The Survival of New Products

We study the survival of new products in a market with horizontal product differentiation and rapid product turnover. Our data set consists of monthly sales for all new products in the Swedish beer market during 1989–1995. Results show that products with low and decreasing market shares have high hazard rates. The hazard rates are also dependent on firm characteristics; products from firms with the largest market shares face a greater risk of being withdrawn. We argue that high hazard rates of new products can help to explain high failure rates of new firms.     

技术创新是航天民品发展的关键

经过20年的发展,我国的军转民工作取得了举世瞩目的成就。目前,国防军工有一半以上的人员从事民品的开发和生产,先后开发出几十大类、上万种民用产品,促进了国民经济的发展,如“长征”运载火箭进入国际卫星发射市场,通信、气象、资源等卫星技术的应用。     

战略和流程是新产品开发成功的基础

自20世纪90年代以来,随着经济全球化的加快、市场经济的日趋成熟、高新技术产业的迅猛发展,特别是互联网技术所引发的信息技术革命,企业的生存环境和发展模式正在发生前所未有的变革。新产品开发作为企业经营过程中具有重要意义的一环,在现代商业竞争中扮演着越来越重要的作用,成为企业竞争力的源泉。     

Explaining Competitive Reactions to New Products: An Empirical Signaling Study

This article develops a conceptual model to help explain the strength of competitive reactions to new product introductions and presents the findings from a preliminary empirical investigation of this model. Being able to explain the strength of competitive reactions to new product introductions is important, as such reactions often determine a product's success or failure in the marketplace. To explain these reactions Oliver Heil and Rockney Walters investigate competitive market signals associated with new product introductions and the reactions of competing firms to the signals. The authors empirically test the hypothesized linkages among three market signals—hostility, consequences and commitment—and competitive reactions using primary data collected from a large number of US corporations. The empirical results show that the market signaling variables explain a significant portion of the variance in the perceived strength of competitive reactions to new product introductions. The study has implications for managers introducing new products and for researchers studying new product introductions and competition.     

The Hidden Value of Knowledge in New Products

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the impact that knowledge management has on new product success. In this study, two aspects of knowledge management—knowledge acquisition and knowledge dissemination—were examined relative to traditional determinant of new product success. Moderating effect of competitive intensity is also investigated. The results generally support the importance of knowledge management to new product success. These findings imply that if organizations fail to understand the subtle ways by which different features of KM influence new product success, they may fail to harvest the full value of KM.     

航天民用产品开发的创新模式

目前国内航天民用产业在产品开发和经营方面还存在很多薄弱环节，诸如只注重产品开发的技术性而忽视了对市场的调查和分析，市场需求掌握不充分，市场策划比较粗放，从而导致产品经营经常处于被动局面。针对这种状况，笔者从市场开发、市场策划、技术开发、经营开发四个方面对产品开发进行了深刻分析，并借鉴国内外先进企业产品开发的经验，提出了航天民用产业产品开发的创新模式。     

印机行业新发展

2003年我国印机行业保持了行业各项经济指标较快增长. 据统计资料显示:2003年全国印机行业(骨干企业)现价工业总产值为426114万元,与上年同比增长12.6%;工业销售产值为413392万元,与上年同比增长10.2%;工业增加值为166003万元,与上年同比增长13.8%;产品销售收入为408441万元,与上年同比增长8.1%;利润总额为42776万元,与上年同比增长33.9%,成本费用总额为357331万元,与上年同比增长3.9%.     

Forecasting Sales of New Contingent Products: An Application to the Compact Disc Market

Estimating the sales potential of new products before an actual launch is a major problem confronting marketing and new products managers. Several modeling efforts for both new durable products and consumer package goods have been reported. An area which has received little explicit treatment, however, is that of new contingent product sales. A specific case of such products is the close relationship between software (consumables or accessory items subject to repeat purchase), and hardware (the original durable good required for use of the software). Examples of this relationship include video cassette recorders and VCR tapes; microcomputers and floppy diskettes; and cameras and photographic film. In this article Barry Bayus discusses a practical method for estimating hardware and software sales of such products. Effects due to different market segment behaviors, pricing, awareness levels, and purchase intentions are incorporated into the model. Results from a study of the compact disc prerecorded audio market by RCAlAriola are presented in order to illustrate how the model can be applied and how the results are useful in making managerial decisions.     

Development Resource Planning: Complexity of Product Development and the Capacity to Launch New Products

Overcommitment of development capacity or development resource deficiencies are important problems in new product development (NPD). Existing approaches to development resource planning have largely neglected the issue of resource magnitude required for NPD. This research aims to fill the void by developing a simple higher‐level aggregate model based on an intuitive idea: The number of new product families that a firm can effectively undertake is bound by the complexity of its products or systems and the total amount of resources allocated to NPD. This study examines three manufacturing companies to verify the proposed model. The empirical results confirm the study's initial hypothesis: The more complex the product family, the smaller the number of product families that are launched per unit of revenue. Several suggestions and implications for managing NPD resources are discussed, such as how this study's model can establish an upper limit for the capacity to develop and launch new product families.     

