The Effect of Robot Adoption on Profit Margins
The Effect of Robot Adoption on Profit Margins
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DOI：
10.1109/tem.2023.3260734
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发表时间：
2024
影响因子：
5.8
通讯作者：
Y. Chen;C. Velu;D. McFarlane
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Y. Chen;C. Velu;D. McFarlane
在本文中，我们研究了1995-2017年期间25个欧盟国家的机器人采用程度与国家行业水平利润率之间的关系。我们发现了一个负面的和U形的关系，机器人采用的证据是负相关的利润率，到一定程度上，在机器人采用的进一步增加后，显示出积极的关系。我们认为，这是由机器人影响行业的产品生命周期，以及企业如何选择竞争战略，另一方面。在机器人采用率较低的情况下，企业使用机器人通过工艺创新来降低成本;在机器人采用率较高的情况下，该技术可通过产品创新来增加收入。这些分别反映了波特竞争战略理论中的成本领先和市场差异化。我们进行了基于加价的分析，以进一步支持我们对观察到的U形关系的解释，以及从采访美国一家主要医疗设备制造商中获得的佐证。通过将机器人视为一种新兴的先进制造技术，在取代传统制造方法的过程中，我们汇集了技术转型的理论，主导设计的产品生命周期模型，以及波特在机器人采用背景下的竞争战略，对理论和实践都有影响。
In this article, we examine the relationship between the degree of robot adoption and profit margins at country–industry level for 25 European Union countries during the 1995–2017 period. We find evidence of a negative and U-shaped relationship—robot adoption is negatively associated with profit margins, up to a point, before displaying a positive relationship upon a further increase in robot adoption. We suggest that this is caused by robots affecting the industry's product life cycle on the one hand, and how firms select competitive strategy, on the other. At low levels of robot adoption, firms use robots to reduce costs via process innovation; at high levels of robot adoption, the technology is applied to increase revenue via product innovation. These mirror cost leadership and market differentiation, respectively, in Porter's competitive strategy theory. We conducted markup-based analysis to provide further support for our explanation of the observed U-shaped relationship, as well as corroborating evidence from interviewing a major medical equipment manufacturer in the United States. By viewing robots as an emerging advanced manufacturing technology in the process of displacing more traditional manufacturing methods, we bring together the theories of technological transition, the product life-cycle model of dominant design, and Porter's competitive strategy in the context of robot adoption, with implications for both theory and practice.