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.     

Launch Strategy and New Product Performance: An Empirical Examination in The Netherlands

Although previous research has investigated the concept and contents of new product performance, there is still no consensus about the managerial decisions that constitute a launch strategy and how such decisions impact new product performance. The research objective for the present investigation is to assess the impact of launch strategy and market characteristics on new product performance and to test the stability of this impact across consumer and industrial products. Data were collected on 272 consumer and industrial new products in The Netherlands through a mail questionnaire approach. We based our definition of a launch strategy on an extensive literature review and interviews with managers. Our conceptualization of new product performance represented two dimensions, namely, market acceptance and product performance. The market acceptance dimension reflects the new product's market position and sales levels. The product performance dimension refers to the quality and technical performance level of the new product. This richer specification of the dependent variable provides a better view on which launch decisions impact which dimensions of new product performance. The impact of launch strategy was higher for market acceptance than for product performance, overall and for both consumer and industrial subsamples separately. In line with results from recent studies, overall, market acceptance is influenced by the product's innovativeness, timing of market entry, breadth of assortment, branding, pricing, the objective of increasing market penetration, and competitor reactions. Product performance is influenced by the product's innovativeness, breadth of assortment, and by the objective of using an existing market. Analyzing the consumer and industrial products separately showed that the general picture of launch decisions and their impact on the dependent variables was comparable across the total sample and both subsamples, indicating that heterogeneous samples in new product launch research may not cause major interpretation problems. Second, the analyses revealed that some launch decisions are more important in attaining new product success for consumer products than for industrial products, and vice versa. While these decisions do not lead to contradicting results in the samples, they show that some decisions may be especially relevant for only consumer or industrial products. We discuss research and managerial implications of the results.     

The Impact of Product Portfolio Strategy on Financial Performance: The Roles of Product Development and Market Entry Decisions

Innovation is one of the most important issues facing business today. The major difficulty in managing innovation is that managers must do so against a constantly shifting backdrop as technologies, competitors, and markets constantly evolve. Managers determine the product portfolio through key decisions about product development and market entry. Key strategic questions are what portfolio strategies provide the greatest reward. The purpose of this study is to understand the relative financial values of each component of a product portfolio. Specifically, the paper examines the short‐term and long‐term financial impacts of product development strategy and market entry strategy. These strategies reflect two critical tensions that must be balanced in product portfolio decision making and essentially determine a firm's product portfolio. In doing so, the paper also investigates how a firm's capabilities drive each component of a product portfolio. From the empirical analyses in the context of the biomedical device industry, the paper found important insights regarding product portfolio strategies. First, a large product portfolio helps a firm's financial performance. In particular, the pioneering new products have strongest impacts on short‐term performances, and nonpioneering mature products do not provide significant contribution. Second, the results indicate a persistent first‐mover advantage. The first‐to‐market new products yield not only an immediate effect, but also persistent long‐term effects, suggesting that it is important to be first in the market even though there may be short‐term losses. Third, the results suggest the need to balance between “mature” and “new” products. Also, firms need to balance “first‐to‐market” and “late‐entered” products. Because a new or pioneering product requires more resource, it may hurt other products in the portfolio. Thus, without support from mature or follower products, new products and pioneering products alone may not increase firm sales or profit. Fourth, from a long‐term perspective, the paper found that the financial market only rewards a firm's overall capability to deliver new products first in the marketplace. Thus, short‐term performance is mainly driven by product‐level innovativeness, whereas firm‐level innovativeness enhances forward‐looking long‐term performance. Fifth, the paper also found that pioneering new products are driven by integrating both primary and complementary technological capabilities. And nonpioneering new products are mainly driven by the capabilities in primary technology domain. These results provide important insight into the relative value and timing of return on investment in radical versus incremental innovation and alternative market entry strategies. By understanding the performance trade‐offs of these different factors in the short and long term, one can develop better guidelines for optimizing innovation strategies, and their dependence on both external and internal environmental conditions.     

