Rolling Out New Products Across Country Markets: An Empirical Study of Causes of Delays

Faced with the challenge of launching a new product into numerous countries, managers may view a sequential rollout as the prudent course of action. Rather than launching the product simultaneously in diverse countries, they may believe they can reduce risk by launching first in one or two countries, and then in others. However, this strategy overlooks the interplay between timeliness in international new product rollouts (INPR) and product success. George M. Chryssochoidis and Veronica Wong explore these issues in a study of 30 high-tech products launched into multiple European markets. Their study has three objectives: examining the incidence of timeliness and delays in simultaneous and sequential INPR; exploring the causes of delays in INPR; and assessing the effects that INPR timeliness and delays have on new product outcomes. They define timeliness in INPR as the availability of the new product to the firm's multiple target markets within the time frame planned by the company's managers. In other words, timeliness in this study reflects a company's capability for adhering to the schedule that management has established. Contrary to expectations, the results of this study do not reveal direct effects on timeliness in INPR from such sources as diversity of target markets or the firm's external environment. These results suggest that firms can achieve on-time, multicountry rollout of new products notwithstanding the legal, technological, and competitive environment. For the firms in this study, timeliness in INPR depends on such factors as sufficiency of marketing and technological resources (for example, to train sales staff, provide after-sales service, and adapt the product for multiple markets), proficiency in executing new product development activities, and effective communication between a company's headquarters and its business units and customers in different countries. Among the 22 product launches categorized as sequential rollouts in this study, 15 experienced delays. All eight of the simultaneous launches were timely. The results of this study indicate a positive relationship between timeliness in INPR and new-product success. Conversely, for the firms in this study, delays in INPR resulted in lower-than-expected product sales and profitability. In other words, the seemingly less risky sequential launch strategy may actually increase the risk of new product failure by delaying product rollout in multiple markets.     

Strategies for Integrating Stakeholders into Sustainability Innovation: A Configurational Perspective

Sustainability is a key driver of innovation for products, services, and business models. Sustainability innovations are aimed at improving the environmental, social, and economic performance of the innovated solution. Given the complexity of many sustainability challenges, leading innovators may seek to boost their innovation capacity by tapping into the ideas, knowledge, and expertise of their stakeholders. In doing so they need to consider how many and which stakeholders to integrate into new product development (NPD) processes, and at what stage. This study investigates stakeholder integration strategies associated with high sustainability performance of innovation. Building on the literatures of sustainability innovation and stakeholder integration in the context of NPD, this study developed a configurational model to analyze stakeholder integration strategies. The empirical data consisted of 80 interviews and documents from 13 medium to large companies and their stakeholders in Europe. Using the fsQCA method, it was found that there is not just one effective strategy but three stakeholder integration strategies for high sustainability performance of innovation. The results imply that deep organizational engagement with stakeholders is necessary for the achievement of high performance. Otherwise, the three strategies range from progressive openness, which allows stakeholders to exert a fundamental influence on the sustainability innovation, to limited openness toward stakeholder integration. With the early secondary strategy pointing to progressive openness, companies integrate secondary stakeholders early on and so maximize the influence of different views on the innovation. As to limited openness, companies following the selective strategy limit the number of stakeholder groups in NPD but are indifferent to the timing of these groups’ inputs. Finally, the fine‐tuning strategy is least open to atypical views as it restricts the share of secondary stakeholders and only allows external inputs after the fuzzy front end phase when key decisions regarding the innovation have been made.     

中国区域科技创新效率影响因素及提升路径研究

为了提高区域创新质量、改善区域创新环境、实现区域创新能力的提升,以中国27省为研究对象,构建了包含创新资源要素(知识基础与人力资本)、创新经济要素(地区经济水平与对外开放度)与创新政策要素(政府支持与政府竞争)3个维度、6个条件变量的创新要素群落,应用模糊定性比较分析法,探索了区域科技创新高绩效组态。研究发现：1)区域科技创新高效率路径归结为独立开放型和全面驱动型;2)对外开放、无政府间竞争是实现区域创新高效率的关键要素,区域科技高创新效率一定离不开高对外开放度;3)组态视角下政府支持对实现区域科技创新高效率的作用相对较低。研究成果在一定程度上丰富并扩展了区域科技创新效率的研究情境,对各地区开展区域创新活动具有借鉴意义。     

Successful Innovation Using Strategies to Reduce Consumer Resistance An Empirical Test

This article focuses on a relatively neglected concept in new product management: innovation resistance. Specifically, it examines why consumers develop resistance to innovations at the attitude formation and intention-to-buy stages of their decision process, and what strategies marketing firms have within their direct control to reduce this resistance. S. Ram identifies two major sources of innovation resistance: perceived risk and cognitive resistance. These are studied in the context of four product groups and two distinct strategies to reduce innovation resistance. The results show that a strategy of innovation modification works to reduce resistance caused by perceived economic and functional risk. On the other hand, communication strategies can reduce resistance caused by perceived social or psychological risk. Sources of innovation resistance and appropriate strategies vary across different product groups.     

