Drivers and Pathways of NPD Success in the Marketing–External Design Relationship

Marketing often cooperates with external design in the new product development (NPD) process. While this relationship is crucial for NPD success and is a typical case of interorganizational collaboration between a business‐oriented function (marketing) and a creative partner (external design), a comprehensive understanding of this relationship remains lacking. As the NPD field evolves to open systems that have changed concepts like functional integration into interorganizational integration, this study contributes to NPD literature by developing an integrated conceptual framework leading to a model of drivers and pathways of NPD success in the marketing–external design relationship. Building on the literature on NPD, design management and relationship marketing, and on nine dyadic case studies from the luxury fragrance and cosmetics industry, a content analysis was conducted, enriched by a crisp‐set qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). This research confirms several NPD success drivers suggested in the literature and reveals three new drivers: source of design expertise, designer brand commitment, and number of NPD stages involving designer. The first new driver (source of design expertise) impacts the relationship process, which then impacts NPD success, while the other two drivers (designer brand commitment, and number of NPD stages involving designer) directly influence NPD success. The paper also identifies the pathways of NPD success, showing that contact authority and designer brand commitment are necessary conditions for NPD success, especially when combined with a high number of NPD stages involving designer or a previous relationship. The results also indicate that pathways of NPD success may differ according to the source of design expertise. From a managerial perspective, this study provides recommendations to managers to select the right design partner and choose from a range of drivers and pathways to devise more effective ways to work with external designers, thereby leading to NPD success.     

The Effects of Self‐Managed and Closely Managed Teams on Labor Productivity and Product Quality: An Empirical Analysis of a Cross‐Section of Establishments

I estimate the effect of team production on labor productivity and product quality using a cross‐section of British establishments, finding that the typical establishment enjoys statistically significant increases in labor productivity (but not product quality) from using teams, although there is no statistically significant difference between the predicted gains from autonomous versus nonautonomous teams. I show that standard methodological approaches that treat teams and autonomy as exogenous induce biases of two forms: (1) the benefits from teams are inflated, and (2) the benefits of autonomous teams relative to those of nonautonomous teams are inflated.     

New Product Preannouncement as a Signaling Strategy: An Audience‐Specific Review and Analysis*

Firms in various industries with highly competitive environments use new product preannouncement (NPP) as one of the most effective and popular signaling tools. Preannouncements can bring both benefits and costs to firms. Extant research has studied NPP from different perspectives and tackled the questions, “Should a new product be preannounced and when?” and “What information should be preannounced and why?” However, the benefits and costs of preannouncements from an audience‐specific perspective are less well understood. It is important to notice that benefits and costs of a preannouncement vary among different audiences and firms need to apply group‐specific weights in assessing the overall benefits and costs prior to making new product preannouncements. The purpose of this article is to review the existing literature on new product preannouncements for commonly observed marketing problems and to develop a general approach focusing on the target audiences and the incentives in sending signals to each audience and the impacts of these signals. This paper first reviews the literature on marketing‐related NPP issues as well as the determinants and effects of various factors on NPP decisions. Then, it discusses the phenomenon of new product preannouncements linked to other marketing and economics problems: (1) product development and positioning; (2) product diffusion and adoption; (3) firm value; (4) vaporware and antitrust litigations; and (5) consumer welfare. In addition, this paper divides the target audience of the new product preannouncement into four groups: customers, competitors, investors, and distributors. Based on current signaling theory, it proposes an audience‐specific framework to analyze the determinants, incentives, and impact of new product preannouncements. The proposed approach may provide more comprehensive insights on NPP strategies to managers and industrial decision makers. Finally, the paper suggests a number of future research directions from four different perspectives (i.e., customer, firm, government/industry, and methodology).     

