Criteria for screening new industrial products

Screening new industrial product ideas—the initial GO/NO GO decision in the new product process—is a critical decision. This article reports the results of an extensive investigation into what criteria managers use in their screening decisions, and how these criteria are weighted and combined.     

Product Recycle patterns for new industrial products

A diffusion model that is capable of tracking very different diffusion paths is presented. Based on this model, nine different diffusion classes are proposed. Actual data for a number of products confirm that the full flexibility of the proposed approach is necessary. That is, most classes are represented by at least one product. Possible explanations of class member-ship are proposed. More work is needed to confirm/refute these explanations.     

Measuring market potential for industrial products: An eight-step approach

The assignment given more often than any other to industrial marketing research departments by marketing management is the measurement of market potentials. This sounds like a clear-cut and unequivocal task. However, depending upon the type, age (well-established vs. new product), and use of the product involved, the approaches and avenues to be employed, and the data to be established may differ markedly from one product to another. In order to illustrate this, the seven main categories of undustrial products are briefly discussed below.     

Artificial neural networks: A new methodology for industrial market segmentation

Neural networks are a type of artificial intelligence computing that have generated considerable interest across many disciplines during the past few years. The authors explore the potential of artificial neural networks in assisting industrial marketers faced with a segmentation problem by comparing their classification ability with discriminant analysis and logistic regression. The neural networks achieve higher hit ratios on holdout samples than the other methodologies. A marketer in a business-to-business situation may be able to segment a market more accurately, thereby improving efficiency for sales forces and other promotional activities, by using artificial neural networks.     

Benefit segmentation for industrial products

Operationalizing the segmentation concept for industrial products and making the segmentation research strategically relevant constitute a formidable challenge for marketing researchers and practitioners alike. This paper attempts to identify why many existing approaches to this question frequently lack operational meaning and strategic relevance. Next, a simple but practical benefit segmentation scheme is described which assists marketing managers in strategy formulation. The model is illustrated with a detailed case study of the air compressor market.     

Risk factors in accepted and rejected new industrial products

Faced with limited and increasingly expensive resources, managers in most industrial product companies are constantly confronted with the difficult task of choosing which new product opportunities to accept for development funding and which to reject. Their decision is made even more difficult because of both the high failure rates and high development costs typical of high-technology industrial products, both during development and after market introduction. This research identifies some critical dimensions of risk in potential new product opportunities. This is an important step toward identifying the most relevant dimensions of government incentives for research and development assistance, as well as an aid to managers attempting to recognize and deal with the greatest risks in the new product opportunities they face.     

Uncertain regulatory timing and market dynamics

Using a dynamic model of capacity accumulation, I examine the relationship between uncertainty about the timing of a new Pigouvian tax and oligopolistic competition. I find that for some market structures uncertainty about the timing of the regulatory change leads firms to increase investment. These results stem from the nature of the uncertainty and its interaction with firms' strategic incentive to engage in capacity races. They dramatize the importance of accounting for initial conditions when forecasting firms' reactions to anticipated regulatory changes. In addition, I find that more protracted uncertainty leads to greater welfare costs.     

Measuring innovativeness for the adoption of industrial products

This study evaluates two traditional methods of segmenting industrial markets based on firm innovativeness. There are two distinct innovativeness measures used in the literature. The first innovativeness measure is based on the time of adoption of a single product. Segmenting an industrial market based in this measure was found to be predictive of a firm's relative time of adoption of related products. The second innovativeness measure is based on the usage of multiple products at a single point in time. Segmentation based on this measure captured the degree of adoption or usage of a new product. However, neither of these measures captured both the time of adoption and the degree of adoption constructs of innovativeness. Therefore, a third innovativeness measure is proposed here which is a hybrid of the two traditional measures. This composite measure captured both innovativeness constructs.     

Revitalizing weak industrial products

The study reported in this article focuses on the policies and practices of industrial goods companies to revitalize weak products. The decision was found to be a multiple-stage sequential process that begins with “diagnostic” routine to identify the causes of a product's unsatisfactory performance and ends with the implementation of a corrective action that management believes could restore the product's health.     

Likely gains from market timing in Japan

This paper explores the potential gains and required predictive ability of market timing in Japan and then compares the results to previously reported findings from another developed financial market — the United States — and a developing Asia Pacific financial market — Singapore. Shifts between cash equivalents and common stocks are evaluated. The results demonstrate that the potential gains from market timing in Japan are quite attractive and that the minimum predictive accuracy required for successful market timing may be attainable by some portfolio managers. However, for the period examined, the results also indicate that larger incremental gains result from market timing Singapore stocks and cash equivalents.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Second Annual Pacific Basin Finance Conference in Seoul, Korea in 1991. The author appreciates the helpful comments of Lim Kian Guan and two anonymous referees.     

Library support for industrial marketing research

The literature of business and management often discusses the need for timely information as a prerequisite to decision-making and planning. The role of the corporate library in supporting management's information needs has rarely been discussed in professional management literature. This article examines the library's role in supporting industrial marketing research. Special reference is made to new technologies that enhance traditional library services.     

Unfolding implementation in industrial market segmentation

Market segmentation is an important method of strategic marketing and constitutes a cornerstone of the marketing literature. It has undergone extensive scientific inquiry during the past 50 years. Reporting on an extensive review of the market segmentation literature, the challenging task of implementing industrial market segmentation is discussed and unfolded in this article. Extant literature has identified segmentation implementation as a core challenge for marketers, but also one, which has received limited empirical attention. Future research opportunities are formulated in this article to pave the way towards closing this gap. The extent of implementation coverage is assessed and various notions of implementation are identified. Implementation as the task of converting segmentation plans into action (referred to as execution) is identified as a particularly beneficial focus area for marketing management. Three key elements and challenges connected to execution of market segmentation are identified — organization, motivation, and adaptation.