Two Sides of the Same Coin: How Do Different Dimensions of Product Program Innovativeness Affect Customer Loyalty?

Conventional wisdom holds that innovativeness has essentially positive performance implications. However, empirical research reveals mixed findings regarding customer‐related responses to innovation, as distinct dimensions—such as product newness and meaningfulness—may generate responses in different manners. This study introduces a multidimensional conceptualization of innovativeness at the program level, thereby enlarging the customary perspective by considering both positive and negative customer responses to innovativeness. Drawing on information economics, this study suggests that product program meaningfulness fosters customer loyalty, whereas product program newness undermines customer loyalty. In addition, the study examines mechanisms that might buffer the negative newness–loyalty relationship and explores enablers of the positive meaningfulness–loyalty effect by considering a brand's association with innovativeness and customer integration. Empirical support for the proposed effects comes from a multi‐industry sample with 180 triadic cases from business‐to‐business companies, which includes assessments from marketing, and research and development managers as well as customers. Moderated regression analysis was applied to test the hypotheses. The results indicate a negative effect of product program newness on customer loyalty and a positive effect of product program meaningfulness. Further, a brand's close association with innovativeness reduces the negative effect of product newness, and integrating customers into the value‐creating process fosters the loyalty effect of product meaningfulness. This study offers a potential explanation for the ambiguity created by equivocal empirical results regarding customer responses to innovativeness. The study also shows that offering more innovations does not necessarily make customers loyal. Instead, managers should mitigate the negative effects of product program newness.     

Market Orientation and Innovativeness in Supply Chains: Supplier's Impact on Customer Satisfaction

As today's firms increasingly outsource their noncore activities, they not only have to manage their own resources and capabilities, but they are ever more dependent on the resources and capabilities of supplying firms to respond to customer needs. This paper explicitly examines whether and how firms and suppliers, who are both oriented to the same customer market, enable innovativeness in their supply chains and deliver value to their joint customer. We will call this customer of the focal firm the “end user.” The authors take a resource‐dependence perspective to hypothesize how suppliers' end‐user orientation and innovativeness influence downstream activities at the focal firm and end‐user satisfaction. The resource dependence theory looks typically beyond the boundaries of an individual firm for explaining firm success: firms need to satisfy customer demands to survive and depend on other parties such as their suppliers to achieve customer satisfaction. Accordingly, the research design focuses on three parties along a supply chain: the focal firm, a supplier, and a customer of the focal firm (end user). The results drawn from a survey of 88 matched chains suggest the following. First, customer satisfaction is driven by focal firms' innovativeness. A focal firm's innovativeness depends, on the one hand, on a focal firm's market orientation and, on the other hand, on its suppliers’ innovativeness. Second, no relationship could be established between a focal firm's market orientation and a supplier's end‐user orientation. Market orientation typically has within‐firm effects, while innovativeness has impact beyond the boundaries of the firm. These results suggest that firms create value for their customer through internal market orientation efforts and external suppliers' innovativeness.     

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).     

Product innovativeness from the firm's perspective: Its dimensions and their relation with project selection and performance

There has recently been tremendous interest in product innovativeness. However, it seems that we need a better understanding of exactly what product innovativeness means. This article presents a conceptual framework to clarify its meaning. The framework first distinguishes customer and firm perspectives on product innovativeness. From the customer's perspective, innovation attributes, adoption risks, and levels of change in established behavior patterns are regarded as forms of product newness. Within the firm's perspective, environmental familiarity and project-firm fit, and technological and marketing aspects are proposed as dimensions of product innovativeness.
Next, the article offers a tentative empirical test of the proposed dimensions of product innovativeness from the firm's perspective. A well-known dataset of 262 industrial new product projects is used to: I) clarify the product innovativeness construct and examine its underlying dimensions, 2) examine the relation of product innovativeness with the decision to pursue or kill the project, and 3) examine the relationship between product innovativeness and product performance. Five dimensions of product innovativeness are found which have distinct relations with the Go/No Go decision and product performance: market familiarity, technological familiarity, marketing fit, technological fit, and new marketing activities. Most strikingly, measures of fit are related to product performance, whereas measures of familiarity are not.
The article concludes that researchers need to be careful about which definitions and measures of product innovativeness they employ, because depending on their choice they may arrive at different findings. New product practitioners are encouraged to evaluate new product opportunities primarily in terms of their fit with their firm's resources and skills rather than the extent to which they are "close to home".     