A critical look at technological innovation typology and innovativeness terminology: a literature review

A plethora of definitions for innovation types has resulted in an ambiguity in the way the terms ‘innovation’ and ‘innovativeness’ are operationalized and utilized in the new product development literature. The terms radical, really‐new, incremental and discontinuous are used ubiquitously to identify innovations. One must question, what is the difference between these different classifications? To date consistent definitions for these innovation types have not emerged from the new product research community. A review of the literature from the marketing, engineering, and new product development disciplines attempts to put some clarity and continuity to the use of these terms. This review shows that it is important to consider both a marketing and technological perspective as well as a macrolevel and microlevel perspective when identifying innovations. Additionally, it is shown when strict classifications from the extant literature are applied, a significant shortfall appears in empirical work directed toward radical and really new innovations. A method for classifying innovations is suggested so that practitioners and academics can talk with a common understanding of how a specific innovation type is identified and how the innovation process may be unique for that particular innovation type. A recommended list of measures based on extant literature is provided for future empirical research concerning technological innovations and innovativeness.

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Determinants of technological innovation success and failure: Does marketing innovation matter?

Innovation is attracting increasing attention from public authorities, enterprises, and academics. Although emerging evidence has indicated that marketing innovation should be regarded as critical as technological innovations for enhancing companies' competitiveness, few studies have considered this topic.This study aims to address this gap by examining the role of marketing innovation in the relationship between technological innovation and innovation success and failure. This study analyses the 2010–2012 Community Innovation Survey sample of German enterprises by using a double hurdle model and a probit model with sample selection. The results show that when enterprises undertake a technological innovation, introducing a marketing innovation is observed not to play a significant role regarding innovation success and failure. Notably, when the four types of marketing innovations are disentangled in the analysis, new findings emerge. Innovation in product packaging and design is positively related to innovation success. Innovation in product promotion is negatively related to innovation success and positively related to probability of innovation failure. Academics are called to study the role of marketing innovation, regarding innovation success and failure, by devoting their attention to the level of each marketing innovation. Enterprises should then carefully consider which marketing innovation should be introduced.     

When Does Search Openness Really Matter? A Contingency Study of Health‐Care Innovation Projects

Given the growing popularity of the open innovation model, it is increasingly common to source knowledge for new product ideas from a wide range of actors located outside of organizational boundaries. Such open search strategies, however, might not always be superior to their closed counterparts. Indeed, widening the scope of knowledge sourcing at the ideation stage typically comes at a price given the substantial monetary and nonmonetary costs often incurred in the process of identifying, assimilating, and utilizing external knowledge inputs. Considering both the benefits and costs of search openness, the authors develop a project‐level contingency model of open innovation. This model suggests that search openness is curvilinearly (taking an inverted U‐shape) related to new product creativity and success. They hence assume that too little as well as too much search openness at the ideation stage will be detrimental to new product outcomes. Moreover, they argue that the effectiveness of open search strategies is contingent upon the new product development (NPD) project type (typological contingency), the NPD project leader (managerial contingency), and the NPD project environment (contextual contingency). To test these propositions empirically, multi‐informant data from 62 NPD projects initiated in the English National Health Service (NHS) were collected. The econometric analyses conducted provide considerable support for a curvilinear relationship between search openness and NPD outcomes as well as for the hypothesized contingency effects. More specifically, they reveal that explorative NPD projects have more to gain from search openness at the ideation stage than their exploitative counterparts. Moreover, the project‐level payoff from search openness tends to be greater, when the project leader has substantial prior innovation and management experience, and when the immediate work environment actively supports creative endeavors. These findings are valuable for NPD practice, as they demonstrate that effective knowledge sourcing has much to contribute to NPD success. In particular, pursuing an open search strategy might not always be the best choice. Rather, each NPD project is in need of a carefully tailored search strategy, effective leadership, and a supportive climate, if the full value of external knowledge sourcing is to be captured.     