A Cross‐National Comparative Study of Senior Management Policy,Marketing–Manufacturing Involvement,and Innovation Performance

The marketing–manufacturing interface is important to the success of product development. This research investigates the effect of senior management policies on the effectiveness of the marketing–manufacturing interface. Based on existing literature, a conceptual framework is developed that relates senior management policies, marketing–manufacturing involvement, and new product performance. The proposed framework is contingent on the national culture of the country in which product development occurs. Structural equation modeling is used to test the framework with data from a sample of 146 U.S. marketing managers and 185 Japanese marketing managers. The results suggest that a number of senior management policies are effective in promoting joint involvement between the marketing and manufacturing functions during the innovation process. While the use of formal cross‐functional integration policies was found to promote marketing–manufacturing involvement both in the United States and Japan, team leader autonomy, team rewards, and job rotation were found to promote marketing involvement in the United States but not in Japan. On the other hand, promoting marketing–manufacturing involvement via goal clarity and promotion of teamwork proved to be effective in Japan. The results have a number of implications for product development practice. Foremost among these is the finding that, despite the fundamental ideological differences separating the marketing and manufacturing functions, senior management policies can enhance the level of marketing–manufacturing involvement, and consequently can improve the likelihood of new product success. The second implication is that the effectiveness of specific senior management policies depends on national culture. Thus, managers wishing to improve the marketing–manufacturing interface should select the policies that match the culture in which the product development project is located.     

When Visual Product Features Speak the Same Language: Effects of Shape‐Typeface Congruence on Brand Perception and Price Expectations*

Recent studies in marketing research and consumer psychology indicate that congruence, as opposed to incongruence, of symbolic meanings connoted across or within marketing mix elements positively affects consumer response. However, controlled studies addressing congruence effects among visual product features such as shape and typeface are nonexistent. Since consumer products comprise multiple visual elements that connote symbolic meanings, and considering that a product's visual appearance is an important determinant of consumer choice, such studies are called for. Based on processing fluency accounts, the authors argue that shape‐typeface congruence facilitates stimulus processing, thereby positively affecting perceptions of brand credibility, brand aesthetics, and brand value; the latter reflected in higher price expectations. Two studies were conducted to test these predictions. In study 1 , two shape variants and two typeface variants of a fictitious brand of bottled water connoted either luxury or casualness. Cross‐pairing the two shapes with the two typefaces resulted in four product variants, either congruent or incongruent in terms of the symbolic meanings connoted. Participants were randomly presented with one of the product variants, after which they filled out a questionnaire comprising the dependent measures. Largely in line with expectations, results revealed overall positive effects of meaning congruence on perceptions of brand credibility and price expectations. In addition to replicating the findings from study 1 using another set of stimuli, study 2 tested the prediction that meaning congruence positively affects perceptions of brand aesthetics. As in study 1 , four product variants were created by cross pairing two product shapes and two typefaces, this time connoting either masculinity or femininity. In line with the findings from study 1 , results revealed overall positive congruence effects. In addition, subsequent analyses showed that perceived brand aesthetics partially mediates congruence effects on price expectations, indicating that consumers expect to pay more for congruent variants because they are considered more attractive. The findings presented testify to the importance of careful consideration of visual product features and the symbolic meanings they connote, and stress the importance of perceived brand aesthetics. In discussing these findings, it is proposed that congruence effects and the mediating processes involved may vary across product categories and depend on consumer personality. In addition, the findings presented are discussed in relation to research indicating that moderate degrees of incongruence may be useful for attracting consumer attention and stimulating information processing. Managerial implications and avenues for future research are discussed.     