Product Innovativeness Dimensions and Their Relationships with Product Advantage,Product Financial Performance,and Project Protocol

A considerable body of research informs the relationship of product innovativeness with firm and environmental variables as well as the impact of product innovativeness on product financial success. While providing significant insight, the extant literature exhibits conflicting findings that raise questions as to how, specifically, product innovativeness contributes to product financial performance. This study ties together several streams of research related to the product innovativeness construct to enhance understanding of the product innovativeness—product financial performance relationship. The product innovativeness construct is deconstructed by conceptualizing the relationships among three dimensions of product innovativeness: technological discontinuity, marketing discontinuity, and customer discontinuity. Product innovativeness is distinguished from product advantage, and the relationships among product innovativeness dimensions, product advantage, and product financial performance are empirically tested. The results reveal that, indeed, product innovativeness consists of three separate dimensions that exhibit no or moderate correlations with product advantage. Furthermore, product advantage positively and marketing discontinuity negatively influence product financial performance. Finally, the study also examines how project protocols impact the product innovativeness dimensions. Project protocols, also known as product definitions, describe the general parameters a new product should exhibit (i.e., target segments, product functions and features, base technology, pricing, communication and distribution channels, and required resources) as well as the priorities of the general parameters. Because they guide product design and set priorities and have been found to be a dominant driver of product financial performance, project protocols are important. The present study enhances understanding of how project protocols influence the dimensions of product innovativeness, finding that project protocols positively impact product financial performance indirectly through product advantage and marketing discontinuity.     

The joint impact of quality and innovativeness on short-term new product performance

In the last decade a number of conceptualizations of product quality and innovativeness have been suggested, and academics as well as managers have begun to understand that the relationships between quality, innovativeness and new product performance are more complicated than they may initially seem to be. While an innovation-oriented strategy depends on the exploration of new possibilities through search, risk-taking and experimentation, a high quality strategy requires the exploitation of existing certainties through efficiency, standardization and control. In this research, we demonstrate that the interaction effects of quality (objective and subjective) and innovativeness (for the firm and for the customer) on new product performance are different than the isolated impact of these variables. In addition, by focusing on the main and joint impact of these variables on short-term new product performance, we provide valuable recommendations for new product launch decisions.“The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.”—Oscar Wilde     

It Won't Fit! For Innovative Products,Sometimes That's for the Best

The degree of overlap (i.e., fit) between product development organizations' resources and the product development projects pursued has powerful performance implications. Drawing on organizational learning theory and the resource‐based view, this research conceptualizes and empirically tests the interrelationships between the levels of fit, innovativeness, speed to market, and financial new product performance. After reviewing the research literature relevant to resource fit and new product performance, the level of innovativeness is posited to be an important moderating and mediating factor, which is validated by analysis of data gathered from 279 product developing firms. Technological fit has a negative direct effect on both technological and market innovativeness, while the use of existing marketing resources (i.e., a high degree of marketing fit) positively impacts technological innovativeness. This suggests, consistent with findings from market orientation research, that a deep, long‐held customer understanding can promote technological innovativeness. The moderating hypotheses proposed are also well supported: First, a high degree of marketing fit has a more positive impact on performance for market innovative products (e.g., products which address a new target market or use a nontraditional channel for the firm). Drawing on a deep customer understanding is more critical to performance for market innovative products. Conversely, the benefits of marketing fit are limited where market innovativeness is lacking. Interestingly, the counterpart moderating role of technological innovativeness on technological fit's performance effect is not significant; the level of technological innovativeness does not significantly impact the performance impact of technological fit. There are also significant moderating effects across dimensions. Our results show that the financial benefit of using existing marketing resources is lessened for technologically innovative products. Technological innovations necessitate drastic adaptation of marketing resources (i.e., channel and brand); firms drawing only on existing marketing resources for a technologically innovative new product will incur reduced profit. Similarly, the positive implications of using existing technological resources are limited for products which are highly market innovative. Generally, resource fit is seen to have an (oft‐overlooked) dark side in product development, though several of our findings suggest that marketing resources are more flexible than are technological resources.     

