The company, product and market dimensions of new product decision scenarios

Studies show that managers synthesize information and make strategic decisions in a situation-specific mode. Making effective new product decisions is a critical problem and managers are urged to improve their performance by adjusting their decision approach to fit the type of situation. Identifying situation-specific new product scenarios is, therefore, an important prerequisite. This article identifies five basic new product decision scenarios using a cluster analysis of factor scored company, product and market data. These provide insights about the situations managers typically face when evaluating new products.     

DESIGNOR: A decision support procedure for industrial product design

This paper presents a model-based methodology called DESIGNOR to support design decisions for new industrial products. Models and measurements are developed to assess the relationship between product features and market potential. The methodology incorporates a measurement survey for model calibration and leads to empirical tradeoff curves between design dimensions. The approach handles discrete as well as continuous features and can be incorporated into a procedure aimed at finding a profit maximizing design. It can be used to support decisions concerning product design as well as for product line expansion. The approach provides a consistent way of evaluating market potential for new industrial products and presents important advantages over other product design methodologies.     

Determinants of the new product screening decision A structural model analysis

Many criteria have been proposed to aid managers in the difficult and complex new product screening decision task. Corporate synergy, production synergy, marketing synergy, competitive advantage and expected performance are shown to be five critical causal determinants of managers' overall evaluation of a new product's likelihood of success.     

How consumers use product reviews in the purchase decision process

This paper uses individual level data to examine the influence of product reviews in different stages of the consumer’s purchase decision process. Specifically, a two-stage model consisting of consideration set formation and choice is posited, where the consumer can incorporate information from product reviews in each stage. The model is estimated using an online panel survey about hotel choice. We find that (1) consumers use product reviews more in the consideration set stage and less in the choice stage, (2) Bayesian updating of prior perceived quality better explains how consumers use product reviews compared to two competing updating methods, and (3) the monetary value of a unit increase in the mean of product reviews is computed. Our results suggest that managers should make product review information (their number, average, and variance) available from the beginning of the search process and encourage satisfied customers to write reviews.     

A linguistic decision process in group decision making

Assuming a set of linguistic preferences representing the preferences of the individuals, a linguistic choice process is presented. This is developed using the concept of fuzzy majority for deriving a collective linguistic preference, and the concept of nondominated alternatives for deriving the selected alternatives in the linguistic choice process. The fuzzy majorities are equated with fuzzy linguistic quantifiers. The collective linguistic preference is derived by means of a linguistic ordered weighted averaging operator whose weights are defined using a fuzzy linguistic quantifier. In order to obtain the nondominated alternatives, we present a novel reformulation of Orlovski's nondominance degree under linguistic information.     

Substance versus trappings in new product management

When firms experience a faster pace of change in their markets and in the technology used they frequently have to turn to developing new products in order to safeguard their competitive position. This paper identifies possible formal organisation designs for developing new products and discusses a method for understanding the different ways in which firms actually undertake the detailed tasks involved. New avenues for further practically orientated research are identified.     

Consumer decision making and the nature of the product: A comparison of husband and wife adoption process location

Many studies investigating consumer decision making have implicitly assumed that one individual in a family (most often the wife) makes all of the consumption choices for the family. This study investigated and compared the independent responses of husbands and wives concerning their adoption process location for a series of products. Significant response discrepancies were observed, primarily for products for which the adoption decision likely involves lower levels of involvement. Relatively little agreement was observed between husbands and wives on whether a product was adopted. © 1993 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

The role of top management team attention in new product introductions

Individuals in high technology organizations inhabit four different “thought worlds” that shape their perceptions of the problems and opportunities facing the organization. Field people, planning people, technical people, and manufacturing people all have different patterns of allocating their attention and prioritizing issues. We theorize that some executives on the top management team (TMT) reflect the cognitive patterns of the areas that they represent; thus the representation of these thought worlds on the TMT ultimately affects how and when new products are introduced. This perspective integrates the concept of organizational thought worlds with the attention-based view, and we find that field people increase the introduction of products to existing markets while planning people increase products introduced to new markets. Manufacturing and technical people decrease products introduced to new markets. These findings increase our understanding of how the composition of the TMT affects the organizational-wide process of new product development.     

Information diffusion and new product consumption: A bass model application to tourism facility management

This article applies models to measure and to understand how information diffusion influences tourists' consumption patterns. The study uses administrative data on a new festival's attendance and advertising. Bass's [Bass FM. A new product growth for model consumer durables. Manage Sci 1969;15(5):215-227] model and a modified version [Horsky D, Simon LS. Advertising and the diffusion of new products. Mark Sci 1983;2(1):1-18] to allow for advertising's effect. Results imply effectiveness of front loaded advertising. This result is due to increasing purchases that result from word-of-mouth information diffusion. However, a model with an effect of advertising is accepted as well as a model with no consideration of advertising budget. Examination of consistency and conceptual issues with models raises the need for models that are more realistic for the tourism product. A specific concern is developing models appropriate to analysis of attendance at a limited-duration innovative event (e.g., new product) held at a host to impact longer-term attendance of the host.     