Industrial New Product Launch Strategies and Product Development Performance

Just as reporters must answer a few fundamental questions in every story they write, decision-makers in the new product development (NPD) process must address five key issues: what to launch, where to launch, when to launch, why to launch, and how to launch. These decisions involve significant commitments of time, money, and resources. They also go a long way toward determining the success or failure of any new product. Deeper insight into the tradeoffs these decisions involve may help to increase the likelihood of success for product launch efforts. Erik Jan Hultink, Abbie Griffin, Susan Hart, and Henry Robben present the results of a study that examines the interplay between these product launch decisions and NPD performance. Noting that previous launch studies focus primarily on the tactical decisions (that is, how to launch) rather than on the strategic decisions (what, where, when, and why to launch), they explore not only which decisions are important to success, but also the associations between the two sets of decisions. Because the strategic launch decisions made early in the NPD process affect the tactical decisions made later in the process, their study emphasizes the importance of launch consistency—that is, the alignment of the strategic and tactical decisions made throughout the process. The survey respondents—managers from marketing, product development, or general management in U.K. firms—provided information about 221 industrial new products launched during the previous five years. The responses identify associations between various sets of strategic and tactical decisions. That is, the responses suggest that the strategic decisions managers make regarding product innovativeness, market targeting, the number of competitors, and whether the product is marketing- or technology-driven are associated with subsequent tactical decisions regarding branding, distribution expenditure and intensity, and pricing. The study also suggests that different sets of launch decisions have differing effects on performance of industrial new products. In this study, the greatest success was enjoyed by a small group of respondents categorized as Niche Innovators. Their launch strategy involves a niche focus, targeting innovative products into markets with few competitors. Tactical decisions made by this group include exclusive distribution, a skimming pricing strategy, and a broad product assortment.     

An Exploratory Analysis of the Impact of Market Orientation on New Product Performance

For many firms, emphasizing the importance of market orientation has taken on a mantra-like quality. Mission statements and memos, policies, and procedures all highlight the importance of staying in touch with the customer. It is also widely assumed that the relationship between market orientation and new product performance depends on environmental conditions and product characteristics. To date, however, little empirical evidence has been presented to support the assumption that market orientation influences new product performance. Kwaku Atuahene-Gima addresses this research need in a study of 275 Australian firms. In addition to exploring the relationship between market orientation and new product development activities and performance, his study examines the effects of environmental conditions and product characteristics. Specifically, the study investigates whether the relationship between market orientation and new product performance depends on the degree of product newness to customers and the firm; the intensity of market competition and the hostility of the industry environment; and the stage of the product life cycle at which the new product was introduced. The survey results provide strong support for the basic proposition that market orientation influences new product performance and development activities. The results show a strong positive relationship between market orientation and a new product's market performance. Market orientation is also shown to have a strong positive effect on proficiency of predevelopment activity, proficiency of launch activity, service quality, product advantage, marketing synergy, and teamwork. Although market orientation is generally found to be an important factor in the success of new products, its influence varies depending on the type of new product—that is, radical versus incremental. Market orientation appears to have greater influence on new product performance when the product represents an incremental change to both the customers and the firm. However, this does not mean that a market-oriented approach is unnecessary in the development of radically hew products. Market orientation also has a greater effect when the perceived intensity of market competition and industry hostility are high, and during the early stage of the product life cycle. Because market competition and industry hostility typically intensify as the product life cycle progresses, these findings suggest that the effects of market orientation are pervasive. In other words, managers should not limit their expectations of market orientation to specific projects or specific stages of the development process and product life cycle.     

Corporate Culture and Commitment: Impact on Performance of International New Product Development Programs

