Marketing’s roles in innovation in business-to-business firms: Status, issues, and research agenda

A project funded by the Institute for the Study of Business Markets to develop an understanding of the current state of business-to-business marketing and a research agenda for the field identified a lack of understanding of how the marketing function can or should best contribute to firms’ innovation efforts as the top priority. A workshop of senior academics and research-oriented practitioners explored this topic further, identifying four specific themes: (1) improving customer needs understanding and customer involvement in developing new products, (2) innovating beyond the lab, (3) disseminating and implementing research findings in firms, and (4) marketing’s overall role in innovation. This article defines these themes, sketches the current status of knowledge about each theme, frames practitioners’ issues with them, and proposes research agendas for each theme to move the field forward. The goal is to encourage rigorously executed academic research that can also help firms innovate more successfully.     

Getting consumers to eat more whole-grains: The role of policy, information, and food manufacturers

The 2005 Dietary Guidelines were unique because they offered quantitative recommendations for consumption of whole-grains. This case study examines the hypothesis that the changed recommendations were responsible for the recent increase in retail sales and consumption of whole-grain food products. We find that release of the Dietary Guidelines and related media attention did increase availability and sales of whole-grain foods. A large impact on consumption occurred through reformulation of existing products, induced by competition among food suppliers. This study reveals the key role product reformulation plays in inter-firm competition and in realization of dietary changes recommended by public policy.     

Development time and new product sales: A contingency analysis of product innovativeness and price

Opposing theories and conflicting empirical results with regard to the effect of development time on new product sales suggest the need for a contingency analysis into factors affecting this relationship. This study uses a unique combination of accounting and perceptual data from 129 product development projects to test the combined contingency effect of product innovativeness and new product price on the relationship between development time and new product sales. The results show that for radically new products with short development times, price has no effect on new product sales. When the development time is long, price has a negative effect on the sales of radical new products. The findings additionally show that price has no effect on sales for incremental new products with short development times and a negative effect for incremental new products with long development times. Together, these findings shed new light on the relationship between development time and new product sales.     

A Laddering Approach to the Use of Methods and Techniques to Reduce the Cycle Time of New-to-the-Firm Products

Millson, Raj, and Wilemon have developed the earliest extant knowledge on the implementation of methods and techniques to reduce new product development (NPD) cycle time by suggesting a hierarchy of generic NPD acceleration approaches. The purpose of this article is to extend Millson, Raj, and Wilemon's hierarchy by recasting and augmenting the conceptual basis of their hierarchy for new-to-the-firm products. Taking this hierarchy of generic NPD acceleration approaches as a starting point, the authors set out to form a number of generic NPD acceleration approaches by surveying the literature and conducting an experience survey with academics and managers. A logical and purposeful implementation sequence subsequently is established by using the laddering technique. The results indicate that managers make tradeoffs in NPD with regard to speed, development costs, and customer value, and that not all generic NPD acceleration approaches need to be implemented in order to obtain the greatest effectiveness. © 1999 Elsevier Science Inc.     

Case Studies of Farmers' Use of Information Systems

Exploratory case study research was initiated to study the evolution of management information systems and their use in operational and strategic decisions. The unit of analysis was the management team on farms with innovative or successful information systems. Human factors, such as an analytical nature and commitment to lifelong learning, were perceived to be the most important common elements. Production variables often were critical success factors. Managers annually developed financial statements; enterprise and "what if" analyses were conducted regularly. Learning about questions that innovative producers have difficulty addressing was time-consuming but instructive with respect to research and educational needs.     

The New Deal at war: alphabet agencies’ expenditure patterns, 1940-1945

While a multitude of New Deal “relief, recovery, and reform” agencies were created in response to the 1930s economic shock, many of these same agencies were subsumed by the Federal Works Agency and played key national defense roles during the 1940s. We examine the wartime expenditure patterns of these agencies, as well as spending on war supply contracts and war-related industrial facilities, to determine whether Depression-era economic goals were addressed during the Second World War. We find that some specific aspects of the New Deal economic agenda were carried out during the war. Furthermore, wartime spending by the alphabet agencies was significantly correlated with the expenditure patterns of those agencies during the 1930s, suggesting that the transition from economic to military objectives may not have been as pointed as the Roosevelt Administration often asserted.     

Gender,entrepreneurship and socioeconomic reparation in South Africa

Entrepreneurship development has become recognized as a functional means of tackling South Africa’s socioeconomic challenges of slow growth rate, rapidly increasing unemployment, and racially inequitable distribution of income. However, current policies and programs ignore the potential input of the female gender. Yet, females are proven to be capable of using their peculiar gender dispositions effectively as small and micro entrepreneurs. The article examines the socioeconomic outcomes of South Africa’s systemic crisis, gender-specific influences on entrepreneurial supply and alternative women-in-entrepreneurship programs that could be implemented with sensitivity to that country’s sociocultural diversity.     

What do we really know about EAPs?

The time has come to make a comprehensive, critical assessment of the increasingly popular EAPs. To date, with very few exceptions, only glowing reports in the literature are available. This EAP literature is reinterpreted and methodological flaws are identified in analyzing usage patterns, legal issues, success rates, and cost-benefit calculations. The real and potential weaknesses and limitations need to be recognized in order to make EAPs more effective for the 1990s.     

INFRASTRUCTURE: OPTIMAL PRIVATE AND GOVERNMENTAL FUNDING AND PROVISION

The excess burden of taxation, which in the US is over $1 trillion, could be reduced by transferring responsibility for funding infrastructure to the private sector, with a corresponding cut in taxes. While governments may resist optimal taxation, private communities are induced to do so by competition. A promising approach to efficient funding of civic infrastructure is its transfer to private enterprise