniformly. When IGVF varies from 10 to 30 per cent, the first two stages should be designed separately, and the latter stages are uniform starting with the second stage. When IGVF varies from 30 to 50 per cent, the first three stages should be designed separately, and the latter stages are going to be similar to the third stage. An additional increase in IGVF results in degeneration of the differential pressure of the pump, which will reduce the compressibility of the gas. As such, it can be deduced that only the first three stages should be designed separately, and the latter stages will be similar to the third stage. In addition, for the pump working under a lower volume flow rate than 25 m³/h, the first three stages should be designed individually while keeping the geometrical structure of the subsequent stages the same as the third stage.

Production is defined as the mission of creating wealth (economic goods and services) from a variety of resources (human and non‐ human) by adding values (intrinsic and extrinsic) through transformation (physical and conceptual) so as to derive utilities (form, place, time, economic, non‐economic). This mission is organised through a system. Basically, what a production system looks like is as Fig.1. It is basically the flow of various resources that defines the nature and characteristic of the production system.

Radial vibration of horizontal centrifugal pump has a close association with radial exciting forces. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the unsteady radial force in multistage centrifugal pump with double volute in detail and investigate the relevance of static pressure, radial force and radial vibration.

The unsteady numerical simulation with realizable k-ε turbulence model was carried out for a multistage centrifugal pump with double volute using computational fluid dynamics codes Fluent. The performance tests were conducted by use of a closed loop system and performance curves from numerical simulation agree with that of experiment. Vibration tests were carried out by vibration probes instrumented on the bearing cover of pump near no-driven end. Fast Fourier transform was used to obtain the frequency components of radial forces on the impellers from numerical simulation, which are compared with ones of radial vibration from experiment in Y and Z direction. And the static pressure distributions in the impeller were analyzed under different flow rates.

The symmetrical double volute can effectively balance radial forces. The maximum radial force and vibration velocity appear at 0.6 Q among the three flow rates 0.6 Q, Q and 1.2 Q. The frequencies corresponding to relatively large amplitude of vibration velocities and radial forces on the impellers in Y direction are blade passing frequency of the impellers. Blade passing frequency of first-stage impeller and shaft frequency are predominating in Z direction. It indicates that the radial vibration of centrifugal pump is closely related to the unsteady radial force.

The unsteady radial forces of the impeller in multistage centrifugal pump with double volute were comprehensively analyzed. The radial forces should be considered to balance during the design of multistage centrifugal pump.