To achieve success in today's competitive environment, firms increasingly must develop new products for international markets. To this end, they must leverage and must coordinate broad creative capabilities and resources, which often are diffused across geographical and cultural boundaries. Recent writings in the globalization and in the new product development (NPD) literatures suggest that certain “softer” dimensions that define the behavioral environment of the firm—that is, the firm's organizational culture and management commitment—can have an important impact on the outcome of these complex and risky endeavors. But what comprises these dimensions and what type of behavioral environment scenario is linked to high performance in the international NPD effort of firms has not been articulated clearly. This research focuses on these softer dimensions, with the objective of understanding and idengifying their specific makeup as well as their relationship to the outcome of international NPD programs. Based on an integration of three literatures—organizational, new product development, and globalization—the present study develops a research instrument, comprising 18 behavioral environment measurement items as well as several outcome measures, that is administered to a broad empirical sample of goods and services firms active in NPD for international markets. Using empirical results from 252 international NPD programs, three key dimensions are idengified: (1) the innovation/globalization culture of the firm; (2) the commitment of sufficient resources to the NPD program; and (3) top management involvement in the international NPD effort. These dimensions are used to derive four clusters of firms, where each grouping represents a distinctly different behavioral environment scenario. In a preliminary analysis, it is ascertained that other aspects of the firm such as “degree of internationalization,” location of the respondent to the NPD center, and other company parameters do not form the basis of cluster membership. By linking measures of performance to the four behavioral clusters, findings are developed that clearly support this study's hypothesis that international NPD outcomes are associated with the softer behavioral environment dimensions. Scenario performance ranges from “very high” to “very low” and appears to be linked clearly to the dimensions studied. The lower‐performing firms tended to emphasize positively only one, or sometimes two, of the three dimensions. The “best performers” were found to be firms with a “positive balanced” approach to international NPD, where all three behavioral environment dimensions are supported strongly. In other words, firms in this scenario have an open and innovative global NPD culture, they ensure that sufficient resources are committed to the NPD program, and their senior managers play an active and involved role in the international NPD effort. Given this evidence of a direct link between behavioral environment and international NPD performance, the present study's findings suggest some important messages for managers charged with the development of new products for international markets.     

The Impact of Front‐End Innovation Activities on Product Performance

This paper describes and tests a model of the impact of front‐end innovation activities on product performance. Data were collected from 272 companies to test the hypothesis that front‐end performance impacts new product performance in the marketplace while controlling for new product development (NPD) processes and strategy. The data support the hypothesis that front‐end performance favorably and independently impacts overall product success, time to market, market penetration, and financial performance. Front‐end performance is predicted by a set of activities, including: the actual amount of front‐end work done in various areas, specifically marketing, R&D, and concept development; the existence of a front‐end process; the existence of a champion; and agreement on the order of developmental steps in the front end. Front‐end activities are related to front‐end performance, and front‐end performance is related to NPD performance. This relationship highlights the distinction between front‐end activities and standard product development practices and the importance of building competency in the front end. This is the first study that quantifies both the nature and amount of work done in the front end and relates that work to commercial performance. This research empirically demonstrates the distinction between the front‐end and formal stages and gates types of systems. This suggests that the concept of the front end needs it own set of theoretical constructs to adequately describe and predict this categorically different set of activities. While this study demonstrates the difference between front‐end and stage‐gate systems, it does not establish the limits of those activities. From a managerial point of view recognizing that formal development and front‐end activities are different mandates that these activities must be managed differently. In particular, the skills, structures, processes, governance, leadership, performance metrics, and resources must be assessed separately and differently. These findings suggest that firms should actively manage the flow of ideas from the front end into the more formal development programs.     

How New Product Strategies Impact on Performance

What is involved in a successful new product program? Is it high spending on risky R&D? Is it close contact with customers? Is it the overall competitive strength of the firm? Well, it might be any of these things, and more, according to Robert G. Cooper, depending on your definition of success. In an exhaustive examination of the new product strategies and performances of 122 industrial products firms, Cooper found that the strategy that a firm elects for its new product program is closely linked to the performance results that firm achieves. But what's performance? Cooper's analysis uncovered three different and independent ways of viewing new product performance. He brings some clarity to the meaning of a “high-performance” product innovation program, but there's a catch—the strategies leading to high performance in one direction are quite different from the strategies leading to positive results by other measures. In his summing up, Professor Cooper proposes sets of generalized strategies—guides to action—that product innovation managers should consider.     