The Impact of User‐Oriented Design on New Product Development: An Examination of Fundamental Relationships*

Design offers a potent way to position and to differentiate products and can play a significant role in their success. In many ways it is the focus on deep understanding of the customer or user—what may be termed user‐oriented design (UOD)—that transforms a bundle of technology with the ability to provide functionality into a “product” that people desire to interact with and from which they derive benefits. Even though the importance of this type of design is gaining recognition, several fundamental relationships between user‐oriented design contributions and the new product development (NPD) process and outcomes (i.e., product) remain unresearched, although they are assumed. This article examines the fundamental relationships underlying the incorporation of a user orientation into the NPD process. The discussion is organized around UOD's impact in terms of enhancing collaborative new product development (process oriented), improving idea generation (process oriented), producing superior product or service solutions (product oriented), and facilitating product appropriateness and adoption (product oriented). Each of these is developed and presented in the form of a research proposition relating to the impact of user‐oriented design on product development. The fundamental relationships articulated concerning UOD's impact on NPD form a conceptual framework for this approach to product design and development. For practitioners, the article suggests how user‐oriented design can improve NPD through its more grounded and comprehensive approach, along with the elevated appreciation of design challenges and heightened sense of possibilities for a product being developed. For scholars, the article identifies four important areas for UOD research. In addition to the rich avenues offered for research by each of these, the framework presented provides a foundation for further study as well as the development of new measures and tools for enhancing NPD efforts.     

Do Out‐of‐State Buyers Pay More for Real Estate? An Examination of Anchoring‐Induced Bias and Search Costs

We explore the questions of whether and why out-of-state buyers pay more for real estate than their in-state counterparts. Theoretically, we develop a model capable of explaining a premium if out-of-state buyers have high search costs, upwardly biased beliefs about prices or an unusually short time horizon to purchase. Empirically, we find that out-of-state buyers pay a statistically significant and economically meaningful premium for apartment complexes in the Phoenix area. We also find some evidence consistent with the premium being driven by high search costs, biased beliefs (anchoring) and haste associated with out-of-state buyers.     

Industrial Relations Climate and Union Commitment: An Evaluation of Workplace‐Level Effects

This paper examines the relationship between industrial relations (IR) climate and union commitment. Using a multi‐workplace sample from North East England, aggregation analysis provided support for treating IR climate as a workplace‐level variable, and workplace IR climate was negatively associated with union commitment. However, IR climate moderated none of the relationships between individual‐level antecedents and union commitment.     

Beyond the High‐Performance Paradigm? An Analysis of Variation in Canadian Managerial Perceptions of Reform Programme Effectiveness

Proponents of the high‐performance paradigm often argue that the variable success of new forms of work organization is explained primarily by a failure to implement them comprehensively and to adopt complementary HRM practices. This paper argues that these explanations are inadequate and develops an alternative, political economy approach which accounts more fully for how conflicts embedded in the employment relation limit the effectiveness of reforms. It draws on a unique longitudinal data set representing 78 Canadian workplaces to analyse the extent to which reform programme content, pre‐existing HRM conditions and workplace context variables are associated with reform programme effectiveness.     

The Effects of Market Network Heterogeneity on Innovation Diffusion: An Agent‐Based Modeling Approach

Innovations usually have an initial impact on very few people. The period of learning or early evaluation precedes the diffusion of the technology into the wider addressed population. More than a transfer, this is best characterized as communication of benefits, costs, and compatibility with earlier technologies and a relative assessment of the new state of the art. Innovation development by an organization or individual creates not just a device (i.e., process or tacit knowledge) but concomitantly a capacity on the part of other organizations or persons to use, adopt, replicate, enhance, or modify the technology, skills, or knowledge for their own purposes. How innovations actually diffuse is to understand the communication of progress, and this framing helps one to design innovations and also design the marketing and testing programs to ready innovations for market and launch them efficiently. Diffusion theory's main focus is on the flow of information within a social system, such as via mass media and word‐of‐mouth communications. This theory presents often in the form of mathematical models of innovation and imitation. Distinct from classical diffusion models, however, consumers are not all identical in how they connect to others within a market or how they respond to information. We examine the effects of various network structures and relational heterogeneity on innovation diffusion within market networks. Specifically, network topology (the structure of how individuals in the market are connected) and the strength of communication links between innovator and follower market segments (a form of relational heterogeneity) are studied. Several research questions concerning network heterogeneity are addressed with an agent‐based modeling approach. The present study's findings are based on simulation results that show important effects of network structure on the diffusion process. The ability to speed diffusion varies significantly according to within‐ and cross‐segment communications within a heterogeneous network structure. The implications of the present approach for new product diffusion are discussed, and future research directions are suggested that may add useful insights into the complex social networks inherent to diffusion. A simple summary is that discovery of significant prime communicator nodes in a network allows innovation development practices to be better calibrated to realistically multiple market segments.     