New Product Strategies of Large, Dominant Product Manufacturing Firms: An Exploratory Analysis

Although researchers have expended considerable effort exploring the links between new product strategy and firm-level performance, most studies of this subject focus on small- to medium-sized firms. Compared to smaller firms, however, large companies typically maintain broader portfolios of products and have easier access to capital markets. Such fundamental differences suggest the need for closer examination of the relationship between new product strategy and the performance of large firms. Based on a study of 459 new products introduced during a 5-year period, Richard W. Firth and V. K. Narayanan profile the new product strategies of 18 large companies. They examine the methods used to acquire new products (internal development or external sources) as well as three dimensions of each firm's new product introductions: newness of embodied technology, newness of market application, and innovativeness in the market. In other words, these profiles identify the degree to which a firm's new product introductions involve core technologies and markets that are new to the firm, as well as the degree to which the market views these products as innovative. Because new product strategy is an investment decision, the study also examines the relationship between these strategic profiles and two facets of firm-level performance: risk and return. The study identifies five archetypes of new product strategy: Innovators, who produce innovative products by using their existing resources; Investors in Technology, who focus on expanding their technological base. Searching for New Markets, firms that venture into unfamiliar markets by introducing products closely aligned with those in their existing portfolios; Business as Usual, firms that rely on existing technologies and products to serve existing markets; and Middle-of-the-Road, firms content to introduce new products rated as low to moderate along all three dimensions of the strategic profile. For new products closely aligned with their core markets and technologies, the firms in this study typically rely on internal development. To introduce products involving new technologies or market applications, they turn to acquisition from external sources. Firms that emphasized market innovativeness in their new product introductions enjoyed higher returns than less innovative firms. And contrary to conventional wisdom, they gained this advantage without an accompanying increase in risk. In other words, continual innovation might provide a large firm with the means for achieving higher returns without higher risk.     

The contingent value of marketing strategy innovativeness for product development performance in Chinese new technology ventures

This study extends research on entrepreneurial behavior by investigating the relationship between the marketing strategy innovativeness (MSI) and new product performance in technology-based new ventures in China. Specifically, premised on contingent resource-based view we argue that MSI is a firm capability that must be bundled with external managerial relationships and be deployed in the appropriate environment to ensure its success. We found that the team's extra industry relationships and market dynamism enhanced the impact of MSI on new product performance. In contrast, top management team's intraindustry relationships, financial relationships, and technology dynamism hindered the impact of MSI on new product performance.     

How New Product Introductions Affect Sales Management Strategy: The Impact of Type of "Newness" of the New Product