Customization of Product Technology and International New Product Success: Mediating Effects of New Product Development and Rollout Timeliness

Offering a standardized product for different country markets may enable companies to accomplish fast product development and multicountry rollout, whereas also enjoying substantial cost benefits. However, not all manufacturers serving multicountry markets can adopt a standardized product strategy. Where technological requirements, standards, and approval procedures vary substantially across countries, manufacturers invariably must adapt the product's technology to fit individual country requirements. Extensive customization may lead to longer new product development and rollout times and increase the likelihood of delays in the entire project, hence adversely affecting overall new product outcome. This study examines the relationships between product technology customization, the timeliness in completion of both the new product development effort and international market launches, and new product success. The study that reports on new product launches across European markets, is based on personal interviews with senior managers in 30 multinational companies. The authors show that timeliness in new product development and timeliness in rolling out the new product into different country markets mediate the link between product technology customization and overall new product success. Customization of product technology increases the likelihood of delays in the completion of new product development projects and multicountry rollout. Additionally, the timeliness in new product development mediates the relationship between product technology customization and timeliness in international new product rollout. This means that if the NPD project runs behind schedule, a fault‐free multicountry rollout program becomes increasingly unlikely, as problems encountered during product development spillover into the rollout program. The results imply that international product managers must assign greater priority to assessing the relative advantages of customizing new product technology and to consider the timing implications for both the NPD effort and subsequent rollout. Managers must set realistic schedules and allocate sufficient resources to ensure both tasks can be accomplished within planned time scales. Finally, managers should not underestimate the complexities and time involved in customizing new product technologies, including the completion of disparate country technical approval procedures.     

Design,Meanings, and Radical Innovation: A Metamodel and a Research Agenda*

Recent studies on design management have helped us to better comprehend how companies can apply design to get closer to users and to better understand their needs; this is an approach usually referred to as user‐centered design. Yet analysis of design‐intensive manufacturers such as Alessi, Artemide, and other leading Italian firms shows that their innovation process hardly starts from a close observation of user needs and requirements. Rather, they follow a different strategy called design‐driven innovation in this paper. This strategy aims at radically change the emotional and symbolic content of products (i.e., their meanings and languages) through a deep understanding of broader changes in society, culture, and technology. Rather than being pulled by user requirements, design‐driven innovation is pushed by a firm's vision about possible new product meanings and languages that could diffuse in society. Design‐driven innovation, which plays such a crucial role in the innovation strategy of design intensive firms, has still remained largely unexplored. This paper aims at providing a possible direction to fill this empty spot in innovation management literature. In particular, first it proposes a metamodel for investigating design‐driven innovation in which a manufacturer's ability to understand, anticipate, and influence emergence of new product meanings is built by relying on external interpreters (e.g., designers, firms in other industries, suppliers, schools, artists, the media) that share its same problem: to understand the evolution of sociocultural models and to propose new visions and meanings. Managing design‐driven innovation therefore implies managing the interaction with these interpreters to access, share, and internalize knowledge on product languages and to influence shifts in sociocultural models. Second, the paper proposes a possible direction to scientifically investigate the management of this networked and collective research process. In particular, it shows that the process of creating breakthrough innovations of meanings partially mirrors the process of creating breakthrough technological innovations. Studies of design‐driven innovation may therefore benefit significantly from the existing body of theories in the field of technology management. The analysis of the analogies between these two types of radical innovations (i.e., meanings and technologies) allows a research agenda to be set for exploration of design‐driven innovation, a relevant as well as underinvestigated phenomenon.     

Using Product Bundling to Facilitate the Adoption Process of Radical Innovations*