质量兴企与品牌战略在国际化经营中的探索与实践

通过剖析西部钻探国际钻井品牌竞争力的成因，提出了要提升企业品牌竞争力，就必须全面坚持质量兴企，强化品牌质量管理的执行和强化自主创新能力的提高。     

An Empirical Study of the Effect of Brand Proliferation on Private Label – National Brand Pricing Behavior

This paper investigates the competitive pricing interaction between national brand and private label food products, focusing on the effect of brand proliferation. IRI scanner data from 1991 and 1992 for 135 food product categories and 59 geographic markets are used. Empirical findings are grouped into three categories: i) price, promotion and competitive effects, ii) brand proliferation and entry deterrence, and iii) local market effects. Results indicate that both private label and national brand reaction functions are positively sloped and asymmetric. Successful private label penetration, as measured by total private label share, lowers the average price of national brands. The paper's central finding is that the impact of brand proliferation on market pricing behavior is multi-dimensional. First, an increase in the number of brands increases the ability of national brand manufacturers to raise price. Second, the effectiveness of a brand proliferation strategy depends upon the distribution of market share. The more concentrated the brand structure, the lower the market price of national brands. Thus, the net effect of brand proliferation strategies is dependent upon not only the number of brands, but upon the actual distribution of brand shares. Finally, local market conditions play only a small role in the competitive interaction between private labels and national brands.     

Wage Effects of On‐the‐Job Training: A Meta‐Analysis

A meta‐analysis is used to study the average wage effects of on‐the‐job training. This study shows that the average reported wage effect of on‐the‐job training, corrected for publication bias, is 2.6 per cent per course. The analyses reveal a substantial heterogeneity between training courses, while wage effects reported in studies based on instrumental variables and panel estimators are substantially lower than estimates based on techniques that do not correct for selectivity issues. Appropriate methodology and the quality of the data turn out to be crucial to determine the wage returns.     

实施全面质量管理 树企业名牌

结合实例,具体阐述了企业应如何实施全面质量管理,只有注重细节管理、发挥领导作用、全员参与、拥有自己的独特技术和文化、科学调配人力资源、打造自己的技术团队、树立企业品牌、创造名牌产品,才能使企业在激烈的市场竞争中立于不败之地。     

An empirical examination of transaction‐ and firm‐level influences on the vertical boundaries of the firm

A large literature has successfully employed transaction cost economic theory to describe how exchange conditions affect the optimal form of organization. However, this approach has historically not accounted for the influence of firm‐specific attributes on the governance decision. This paper develops a model based on insights from transaction cost economics, the resource‐based view, and real options theory to examine how transaction‐level characteristics, firm‐specific capabilities, and product‐market scope influence the governance of production. Empirical evidence derived from analysis of 469 make‐or‐buy decisions involving 117 semiconductor firms indicates that decisions regarding the governance of production activities are strongly influenced by both transaction‐ and firm‐level effects. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Role of Public and Private Protection in Disruptive Innovation: The Automotive Industry and the Emergence of Low‐Emission Vehicles