How do firms adjust sales management strategy for new product launch? Does sales management strategy change more radically for different types of new products such as new‐to‐the‐world products versus product revisions? Because firms introducing a new product rely considerably on their sales force in the product launch effort, the types and degree of changes made in managing the selling effort are important issues. Past studies have demonstrated that firms make substantial adjustments in their sales management strategy when they introduce a new product. This study expands on previous investigations by examining whether sales management strategy changes are conditioned by the type of newness of the new product to the market and to the firm. Australian sales managers were asked to respond to a mail questionnaire concerning pre‐ and post‐new product launch sales management activities. Three groups of firms were compared: (1) those with new‐to‐the‐market and new‐to‐the‐firm products (i.e., new‐to‐the‐world products); (2) those with products new to the firm but not new to the market; and (3) those with products that are revisions to the firm and not new to the market. The study finds that firms do not make the most adjustments for products with the greatest degree of market newness—the new‐to‐the‐world types of products—except in the sales management strategy categories of compensation and supervision. In the other sales management strategy categories defined for study—organization, training, quotas and goals, and sales support as well as for all categories in the aggregate—sales management strategy changes were greatest in incidence, as measured both by the percent of firms making changes and the average number of changes per firm, when the new product was new to the firm but not new to the market. These results suggest that, because different types of new products face different competitive environments, there may be greater incentive for a not‐new‐to‐the‐market new‐to‐the‐firm product to make changes in sales strategy. Uncertainties about market size and customer location with new‐to‐the‐world products may limit the understanding of what changes to make in the strategy categories of quotas and territories. Similarly, uncertainties about product use and customer acceptance of new‐to‐the‐world products may limit the development of training and sales support materials by these firms. Instead, these firms may rely more on compensation and supervision to direct sales efforts for new‐to‐the‐world products. However, observing the market experience and performance of the first‐to‐market product can benefit firms launching a not‐new‐to‐market and new‐to‐the‐firm product, allowing them to rely more on strategy changes in training, sales support materials, organizational adjustments such as redeployments, and quotas.     

Enhancing Stock Market Return with New Product Preannouncements: The Role of Information Quality and Innovativeness

To advance development and application of signaling theory in the new product preannouncement literature while seeking to resolve ambiguity regarding the influence of innovativeness on stock market return, the role of information quality is examined. Specifically, this study investigates the effect of innovativeness across low and high levels of information quality. The results, ascertained using event study methodology on a sample of 243 new product preannouncements collected over a nine‐year period, indicate that higher information quality increases the strength of the positive relationship between innovativeness and stock market return. The findings offer managers insight into what role information quality plays in new product preannouncements that can help their firms generate higher stock market return.     

How Do Interaction Activities among Customers and between Customers and Firms Influence Market Performance and Continuous Product Innovation? An Empirical Investigation of the Mobile Application Market

Mobile application markets (MAMs) significantly differ from other existing marketplaces at least in two aspects. First, customers (app users) and firms (app providers) frequently interact with each other in real time, which is not common in the conventional marketplaces. Second, many app providers incorporate customers’ opinions or suggestions into their software upgrades, representing one of the most unique and interesting aspects of MAMs. Therefore, it has become critical to understand the impact of interaction activities not only among customers, but also between customers and firms on the market performances of new products in MAMs. One of the most significant issues firms face is whether firms reflect on customers’ postpurchase interaction activities, and the next interesting question is how firms respond to them. This study explores the effects of customer‐to‐customer (C2C), customer‐to‐firm, and firm‐to‐customer interaction activities on market performance. In addition, this study investigates how communication activities influence a firm's tendency to pursue continuous product innovation through research and development (R&D). Using data obtained from a major MAM, T store, three models that are respectively related to product sales, product lifetime, and a firm's R&D activity for product upgrades, are applied to empirically test hypotheses concerning the effects of interaction activities. In our analyses of market performance, a hierarchical log regression model with 10,840 weekly transactions data set related to product sales (model A) and 291 aggregate transactions related to product lifetime (model B) is used. Results indicate that C2C and customer‐to‐firm communication activities have a positive impact on sales, but little relationship with product lifetime. However, a firm's continuous product R&D has a positive impact on both sales and lifetime performance. Our analysis of a firm's R&D (model C) shows that C2C and customer–firm communication increases a firm's R&D activity. Taken together, these results have important implications for customer–firm interactions, market performance, and R&D strategies.     