Generally, radical innovations are not easily adopted in the market. Potential adopters experience difficulties to comprehend and evaluate radical innovations due to their newness in terms of technology and benefits offered. Consequently, adoption intentions may remain low. This paper proposes bundling as an instrument to address these problems. More specifically, this paper examines how consumer comprehension, evaluation, and adoption intention of radical innovations may be enhanced by bundling such products with existing products. In addition, it is argued that the proposed effects are contingent upon the level of fit perceived to exist between the radical innovation and the product that accompanies it in the bundle. Furthermore, consumers' prior knowledge may affect the influence of bundling on the innovation adoption process as the interpretation of the meaning of new products may be strongly related to prior knowledge. This study therefore investigates whether consumer prior knowledge has such a moderating effect. Hypotheses are tested by means of an experimental study with three different radical innovations and distinguishing among offering the radical innovation separately, offering the radical innovation in a bundle with moderate perceived fit between the products, and offering the radical innovation in a bundle with high perceived fit between the products. Results show that product bundling enhances the new product's evaluation and adoption intention, although it does not increase comprehension of the radical innovation. Moreover, the results show that comprehension, evaluation and adoption intention of the innovation significantly decrease when consumers perceive a moderate fit between the products in a bundle. Taken together, these findings contribute to the bundling literature by showing not only that product bundling may indeed be an effective instrument to introduce a radical innovation but also that product bundling may be counterproductive when ignoring the critical role of perceived product fit as core characteristic of a product bundle. In addition, the notion that product bundling helps to enhance the evaluation and purchase intention of new and relatively complex products suggests a suitable strategy for new product managers to enhance benefits and reduce learning costs for radical innovations. Moreover, the effects of bundling on consumer appraisals of radical innovations are also shown to depend on the level of knowledge respondents possess regarding the product category of the radical innovation. More specifically, if bundled with a familiar product, novices tend to evaluate the innovative product more positively, but for experts no such effect can be detected. As such, these results provide additional specific implications for managers when introducing radical innovations in the market. Offering a radical innovation in a product bundle could be a fruitful strategy for companies that target customers with little or no prior knowledge in the product domain.     

Antecedents of open innovation at the project level: empirical analysis of Korean firms

The concept of open innovation has recently gained wide academic attention, as it seems to have significant impact for company performance. Most empirical investigations about this emerging concept have been case studies of successful early adopters of open innovation, and their analyses have largely been at the company level. Although case studies at that level provide meaningful implications, the new phenomena merit a more in‐depth examination: that is, we need to collect and analyze data on multiple companies to explore more systematic findings about open innovations across companies. Moreover, analyses may need to go down to the individual project rather than the whole company level because innovation activities are often conducted as part of research and development (R&D) projects. To meet these needs, this study examines companies' open innovation efforts at the level of the individual R&D project. Specifically, the present study focuses on project‐level openness to better understand the mechanisms of open innovation. It explores systematic relationships between various antecedent factors and the degree of openness. Project‐level openness could be affected by team and task characteristics, such as team size, learning distance, strategic importance, technology and market uncertainty, and relevance to the main business. Relevant data collected from 303 companies in Korea were used to identify the antecedents that affect inbound and outbound openness. The research findings are expected to help provide a concrete theoretical framework suited for more generalized application and further practical development of open innovation strategy.     

环境规制对区域技术创新的影响研究

本文基于2000～2014年省际面板数据,实证考察了三大区域环境规制对技术创新的直接与间接影响。研究表明：东部的环境规制强度高抑制了技术创新,中部与西部地区环境规制强度越高越有助于提高技术创新,而且各地区核心技术创新指标不同,东部地区最突出的技术创新是实用新型与发明型,中部地区是外观设计型与发明型,西部是实用型与外观设计型;环境规制的间接作用在东、中两地区表现为正向作用,在西部表现为负向作用。其他因素的影响在各地区表现不同。最后综合研究结论,针对如何提高地区技术创新水平提出了相关政策建议。     

Technological and non-technological innovations,performance and propensity to innovate across industries: The case of an emerging economy

Innovation in a firm may be non-technological, such as organizational and marketing innovation, and technological, such as product and process innovation. The aim of this article is to explore how different types of innovation affect the innovation development of the firm across industries. We chose Chile as an emerging market context. Our results show that only product innovations affect significantly innovation performance across industries. However, different types of propensities to innovate are affected differently by technological and non-technological innovations. We discuss implications for managers and policy makers in emerging economies, in which data tends to be scarce to develop new policy models and increase the effect of non-technological innovation on innovative performance.     

Technological capability, social capital and the launch strategy for innovative products

The Launch strategy for innovative products is a crucial strategic typology adopted by many high tech firms, and which has been identified in prior research focusing on new product introduction to the market. However, the nexus between launch strategies and firm resources has gained little research attention. This article therefore aims to investigate the influence of technological capability and social capital, two key resources for innovation in high tech firms, on the adoption of a launch strategy for innovative products. Furthermore, prior research has revealed that market characteristics play a moderating role on the relationship between firm resources and company strategies; thus, this study also examines the moderating effect of market characteristics. This study takes Taiwan's integrated circuit design firms as the analytical sample. Based on a sample of ninety companies, two interesting findings have been found. First, both technological capability and social capital are associated positively with the launch strategy for innovative products. Second, while the market growth rates increase, the positive relationship between technological capability and the launch strategy for innovative products becomes weaker.     