In the automotive industry, the need to move toward more sustainable trajectories of innovation has received much attention. Car manufacturers have started to develop lower emission alternatives for the internal combustion engine, particularly electric, hybrid, and fuel‐cell vehicles. They face the challenge, however, of how to make a potentially disruptive, systemic, and societally embedded technology such as a low‐emission vehicle attractive to mainstream customers. While literature has suggested that companies can empower the initial stages of disruptive innovation by creating protected spaces themselves and/or by taking advantage of such spaces created by public actors, the specific role of these different types of protection levers—private and/or public—has remained unclear. This article therefore investigates to what extent and how private and public protection levers affect firm‐level strategies to increase the attractiveness of disruptive and systemic innovations to mainstream customers. This is explored empirically through a multiple case study of the emergence of low‐emission vehicles within three car manufacturers—Daimler, General Motors, and Toyota—in the context of European, Japanese, and U.S. policies. The empirical analysis is conducted on a data set consisting of more than 9000 articles from two trade magazines, a car magazine and a financial newspaper for the period of 1997–2010. As main findings, the article identifies regulation, tax incentives, and public–private partnerships as the public protection levers that impose or stimulate “new” performance metrics such as fuel economy and vehicle emissions. It also finds that resource allocation, niche occupation, and collaboration‐integration act as the main private protection levers. In addition, two protection levers emerge from the data that are rather prominent in this context: the use of regulation imposing large‐scale commercialization of low‐emission vehicles and dumping of products in the market below cost price. The article concludes with two different protection trajectories—a public protection trajectory and a private protection trajectory—which explain how car manufacturers leverage the various protection levers to deal with disruptive technology. The main implication of the two trajectories is that while the public protection trajectory stalled due to the systemic, socially embedded technological impediments of electric vehicles and fuel‐cell vehicles, the private protection trajectory picked up the remains of the public protection trajectory and has gained momentum, continuing until today.     

A Report on the Polish Labor Market: An Insider‐Outsider System

In the last decade, Poland has seen a dramatic increase in unemployment. Even though, mainly due to mass emigration, it has fallen, of late, the joblessness rate is still highest in the EU. It is pointed out that the strictness of employment protection legislation and high nonwage labor costs are behind this disappointing performance. The present article argues, in light of the insider‐outsider theory that, due to the power of Poland's trade unions, a two‐tier system has emerged, favoring employees on open‐ended contracts and discriminating against job seekers. Unions, as classic insiders, thwart attempts to ease stringent fire‐and‐hire regulations to modify early‐retirement schemes and to reform the public sector, which risks affecting the country's socioeconomic development.     

Brand‐Specific Design Effects: Form and Function

Product design is inherently a key component of brand strategy. Accordingly, significant resources are invested to improve product and brand performance; however, foundations for understanding the role product design plays in influencing actual consumer opinions from the marketplace have not been fully explored in the literature. This paper develops a conceptual framework illustrating how two critical design factors—form and function—impact consumer opinion and delineate brand‐specific effects. Nonmonotonic effects are identified, as well as the interaction effects of the individual factors among the dimensions. A longitudinal model based on objective measures of form and function is tested with a data set developed from models available in the U.S. automotive market from 1999–2007; it includes 16 firms, 32 brands, and 137 products. The results indicate the relationships between factors of form and function are multifarious and complex, but clearly play a significant role in forming consumer opinions, although they do exhibit diminishing returns. The findings further indicate brand‐specific effects exist, and consumer opinions vary by brand. The findings provide foundations for understanding the interplay between product development and brand management. Overall, this research supports the notion that brand strategies can be supported through the management of design dimensions.     

Union Influence on Local Union Leaders' Perceptions of Job Insecurity: An Empirical Test

Although recent studies have demonstrated that union workers value job security, little research exists about what causes these perceptions and how unions might affect them. In this study, a job insecurity measure is developed and analysed using a sample of union members. The results indicate that the relationships between union variables and individual perceptions of insecurity depend on the organizational level at which threats occur (e.g. arbitrary supervision or organizational decline). Furthermore, for higher source-level threats, union members are often sensitive to the wage-employment trade-off in that, if they perceive their union to effectively raise wages, they have higher levels of job insecurity. However, work rules do not appear to have much effect on reducing job insecurity perceptions.