Measuring product market efficiency: A new methodology

This paper proposes a new methodology to measure product market efficiency. Our approach is based on the economic theory of product market equilibrium where consumers have incomplete information, and it allows quality to be multidimensional. We illustrate the methodology and compare it with other methodologies including the data envelopment analysis (DEA)-based procedure of Kamakura, Ratchford, and Agrawal (1988). The empirical results show that our model is robust to the precise distributional form of the disturbance term. In addition, our efficiency estimates are always equal to or lower than the DEA estimates of efficiency.     

A multiobjective decision support system for multiresource forest management

A multiobjective and/or multiperson decision support system for analyzing multiresource forest management problems is developed in this paper. The procedure includes formulating the problem in a multiobjective and group decision making framework, and solving it using two solution techniques which consist of a distance-based compromise programming (CP) and a cooperative game theoretic approach of the Nash equilibrium type. The problem consists of five forest resources management objective functions to be maximized. Solving the problem using the two solution techniques enables determining a satisfactory compromise solution of the five forest resource management objectives. Sensitivity analysis of the two techniques shows compromise programming to be more sensitive to changes in the weight and the p-parameter of the technique while the cooperative game theoretic approach is relatively robust with respect to changes in the worst utility set.     

The mobile shopping revolution: Redefining the consumer decision process

The use of mobile devices by consumers and the accompanying response by retailers is rapidly revolutionizing the retail environment. In the past, retailers have focused primarily on the outcome (to purchase or not to purchase) of the consumer decision process, but now mobile technologies give retailers the opportunity to more actively influence the entire consumer decision-making processes. The increasing use of mobile devices by consumers makes shopping a continuous rather than discrete activity that requires retailers to engage with their customers at critical touch points of the decision process in order to provide a more customer-centric experience. This change in focus from the decision outcome to the decision process signifies an important paradigm shift for the retailing industry. After an extensive review of the literature, we identify four pillars that form the foundation for the mobile shopping revolution and represent the essential ways and means through which retailers can engage with consumers during the decision process. We also discuss the different areas in which the pillars can enable retailers to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage in the mobile shopping era.     

The evolution of interorganizational relationships in emerging ventures: An ethnographic study within the new product development process

Emerging ventures rarely have the resources they need, which often force them to reach beyond their boundaries to access these resources. While the field has acknowledged how critical external relationships are in the emergence process, we lack an understanding of how these relationships evolve. Drawing on fourteen longitudinal case studies, this article begins to fill that gap by examining how emerging ventures use interorganizational relationships to discover, develop, and commercialize new products. We found that emerging ventures tended to establish outsourcing relationships early and that many outsourcing relationships progressed into alliances. This suggests that these early relationships are dynamic, evolve through the emergence process, and may be critical to the successful emergence of a venture. We also discovered that many entrepreneurs developed strong socioemotional bonds with their alliance partners. Unexpectedly, our study revealed that in many cases these socioemotional bonds clouded the entrepreneur's judgment of the partner's abilities and led to problems that threatened the venture's survival.     

一个新的产品管理理念:品质管理

编者按:今年3月28日,中国啤酒界的目光齐聚山东烟台,一向不事张扬的烟台啤酒集团在这里郑重向外界宣布:烟台啤酒即日起全面实施纯生化战略. 这是"纯生化"首次出现在国人的视野中;这也是中国啤酒业的又一次重大变革,它带来的将是啤酒标准的重新定义和经营理念的全面刷新,并将引领中国啤酒工业步入一个新时代. 本文说的是啤酒,但其"品质提升"的管理理念对我国所有产品生产厂家都是有深刻的启迪作用的,我们能够从中悟出一些原先尚不十分清楚的发展思路.     

Strategies for new product development

In spite of much evidence of its success, many managers hesitate to establish a policy for new product development. Their indecision often arises from two reasons: they fear that a defined strategy may discourage innovation and they are uncertain how to formulate a new product strategy. The author of this article discredits the former notion and, in reply to the latter, proposes the guidelines for developing such a statement. As new products are essential to the continued success of most firms, the strategy must exist and must be operant if the firm is to avoid wasted time, effort, and money as well as employee confusion and discouragement.     

Toward an integrated framework for online consumer behavior and decision making process: A review

This paper presents a comprehensive review of recent empirical studies dealing with online consumer behavior and decision‐making processes. To that end, the paper adapts and extends Engel, Kollat, and Blackwell's ( 1978 ) and Engel, Blackwell, and Miniard's ( 1986 ) decision‐making model as backdrop in the review of the literature. The vast majority of studies examine the link between external factors and one or more components of the decision‐making process. The findings of this study show a paucity of research on a number of components of decision making, as well as inconsistencies in the way the online environment is characterized. Finally, the findings show that student samples are prevalent among the studies identified and the research method is biased toward the survey method as opposed to experimentation. Discussion and conclusions are provided, and directions for future research are presented. ©2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.