Incapability of Technological Capability: A Case Study on Product Innovation in the Japanese Facsimile Machine Industry

Technological leadership in an industry certainly seems like a ticket to ongoing success. However, overemphasis on existing technological capabilities may produce a form of myopia in product development. In other words, by focusing primarily on developing and improving their core technologies, organizations miss opportunities to exploit new technologies and thus create breakthrough products. Ken Kusunoki proposes that problem-solving approaches in a technologically leading firm paradoxically may impede radical product innovation. Suggesting that such firms are inherently oriented toward incremental innovation, he presents a conceptual framework of the dynamic interaction between technological and product development problem-solving in the context of product innovation. He then illustrates this conceptual framework by examining a case of radical innovation in the Japanese facsimile industry. For a technological leader, product innovation typically is driven by technology development. In other words, such a firm quite reasonably relies on the technological advantage it holds over competitors as the basis for its product developments. By refining and enhancing its industry-leading technological capabilities, the firm can successfully introduce incremental innovations in its products. Because of this strong emphasis on exploiting existing technological capabilities, however, the technological leader may fail to capitalize on new technologies that can produce radical innovations. In the race to develop high-speed, digital facsimile equipment during the early 1970s, for example, Matsushita held a decided technological advantage over competitors such as Ricoh. Notwithstanding Matsushita's technological edge, however, Ricoh brought this radical innovation to market two years before Matsushita introduced its first digital machine, causing a serious decline in Matsushita's market share. Ricoh's approach to technological and product problem-solving—an autonomous team structure, with a strong project manager and frequent transfers of engineers among interdependent units—contrasts dramatically with Matsushita's functional structure and strong emphasis on technological problem-solving. Interestingly, Matsushita regained its technological advantage by 1976, thanks to a rapid series of incremental innovations in its product technologies.     

Seeking the Ideal Level of Design Newness: Consumer Response to Radical and Incremental Product Design

To develop successful new products, new product development managers need to have a thorough understanding of the consumer adoption process, specifically in how consumers evaluate new products. This research examines the value of product design for consumers' evaluation of radical and incremental innovations. The primary goal was to empirically test how design newness affects consumer response to product innovations. Design newness (also referred to as novelty or atypicality) is defined as the deviation in a product design from the current design state of a certain product category. Although prior research has suggested that higher levels of design newness may have a positive effect on consumers' evaluations of new products, higher levels of design newness may also have negative consequences for consumer response to radical innovations. An experimental context (n = 130) using systematically designed products for three product categories was used to test how consumers respond to high and low levels of design newness for both radical and incremental innovations. The findings show that for radical innovations, embodying the product in a design with a low (versus high) level of design newness led to more positive evaluations and less learning‐cost inferences. Because the functional attributes of a radical innovation are incongruent to existing products, consumers find it difficult to access the relevant product category schema in order to transfer knowledge to the new product. Because of this poor knowledge transfer, consumers may feel that they lack the ability to make effective use of the radical innovation, resulting in greater learning costs. In this case, a product design with a low level of design newness can provide consumers with a frame of reference for understanding the radical innovation. Contrasting this result, no difference was found between a low and a high level of design newness for incremental innovations. For incremental innovations, by definition the functional attributes characteristic to the innovation are highly comparable with those products that are already stored in consumers' memory. Thus, there is no need for an additional reconfirmation of the preexisting schema through product design, and consumers are able to access the relevant schema regardless of the level of design newness inherent in the product. These findings are integrated into a discussion of the managerial implications and the potential avenues for future research.     

The R&D and marketing cooperation across new product development stages: An empirical study of Taiwan's IT industry

This study extends the new product development (NPD) process research to a new environmental context (Taiwan's IT industry) and a new business type (original design manufacturing, ODM). Taiwan's IT industry has achieved a very outstanding performance during the last two decades. The island's experience is quite valuable for those emerging countries that are struggling to transform themselves from producing low-value goods to making high-technology products. After analyzing the data collected from 153 research and development (R&D) and marketing managers in Taiwanese IT firms, this study finds that the higher the perceived importance of R&D-marketing cooperation is, the higher the attained level of R&D-marketing cooperation will be. Consequently, a better NPD performance can be achieved. This study additionally reports that a firm that has adopted a Defender innovation strategy attains a lower level of R&D-marketing cooperation, and has a poorer NPD performance than those firms that adopted either Prospector or Analyzer innovation strategies. Finally, environmental uncertainty has no significant impacts on the perceived importance and the attained level of R&D-marketing cooperation.     