The Contribution of In‐house and External Design Activities to Product Market Performance

Design may be seen as one of several key factors contributing to new product development, along with research and development, marketing, manufacturing, purchasing, etc. More and more, creative design comes to the fore, and many companies believe that superior design will be the key to winning customers. It has the ability to create corporate distinctiveness and also possesses the potential to give a product an individual or new look. Furthermore, the model of open innovation suggests that firms can and should use external and internal knowledge flows in order to create valuable ideas, and also internal and external paths to the market. Also, in the design process, a common trend toward external design skills has emerged in recent years. Due to cost and control factors, firms are increasingly outsourcing design activities. By using a sample of Belgian companies, this paper explores the contribution of design activities to product market performance. While there is mounting evidence that design can be seen as a strategic tool to successfully spur sales of new product developments at the firm level, the topic of design innovation has not yet been linked to the open innovation concept. In this paper, it is empirically tested whether design activities conducted in house differ in their contribution to new product sales from externally acquired design. So, do design activities that have been developed only with internal resources lead to a greater success than those that have been carried out with external sources of knowledge? Using a large cross‐section of manufacturing and service firms, the effects on sales of products new to the market and of imitations or significantly improved products of the firm are investigated. At first glance, the findings indicate that externally acquired design is not superior to in‐house design activities: the results show that only design activities that are mainly conducted with internal knowledge sources play a crucial role regarding the product innovation's success with market novelties. Design conducted in collaboration with external partners, however, has no significant influence. This is not the case for imitations, that is, products only new to the firm. Their success is also influenced by design activities developed with external collaborators. This effect is robust for several modifications of the model specification. In contrast to earlier literature on new technological developments, this paper argues that external design may not affect the sales of market novelties as the “market news” may spill over quickly to rivals through common suppliers including external designers.     

The Impact of Product Innovativeness on Performance

While many writers and strategists maintain that innovation is important, research has often demonstrated that product innovativeness does not have a major impact on the rate of success in the marketplace. Elko Kleinschmidt and Robert Cooper demonstrate that the relationship between product innovativeness and commercial success is U-shaped. That means that both high and low innovativeness products are more likely to be more successful than those in-between. The authors suggest that past research has not allowed for this non-linear relationship and that their data show that moderately innovative, middle-of-the-road products are less likely to succeed when measured by a number of performance criteria. They explore a number of implications of these results.     

Market Vision and Market Visioning Competence: Impact on Early Performance for Radically New,High‐Tech Products*

Having the “right” market vision (MV) in new product scenarios involving high degrees of uncertainty has been shown to help firms achieve a significant competitive advantage, which can ultimately lead to superior financial results. Despite today's increased rate of radical innovation, and hence the importance of effective vision, relatively little research has been undertaken to improve our understanding of this phenomenon. The exploratory and empirical investigation undertaken herewith responds to this research gap by focusing on MV and its precursor, market visioning competence (MVC), for radically new, high‐tech products. MV is a clear and specific mental model/image that organizational members have of a desired and important product‐market for a new advanced technology, and MVC is a set of individual and organizational capabilities that enable the linking of advanced technologies to a future market opportunity. Based on samples of high‐tech firms involved in early technology developments, the measurement study indicates that five factors comprise MV (i.e., clarity, magnetism, specificity, form, and scope) and that four factors underlie MVC (i.e., networking, idea driving, proactive market orientation, and market learning tools). Structural equation modeling is used to demonstrate that MVC significantly and positively impacts MV and that each of these constructs significantly and positively influences certain aspects of early performance (EP) in new product development. This is the first empirical study to develop a comprehensive set of scales to measure these constructs and then to combine them in a model by which to examine their interrelationships.     