Impact of Strategic Type on Success Measures for Product Development Projects*

Does the strategic type of firm affect which success measures should be used for product development (PD) projects? This paper theorizes that it should and finds that it does because the PD projects undertaken are usually an expression of the strategic type of the firm. The purpose of this research is to affirm a 1996 survey of members of the Product Development & Management Association (PDMA) that proposes that firms' PD performance measures should vary by their strategic type. Thus, for example, prospectors, the strategic type most likely to introduce new products to new markets, should place greater importance on PD success measures consistent with their characteristic strategies of changing product lines and early market entry. In contrast, defenders, the strategic type most likely to maintain stable product lines for existing markets, should place greater importance on PD success measures consistent with their characteristic strategies of stable product lines and market penetration. Analyzers, a hybrid type between prospectors and defenders, should prefer measures consistent with their characteristic strategies for improving products and being early followers in newer markets. To relate strategic types to specific success measures for PD projects, this paper proposes a model of the relationship based on the degree of project newness to the firm and then catalogs measures of PD project success and groups them according to degree of project newness. The research findings are based on survey responses from 222 individuals who are employed by financial service providers, who identified their firms by strategic type and rated the importance of PD success measures to their firms. The importance of 21 performance measures is compared by strategic type to find significant differences among prospectors, analyzers, and defenders. This research finds several significant relationships. prospectors, for example, attach greater importance to customer satisfaction, launch timeliness, and product return on investment, all of which may be characterized as relating to a higher degree of project newness to the firm. defenders and analyzers, on the other hand, attach more importance than prospectors to measures of unit volume, cost reduction, and margin goals, all of which relate to a lower degree of project newness to the firm. In short, because prospectors seek to introduce new products to new markets, they consider important those measures, which accord with greater product and market newness. The major conclusion of this paper is that strategic type affects the importance of project performance measures and that all firms should not use the same success measures. Firms should contextualize their success in PD projects based on their strategic type. This conclusion resonates with previous findings that strategy is a key determinant of PD success, though it is infrequently included in PD success studies. This paper, therefore, challenges the implicit assumption in the mainstream of PD success literature that success can be determined without regard to firm strategy.     

The Impact of Market Orientation, Product Advantage, and Launch Proficiency on New Product Performance and Organizational Performance

Some scholars have suggested recently that a market‐oriented culture leads to superior performance, at least in part, because of the new products that are developed and are brought to market. Others have reinforced this wisdom by revealing that a market‐oriented culture enhances organizational innovativeness and new product success, both of which in turn improve organizational performance. These scholars do not reveal, however, through which new product development (NPD) activities a market‐oriented culture is converted into superior performance. To determine how critical NPD activities are for a market‐oriented firm to achieve superior performance, our study uses data from 126 firms in The Netherlands to investigate the structural relationships among market orientation, new product advantage, the proficiency in new product launch activities, new product performance, and organizational performance. We focus on product advantage—because product benefits typically form the compelling reasons for customers to buy the new product—and on the launch proficiency—as the launch stage represents the most costly and risky part of the NPD process. Focusing on the launch stage also is relevant because it is only during the launch that it will become evident whether a market orientation has crystallized into a superior product in the eyes of the customer. The results provide evidence that a market orientation is related positively to product advantage and to the proficiency in market testing, launch budgeting, launch strategy, and launch tactics. Product advantage and the proficiency in launch tactics are related positively to new product performance, which itself is related positively to organizational performance. Market orientation has no direct relationship to new product performance and to organizational performance. An important implication of our study is that the impact of a market orientation on organizational performance is channeled through the effects of a market orientation on product advantage and launch proficiency; subsequently through the effects of product advantage and the proficiency in launch tactics on new product performance; and finally through the effect of new product performance on organizational performance. These channeling effects are much more subtle and complex than the direct relationship of market orientation on organizational performance previously assumed. Another implication of our study is that the impact of a market orientation on performance occurs through the launch activities rather than being pervasive to all organizational processes and activities. A reason for this finding may be that NPD is the one element of the marketing mix that predominantly is the responsibility of the firm, whereas promotion and distribution often are in control of organizations outside the firm (e.g., advertising agencies, major retailers) and whereas the channel or the market often dictates the price. Both implications provide ample opportunities for further research on market orientation and NPD.     

