تجزیه و تحلیل هزینه چرخه عمر محصول : تاثیر پروفایل مشتری، مزیت رقابتی و کیفیت اطلاعات

Life cycle cost analysis is considered in the literature to be of increasing importance to firms as international competition intensifies and technological change continues. The literature increasingly emphasizes that rapid technological change and shortened life cycles have made product life cycle cost analysis critical to organizations. Although significant benefits are attributed to life cycle cost analysis, there is little evidence regarding the extent of its application in organizational settings. Moreover, there is scant systematic evidence available with respect to the array of factors that may influence its use. However, a review of the literature suggests that customer profiling, competitive advantage, and quality of information system information are three factors potentially impacting the extent to which life cycle cost analysis is used in firms. The results of the study illustrate first, the degree to which product life cycle cost analysis is used across a random sample of organizations. Second, that all three independent variables play a positive role in affecting the extent to which product life cycle costing is used in firms.

Literature reports suggest that life cycle cost analysis is of increasing importance to firms as international competition intensifies and technological change continues. Paying attention to product life cycle costs is expected to enable organizations first, to assess better the effectiveness of planning by comparing actual with budgeted life cycle costs as well as the distribution of those costs (Clinton and Graves, 1999), and second, to enhance their capacity to make better pricing decisions (Adamany and Gonsalves, 1994). Third, to improve the assessment of product profitability (Hansen and Mowen, 1992), and fourth, to aid in the design of more environmentally desirable products (Kreuze and Newell, 1994 and Madu et al., 2002). Fifth, life cycle cost analysis is argued to facilitate an understanding of the environmental impact of products from development through manufacture, distribution, customer use, disposal and potential recycling (Sutton, 1992, Weitz et al., 1994 and Brady et al., 1999). Sixth, to focus on post-sale factors that have become a larger percentage of life cycle costs, including warranty, cost of parts, service and maintenance, as well as being increasingly important to customers in their purchasing decisions (Shields and Young, 1991 and Murthy and Blischke, 2000). Life cycle costs comprise all costs attributable to a product from conception to those customers incur throughout the life of the product, including the costs of installation, operation, support, maintenance and disposal (Shields and Young, 1991, Shank and Govindarajan, 1992, Artto, 1994, Barfield et al., 1994 and Foster and Gupta, 1994). For example, life cycle costs for a manufacturer include planning, design, testing, production, marketing, distribution, administration, service and warranty costs (Kaplan and Atkinson, 1989, Shields and Young, 1991 and Artto, 1994), apart from those costs borne by the purchaser. Few empirical reports chronicle the organizational utility of product life cycle cost analysis as factors influencing its use have not been a major focus of management accounting research. Life cycle cost analysis is a decision tool of growing organizational importance across a range of industries. What is absent, however, is an awareness of its use across firms, and second, an understanding of the factors that may drive its application. A review of the literature suggests that customer profiling, competitive advantage and quality of information system (IS) information may have a positive bearing on the extent to which life cycle cost analysis is employed by firms. Organizations that undertake customer profiling are likely to use life cycle cost analysis as a means of maintaining and enhancing customer focus (Hagel and Rayport, 1997 and Murthy and Blischke, 2000). Competitive advantage, with its concentration on factors that differentiate a firm from others in the same product market, is also expected to result in the use of life cycle cost analysis (e.g. Flynn et al., 1995 and Perera et al., 1997). Finally, quality of IS information’s contribution to more effective decision making is likely to facilitate the application of product life cycle cost analysis. The purpose of this study is to first, evaluate the extent to which product life cycle cost analysis is used in firms. Given the extensive claims for its utility, an assessment of the degree to which it is employed is overdue. Second, the paper empirically examines the impact of customer profiling, competitive advantage, and quality of IS information on product life cycle cost analysis use in firms. In doing so, this study is one of the first to investigate the use of life cycle cost analysis together with specific factors influencing its application in organizational settings. The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. Section 2 reviews the literature leading to the development of the hypothesis. Section 3 describes the method taken in sample selection and variable measurement. Section 4 presents the results of the hypothesis test. Section 5 discusses the conclusions and considers potential limitations of the study.

The results of the study suggest that customer profiling, competitive advantage, and quality of IS information play a positive role in affecting the extent to which product life cycle costing is used in organizations. Hence, the results are consistent with the theoretical expectations of the research. What is of particular interest to this study and the generalization of its findings is that three specific variables have been identified in a random sampling of manufacturing firms that influence the application of life cycle cost analysis. These results suggest that organizations find life cycle analysis important in responding to specific customer requirements as well as in seeking competitive advantage, and facilitated by improved IS information quality. In turn, life cycle analysis should enhance the capacity of those firms using it to understand more fully the financial dimensions of their products from inception to final disposal (e.g. Hansen and Mowen, 1992 and Murthy and Blischke, 2000). However, the literature reveals that there are potential impediments to the use of life cycle costing. Shields and Young (1991) noted that cost accounting systems typically are orientated toward reporting functional area costs rather than life cycle costs. Improved information quality should help to redress this deficiency. For example, Adamany and Gonsalves (1994) pointed out that enhanced process measurement facilitates an assessment of its performance and variability on a product life cycle basis. Furthermore, Cheatham and Cheatham (1993) argued that life cycle cost analysis should enable product profitability to be evaluated according to its life cycle stage. Life cycle cost analysis adds a dimension to prior work that has classified life cycles in terms of the emerging, growing, maturing, and declining stages of a product’s life. Hoque and James (2000) noted that the organizational strategy literature frequently classifies product life cycles into these four categories. Using this framework, Merchant (1984) argued that firms with products early in their life cycle are likely to use management control system tools, such as budgeting, primarily as planning devices, rather than control and integration tools, in contrast to when products are further along their life cycle stages. Further research is required to identify other critical factors influencing the use of life cycle cost analysis. As an area of potential future research, the literature review revealed that the use of life cycle cost analysis is increasingly being seen as a tool to assess the distribution of product environmental attributes and costs from the design phase through to final disposal. With the growing stringency of environmental regimes nationally and globally (e.g. Burritt, 1995 and Brady et al., 1999), life cycle analysis may facilitate an understanding of the implications associated with specific decision choices made by firms in terms of their product design and process parameters. From this perspective, the utility of life cycle analysis may develop further. However, this is a matter for future empirical analysis. Nevertheless, the findings of the study are subject to a number of potential limitations. First, data were collected from Australian companies, and consequently, the results may be generalizble only to that population. Second, as the data collection method was contemporaneous and cross-sectional, no statement of causation can be made and in particular, the direction of causation, can be made. Third, further work needs to be undertaken to provide additional evidence on the psychometric properties of the measures used in this study, particularly with respect to the customer profiling instrument that was developed for this study. Their focus on assessing crucial organizational constructs is of importance, but their limited prior research exposure necessitates additional attention being paid to their reliability and validity properties. Fourth, as the questionnaire was not pilot tested, unspecified demand characteristics may have been induced.