Perspective: The Innovation Dilemma: How to Innovate When the Market Is Mature

Most companies have ambitious growth goals. The trouble is there are only so many sources of market growth. Markets in many countries and industries are mature and increasingly commoditized; achieving growth in market share is expensive; and acquisitions often do not work. For most companies, product development means line extensions, improvements, and product modifications, and only serves to maintain market share. Markets aren't growing, so firms increasingly compete for a piece of a shrinking pie by introducing one insignificant new product after another. The launch of a truly differentiated new product in mature markets is rare these days. As a result, development portfolios have become decidedly less innovative since the mid‐1990s, and R&D productivity is down. The answer is bold innovation—breakthrough products, services and solutions that create growth engines for the future. This means larger‐scope and more systems‐oriented solutions and service packages. Examples such as Apple's iPod are often cited. (Note that Apple did not invent the MP3 player, nor was this opportunity in a blue ocean; in fact there were 43 competitors when Apple launched!) What Apple did succeed in was in identifying an attractive strategic arena (MP3s) where it could leverage its strengths to its advantage and then to develop a solution that solved users’ problems. The result—an easy‐to‐use, easy‐to‐download MP3 system, which also happened to be “cool.” Our benchmarking studies reveal that five vectors must be in place to undertake this type of innovation to yield bolder and more imaginative development projects. First, develop a bold innovation strategy that focuses your business on the right strategic arenas that promise to be engines of real growth. Most businesses focus their efforts in the wrong areas—on flat markets, mature technologies, and tired product categories. Break out of this box towards more promising strategic arenas with extreme opportunities. Next, foster a climate and culture that promotes bolder innovation. Leadership is vital to success. If senior management does not have the appetite for these big concepts, then all your efforts and systems will fail. Senior management plays a vital role here in promoting an innovative climate in your business. Next, create “big ideas” for integrated product‐service solutions. The best methods for generating breakthrough new product ideas are identified in this paper. Then drive these “big concepts” to market quickly via a systematic and disciplined idea‐to‐launch system designed for major innovation initiatives. Just because these projects are imaginative and bold is no reason to throw discipline out the window. In fact, quite the reverse is true. Finally build a solid business case and focus on the winners. Most innovation teams don't get the facts, and consequently build weak business cases; the result is that many worthwhile innovations don't get the support they need to be commercialized. It's essential to do the front‐end homework, and so build a compelling business case. Then make the right investment decisions—evaluating “big concepts” for development when little information is available. Note that financial models don't work well when it comes to evaluating major innovations, because the data are often wrong. But other methods can be used to make these tough go/kill decisions. Illustrations and examples are provided from many industries and companies to show how to implement these five vectors.     

The Role of Market Research in the Development of New Consumer Products

Managers today face the twin challenges of producing better results, faster than ever before. Robert Davis presents a number of lessons on how market research can enhance a typical new product development and decision plan. His central theme is the disciplined use of very focused market research to make better and faster decisions about a new product throughout its development. These lessons are based on his thirty years of experience in market research, mostly in the new products work conducted at Procter & Gamble.     

Design of Robust New Products under Variability: Marketing Meets Design*

In designing consumer durables such as appliances and power tools, it is important to account for variations in product performance across different usage situations and conditions. Since the specific usage of the product and the usage conditions can vary, the resultant variations in product performance also can impact consumer preferences for the product. Therefore, any new product that is designed should be robust to these variations—both in product performances and consumer preferences. This article refers to a robust product design as a design that has (1) the best possible (engineering and market) performance under the worst‐case variations and (2) the least possible sensitivity in its performance under the variations. Achieving these robustness criteria, however, implies consideration of a large number of design factors across multiple functions. This article's objectives are (1) to provide a tutorial on how variations in product performance and consumer preferences can be incorporated in the generation and comparison of design alternatives and (2) to apply a multi‐objective genetic algorithm (MOGA) that incorporates multifunction criteria in order to identify better designs while incorporating the robustness criteria in the selection process. Since the robustness criteria is based on variations in engineering performance as well as consumer preferences, the identified designs are robust and optimal from different functional perspectives, a significant advantage over extant approaches that do not consider robustness issues from multifunction perspectives. This study's approach is particularly useful for product managers and product development teams, who are charged with developing prototypes. They may find the approach helpful for obtaining customers' buy‐in as well as internal buy‐in early on in the product development cycle and thereby for reducing the cost and time involved in developing prototypes. This study's approach and its usefulness are illustrated using a case‐study application of prototype development for a handheld power tool.     