Firm innovativeness and business performance: The joint moderating effects of market turbulence and competition

To clarify the nature of the effect of firm innovativeness on business performance, this study draws on contingency theory and an interactional perspective to develop a conceptual framework to investigate how the interaction between market turbulence and competitive intensity moderates the relationship between firm innovativeness and business performance. This study used survey data from a sample of 154 high-tech manufacturing firms in Taiwan and employed hierarchical moderated regression analysis to test the hypotheses developed. The results reveal that the effect of firm innovativeness on business performance varies across the different configurations of market turbulence and competitive intensity. Specifically, the performance effect of firm innovativeness is most positive under high market turbulence and high competitive intensity; the performance effect is least positive under low market turbulence and low competitive intensity. However, the performance benefits of firm innovativeness fail to materialize under low market turbulence and high competitive intensity. Overall, these findings highlight that market turbulence and competition jointly influence the direction and strength of the performance effect of firm innovativeness. This study advances firm innovativeness research by identifying the configurational market conditions that augment or limit the value of firm innovativeness.     

The Contributions of Firm Innovativeness to Customer Value in Purchasing Behavior

The purpose of this research is to examine the influence of firm innovativeness and product innovativeness on the components of customer value mediated by instrumental and symbolic brand benefits. Over the last 10 years, the mobile phone industry in Korea has grown rapidly, with the introduction of several innovative phone features. The research context therefore is mobile phones with Internet access and their users in Korea. A major research finding is that the firm innovativeness affects product innovativeness, and hence, the instrumental brand benefits. A firm's innovativeness also has a significant effect on the symbolic brand benefits and the partnership value. Our key academic contribution is to expand the previous fragmentary studies of customer value, by classifying customer value into four components: expectation, partnership, transaction, and relationship customer values, rather than just focusing on benefits and sacrifices. Implications for managers include the verification that firm innovativeness is a source of ability for mobile phone firms to create value for customers. Instrumental and symbolic brand benefits through innovation should be the focus area for marketers and new product development (NPD) managers in mobile phone firms to communicate with consumers to increase expectation values in the prepurchase step.     

Product radicalness and firm performance in B2B marketing: A moderated mediation model

There has been ambiguity and controversy in establishing the links between the introduction of radical innovations and firm performance. While radical innovations create customer value and grow product sales, they are also fraught with uncertainty due to customer resistance to innovative products and significant costs associated with commercialization. This research aims to explain the contrarian findings between radical innovations and firm performance in a business-to-business (B2B) context by examining two mediating variables – new product advantage and customer unfamiliarity. Using a multi-informant approach, the authors collected survey data from a sample of 170 Spanish B2B firms engaged in new product development, provided by 357 managers. The authors find that, while new product advantage positively mediates the relationship between product radicalness and firm performance, customer unfamiliarity has a negative mediation effect on this relationship. Furthermore, the authors examine the moderated mediation effect by industry type, manufacturing vs. service, and find that it moderates the mediation of customer unfamiliarity: The negative impact of product radicalness on customer unfamiliarity is greater for manufacturing firms than for service firms. With these findings, the authors discuss implications for development and marketing of radical innovations and how those implications facilitate firm performance in the B2B context.     

Interaction Orientation and Product Development Performance for Taiwanese Electronics Firms: The Mediating Role of Market‐Relating Capabilities

While academics and practitioners are increasingly aware of the value of including the customer in new product development (NPD), processes for doing so effectively remain unclear. Therefore, this study explores the process through which a firm's interaction orientation (the ability to effectively interact with customers) influences product development performance. Drawing on the resource‐based view, this study develops a research model in which two market‐relating capabilities—market‐linking and marketing capabilities—mediate the effect of interaction orientation on product development performance. The validity of this model is examined by analyzing primary data gathered from 167 Taiwanese electronics companies. The model results provide support for a process link between interaction orientation, market‐relating capabilities, and product development performance, such that a firm's capabilities enable the conversion of customer‐based resources into productive new product outcomes. More specifically, the interaction orientation–product development speed relationship is mediated by both marketing and market‐linking capabilities, while the interaction orientation–product innovativeness relationship is partially mediated by marketing capability. That is, interaction orientation has indirect effects on product innovativeness and product development speed by strengthening both marketing and market‐linking capabilities that in turn improve product development performance. In addition, the results suggest that a firm's interactive rationality moderates the relationship between interaction orientation and marketing capability. Overall, this study enhances our understanding of how firms achieve superior product development performance by developing effective customer interaction. The findings of this study provide important strategic insights into NPD.     

