Marketing
lost sales of a firm's existing product caused by the same firm introducing a new offering, like a line extension.
The loss of sales of a firm's existing product that is caused by that same firm introducing a new offering, such as a line extension or a variant, so part of the new product's revenue is merely captured from the seller's own baseline rather than won from rivals or created as fresh demand. Van Heerde, Srinivasan, and Dekimpe's 2010 Estimating cannibalization rates for pioneering innovations decomposed a new product's sales into cannibalization, competitive draw, and primary demand, showing that net demand can be far below total demand. The referent is a shift of revenue between products of the same owner, quantified as a cannibalization rate, not an animal eating its own kind, a river taking another's flow, or a machine stripped for parts.[1][2]
- Unit
- A share of a new product's sales taken from the firm's own existing products, the cannibalization rate
- Recovery means
- Not applicable
- Measured by
- Estimated from sales or transaction data by modelling how much of a new product's demand is drawn from the firm's existing line rather than from competitors or new buyers
Behavioral ecology and zoology
Eating one's own kind
The act of one individual killing and consuming another member of its own species, spanning sexual cannibalism, filial cannibalism, and size-structured predation among juveniles, with consequences for survival, life history, and population dynamics. Fox's 1975 Cannibalism in natural populations surveyed how common the behavior is across taxa and when it is favoured, and Polis's 1981 review set it out as a form of intraspecific predation that can regulate populations. The referent is a literal feeding event between conspecifics, counted as a rate of consumption in a population, not a firm's lost sales, a captured river, or a scavenged spare part.[3][4]
- Unit
- A conspecific consumed, as a rate of cannibalism in a population
- Recovery means
- Not applicable
- Measured by
- Recorded in the field or laboratory as the frequency of conspecific consumption, and modelled through its effects on survival, growth, and population size
Geomorphology and hydrology
One river captures another
The redirection of one drainage into another when a stream erodes headward and breaches the divide that separates it from a neighbour, capturing that neighbour's upper catchment and diverting its flow, a process also called stream piracy or river capture. Bishop's 1995 Drainage rearrangement by river capture, beheading and diversion reviewed how such rearrangement reshapes drainage networks and sediment budgets, while cautioning that the headward retreat it assumes is not as self-evident as the abundant literature suggests. The referent is a landscape-evolution process in which one river gains territory at another's expense, mapped from channels and divides, not a sales loss, an act of eating, or a maintenance workaround.[5]
- Unit
- A captured reach of drainage, by area of catchment diverted
- Recovery means
- Not applicable
- Measured by
- Inferred from the geometry of channels, wind gaps, barbed tributaries, and drainage divides, and from sediment provenance
Maintenance engineering
Robbing parts to fix another
The practice of removing a serviceable part from one unit, vehicle, or aircraft in order to restore another to working condition, trading the availability of the donor for that of the recipient when a spare is not on hand. Salman, Cassady, Pohl, and Ormon's 2007 Evaluating the impact of cannibalization on fleet performance modelled how this transfer of parts raises the readiness of some assets at the cost of grounding others, and how it strains the maintenance workforce. The referent is a supply and readiness tactic within a fleet, measured by its effect on availability and labour, not a firm's own sales, an animal's meal, or a river taking another's water.[6]
- Unit
- A part moved from a donor unit to keep another in service
- Recovery means
- The donor is restored when the missing part is finally replaced from supply
- Measured by
- Tracked as cannibalization actions across a fleet and modelled by their effect on operational availability and maintenance workload