Using the Weapons You Have: The Role of Resources and Competitor Orientation as Enablers and Inhibitors of Competitive Reaction to New Products*

It is a well‐accepted notion that to respond to competitive attacks firms need the necessary resources to do so. However, the presence of resources may not be a sufficient condition to enhance competitive responsiveness. Following a managerial decision‐making approach, the present paper investigates how the availability of resources affects decision makers' assessment of a competitor's new product and their subsequent reaction to it. This study posits that competitive reaction follows from a decision maker's assessment of a competitive action. This assessment contains a motivation dimension and an ability dimension. The effect of three types of resources—financial, marketing, and technological—are examined. A quasi‐experiment with the Markstrat business game as an empirical setting provided 339 questionnaires containing information on 29 different new product introductions. The motivation and ability dimensions are confirmed as important antecedents explaining reaction behavior. The results show that resources possess a dual, and opposing, role in influencing competitive reaction to new products. On the one hand, resources enhance decision makers' belief that they are able to react effectively to competitive attacks, but the presence of resources also makes them less motivated to react. The paper introduces two explanations for this: the liability‐of‐wealth hypothesis and the strong‐competitor hypothesis. The addition of competitor orientation as a moderator allows us to discern between the two competing rationales for the existence of a negative effect of resources on the expected likelihood of success of a competitive new product introduction, supporting the liability‐of‐wealth hypothesis. The paper demonstrates the key role of competitor orientation and formulates implications from that.     

可靠性在机械产品设计中的应用

介绍了机械产品在设计过程中应当注意的一些准则和方法.设计准则介绍了继承性设计、简化设计和耐环境设计等准则,并举例说明这些准则应用的一些实例.设计方法介绍了系统设计、冗余设计、参数设计、容差设计、降额设计、安全裕度设计方法及耐环境设计方法.同时说明了一些方法的应用.     

The Effect of Product Design Activities on Commercial Success Levels of New Industrial Products

Previous research has investigated the link between product success and key steps in the new products development process. Because the design/development phase of this process uses large proportions of resources, it has been carefully scrutinized. Nevertheless, the impact on new product success levels of an important aspect of this phase—the technically oriented design steps—has not been comprehensively examined and has been neglected in favor of such nontechnical dimensions as the marketing/R&D interface problem. Richard Hise, Larry O'Neal, James McNeal and A. Parasuraman report the results of a study of 195 new industrial products. They conclude that new product developers may jeopardize the success potentials of new industrial products by not performing specific design steps and by instituting an incomplete design/development agenda.     

Narrative Transportation in Concept Tests for Really New Products: The Moderating Effect of Reader–Protagonist Similarity

The authors investigate the benefits of using a narrative (i.e., a storyline featuring a protagonist) to convey product information in the evaluation of really new product concepts by consumers. In the context of early product evaluation, the imagination of consumers can be guided by a narrative about a protagonist who uses the new product in a series of actions and events. In this way, a narrative can present information about the new product concept in a way that is evocative and relevant. The authors build on narratives research and study the implications of different protagonist focal characters. Further, the role of a protagonist focal character in facilitating consumer evaluations is examined, and evaluation formats (narrative versus attribute/benefit listings) are compared. Utilizing three empirical studies, this research looks at the potential effects of protagonist (dis)similarity with the reader on transportation and new product evaluation both in narrative and bulleted list evaluation formats. Study 1 shows an interactive effect of reader–protagonist similarity and evaluation format on transportation and product evaluation. The results from this study show that reader–protagonist similarity is needed for a narrative to be effective. Studies 2 and 3 provide further understanding of the effects of reader–protagonist (dis)similarity. Study 2 shows that the negative impact of a dissimilar protagonist can be mitigated by explicitly instructing the readers to imagine themselves as the protagonist, thus enabling them to fully experience the storyline. Study 3 decomposes the reader–protagonist dissimilarity and shows that not all protagonists dissimilar to the reader deliver a negative outcome. A dissimilar protagonist that is not from a dissociative out‐group for the reader effectuates a positive result. Finally, the underlying process for the observed effects is demonstrated: narrative transportation is shown to mediate the observed effects in all three studies. With these studies, the authors advance narrative transportation and social identity theory. Furthermore, the research provides practical guidelines for how narratives should be constructed and utilized to obtain consumer evaluations of product concepts in the new product development process.     

When Technologies Compete: The Role of Externalities in Nonlinear Market Response

When competing technologies are introduced at about the same time, they may either share the market for an extended period or one may eventually dominate the other. Using actual data from the VCR market, William Redmond explores product and market conditions that favor the emergence of a dominant technology. Recent developments in the theory of nonlinear economic processes yield straightforward models of the dominant or all-or-nothing response pattern. In this study, the role of externalities, or infrastructure, emerges as a critical determinant in producing the nonlinear market response pattern. One intriguing aspect of nonlinear market processes is a propensity for small, outside influences to exercise a powerful and long-term influence on market response, that is, "luck" may play a role in these models.     

Focus Groups and the Development of New Products by Technologically Driven Companies: Some Guidelines

Manufacturers of consumer goods frequently have used focus group discussions to learn about consumers' reactions to both new and existing products. Typically, results of these discussions have led to the exploration of new concepts and the identification of new opportunities. Edward McQuarrie and Shelby McIntyre have developed a series of practical guidelines to help industrial and technological companies use focus groups during the process of concept development and refinement. The group's discussion provides insight into how the product may be received by buyers in the marketplace.