Investigating the Drivers of Innovation and New Product Success: A Comparison of Strategic Orientations*

The notion of producing innovations and achieving new product success has received a great deal of attention. Though many have investigated these effects in marketing and various fields within management, there has been little cross‐fertilization between fields of study to explain the basis for this superior performance. Though research has examined the resource‐based view (RBV) and market orientation individually, none has evaluated and compared their effect on firm innovation and new product success in one study. Furthermore, although empirical work has been conducted between market orientation and organizational learning, comparatively less research has been conducted to evaluate the relationship between organizational learning and the RBV to examine their combined effects on a firm's ability to innovate and succeed. Subsequently, the purpose of the present article is to investigate whether a focus on the customer (i.e., market orientation) or the firm (i.e., RBV) will drive the ability to (1) innovate within the firm and (2) succeed in terms of new product success, financial performance, market share, and customer value. The present article examines the relationship between organizational learning and the RBV and market orientation. It presents an empirically testable framework that investigates the relationship that RBV and market orientation have with performance outcomes. Data were collected from 249 senior executives. LISREL was applied to evaluate the relationships. Confirmatory factor analysis and related techniques were applied to assess the robustness of the measures used. Findings show that organizational learning is strongly associated with market orientation, which in turn impacts various performance outcomes including customer value. The RBV had a significant relationship with new product success. These results suggest that managers seeking innovation and new product success should focus less on the provision of customer value. Instead they should look toward developing their resources within the firm, including investing in human resources, to ultimately provide value to the firm. Findings indicate that this unique offering—innovations—will have an indirect effect on customer value and financial performance. In contrast, those in pursuit of positive financial performance and customer value should focus on the development of market orientation. Even though this will not necessarily lead to the development of innovative processes and new product success according to the present study, this approach may lead to a greater market share in the long term. This article reviews theoretical and managerial implications in more depth, providing an impetus for further research.     

New Product Development Speed: Too Much of a Good Thing?

New product development (NPD) speed has become increasingly important for managing innovation in fast‐changing business environments due to continuous reduction in the product life cycle time and increase in competition from technological advancements and globalization. While the existing literature has not produced consistent results regarding the relationship between speed and success for NPD projects, many scholars and practitioners assert that increasing NPD speed is virtually always important to NPD success. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implicit assumption that faster is better as it relates to new product success (NPS). From the perspectives of time‐compression diseconomies and absorptive capacity, the authors question the assumption that speed has a linear relationship with success. The authors further argue that time‐compression diseconomies depend on levels of uncertainty involved in NPD projects. Using survey data of 471 NPD projects, the hypotheses were tested by hierarchical regression analysis and subgroup polynomial regression. The results of this study indicate that NPD speed has a curvilinear relationship with NPS, and the nature of the speed–success relationship varies, depending on type and level of uncertainty. When turbulence or technological newness is high, the relationship is curvilinear, but when uncertainties are low, the relationship is linear. In contrast, the results of this study suggest a curvilinear relationship under conditions of low market newness but not when market newness is high. The present paper asserts that time‐compression diseconomies and absorptive capacity are important theoretical constructs in understanding speed in NPD. The different impact of market newness and market turbulence on NPD speed supports the distinction of newness and turbulence as two different sources of uncertainty. Discussion focuses on the implications of NPD speed under the different conditions of uncertainty. NPD teams need to pursue NPD speed as a critical strategy, but it is necessary to analyze the source and degree of uncertainty about projects before a time‐based strategy is selected. In order to address the challenges of high uncertainty, a firm needs to probe, learn, and iterate fast. In particular, NPD teams need to distinguish between the different requirements for new products in emerging and new markets, and those in fast‐changing markets. Moreover, NPD teams need to balance how fast they need to go with how fast they can go by considering team absorptive capacity and customer absorptive capacity.