Consumer Response to Product Form in Technology‐Based Industries

Product design is a key driver of competitive advantage and new product success. Relative to its importance, product design remains an underresearched area. The authors address this issue by examining the moderating effects of consumer innovativeness and design acumen on consumer response to product form—i.e., the product's visual appearance. Using subjects from the United Kingdom, these effects were tested with a technology‐based product that is expected to be introduced to market in the near future. A technological innovation was chosen because such products are often characterized by an accelerating pace of innovation and shortening life cycles. In such contexts, the product's visual appearance is often critical to success because it drives inferences about the technical capabilities and functional novelty. Our findings indicate that for more innovative consumers, an innovative product form can further enhance perceived value, product liking, and purchase intention. Furthermore, for consumers who possess more design acumen, an innovative product form can increase perceived value and product liking. An innovative product form was not found to enhance purchase intention for consumers with higher levels of design acumen. A primary implication of the study is to consider target market characteristics such as consumer innovativeness and design acumen when selecting a product form strategy. Additional implications include involving consumer innovators in the development and evaluation of product forms and involving consumers with greater design acumen early in the product's introduction so that they may influence other buyers.     

The Relationships between Resource Configurations and Launch Strategies in Taiwan's IC Design Industry: An Exploratory Study

Within the last decade, the link between launch strategies and new product performance has been widely investigated. However, the relationship between resource configurations and launch strategies has received little attention. This study endeavors to fill that void by examining the relationships between resource configurations and launch strategy selections. In addition, this study investigates the moderating effects of market growth and competitiveness on the relationship between resources and launch strategies. Drawing on contingency theory and strategic studies, this study proposes that resource contingencies affect changes in launch strategies. This study also suggests that market characteristics play a contingent role in the relationships between the configurations of resources and launch strategy choices. Based on extensive studies reporting on market characteristics and their links to strategies, this study proposes that two market characteristics—market growth and competitiveness—are relevant for launch strategy decision making. Taiwan's integrated circuit (IC) design industry has been used as the analytical sample, as it has been identified as a promising sector for new product development. Based on the result of investigating 90 firms, four resource configurations are identified: (1) strategic and organizational abilities; (2) technological capabilities; (3) societal assets and goodwill; and (4) physical assets. Furthermore, two different launch strategies—innovative and product advantage and cost oriented—also are discovered. The results from a seemingly unrelated regression model reveal that technological capabilities and societal assets and goodwill contribute to the variation in the firms' choices of launch strategies. This study further conducted the simple slope analysis to observe the effect of the technological capabilities on the innovative and product advantage strategy under different levels of the market growth rate. The results interestingly showed that firms with technological capabilities demonstrated different degree of tendencies in employing this strategy in alignment with various market growth rates. The finding sheds some lights on the moderating role market characteristics play on the relationships between resource configurations and launch strategy selections. Academic implications and suggestions for practitioners also are provided.     

Innovations—Doomed to Fail? Investigating Strategies to Overcome Passive Innovation Resistance

The constant and successful market introduction of new products is of major concern to companies throughout all industries. However, empirical research points to high failure rates of innovations, indicating that most new products fail as they are rejected by consumers due to their resistance to innovation. Several studies have confirmed the importance of passive innovation resistance as a dominant barrier, which has to be overcome before new product adoption can start. However, empirical evidence on how to overcome passive innovation resistance is still lacking. This study intends to address this gap by evaluating the effectiveness of marketing instruments (i.e., mental simulation and benefit comparison) to reduce negative effects of passive innovation resistance on new product adoption. The results of a scenario‐based experiment (n = 679) confirm high effectiveness for both instruments. However, the effectiveness varied with the type of passive innovation resistance present. More specifically, mental simulation was found to be the most effective instrument in the case of cognitive passive resistance, whereas benefit comparison was found to be most effective in the case of situational passive resistance. Thereby, the effect of both marketing instruments was stronger the more radical the new product was perceived. Hence, companies should assess the type of passive innovation resistance that is predominant in their target market, and align their choice of marketing instruments that accompany a new product launch to most effectively overcome passive innovation resistance. Employing such new product launch tactics should decrease initial market resistance and thus help companies in reducing innovation failure rates.