Best Practices for New Product Pricing: Impact on Market Performance and Price Level under Different Conditions

To date, research on new product pricing has predominantly been approached as a choice between market skimming and penetration pricing. Despite calls for research that addresses other complexities in new product pricing, empirical research responding to these calls remains scarce. This paper examines three managerial price‐setting practices for new products, i.e., value‐informed, competition‐informed, and cost‐informed pricing. By engaging in these practices, managers can develop and compare quantifications in order to attain an introduction price for the product. The authors draw on consumer price perception literature, Monroe's pricing discretion model, and numerical cognition literature to develop hypotheses about the impact of price‐setting practices on new product market performance and price level. By studying the effects on market performance and price level, the paper provides insights that may help explain the growth of new products and address the problems of underpricing. The hypotheses are tested in a management survey of 144 production and service companies. The results indicate which pricing practices are superior for the achievement of either higher market performance or higher prices in specific product and market conditions. Whereas value‐informed pricing has an unambiguous positive impact on relative price level and market performance, the results also suggest that in many cases engaging in value‐informed pricing is not enough. The effects of cost‐informed and competition‐informed pricing may differ depending upon the objective (market performance or higher prices), product conditions (product advantage and relative product costs), and market condition (competitive intensity). Engaging in inappropriate pricing practices leads to a decline in new product performance. Moreover, bad pricing practices make the positive effect of product advantage on the outcome variables disappear. The latter finding suggests that companies can jeopardize their efforts and investments in the new product development process if they engage in the wrong price‐setting practices. The findings imply that managers should consider different factors in new product pricing. First, when launching a new product, they should determine their explicit pricing objective, either stressing market performance or a higher price level. To determine the most appropriate pricing practices, however, they should next assess their situation in terms of product advantage, relative product costs, and competitive intensity. Together with the pricing objective, these conditions determine the best pricing practice. On a higher level, the findings imply that companies should invest in knowledge development in order to engage in the appropriate pricing practices for each product launch.     

Exploring the Nonlinear Impact of Organizational Integration on New Product Market Success

This article explores the nonlinear relationship between organizational integration and new product market success (NPMS). The concept of organizational integration was measured by assessing the degree of integration among various groups of people involved in the development of new products including new product development (NPD) teams that are typically the focal points of NPD efforts. New product market success was measured by examining four often‐used measures of NPD success. The mail survey research approach was used to gather empirical data from NPD managers in three major industries. The data gathered from this survey process were used as the basis from which to extract information to address this study's major research questions, which include: (1) How is the degree of new product market success related to the nonlinear degree to which groups of people (including NPD teams) integrate during NPD processes? and (2) How is the degree of new product market success related to the nonlinear degree to which separate groups of people (e.g., customers, suppliers, and functional departments) integrate during NPD processes? This study found that high levels of organizational integration (overall organizational integration and supplier organizational integration) during NPD processes are associated with high levels of new product market success. Additionally, this study found that the relationship between new product market success and organizational integration (customer organizational integration and functional organization integration) during NPD processes exhibit nonlinear, U‐shaped relationships. Therefore, the first important finding of this study confirms that various forms of organizational integration impact in a positive way the market success of new products. This suggests that management responsible for all NPD projects should consciously integrate important groups of people to support such developments. This study's findings also confirm and imply that new product developers in the studied industries should integrate marketing and research and development (R&D) over the duration of the NPD process. This suggests that new product managers must be proactive to assure that members of NPD teams are actively engaged with groups of supporting people within and outside new‐product–producing organizations. Unlike prior research, a major finding of this study suggests that the association between organizational integration and new product market success does not form inverted U‐shaped relationships. Data from this research imply that new product market success is linearly influenced by overall and supplier organizational integration. However, this study's data suggest that new product market success is nonlinearly influenced by customer and functional organizational integration. This study's data suggest that when customer organizational integration and/or functional organizational integration is increased, new product market success can be increased at a rate which is greater than a linear rate.     

The Impact of a Creativity‐supporting Work Environment on a Firm's Product Innovation Performance

Many scholars and practitioners have suggested that a creativity‐supporting work environment contributes to a firm's product innovation performance. Although there is evidence that such an environment enhances innovative behavior at individual level, very few studies address the effect of a creativity‐supporting work environment on product innovation performance at firm level, and the results are inconsistent. This paper examines the relationship between a firm's creativity‐supporting work environment and a firm's product innovation performance in a sample of 103 firms. For measuring a firm's creativity‐supporting work environment, a comprehensive and creativity‐focused framework is used. The framework consists of 9 social‐organizational and 12 physical work environment characteristics that are likely to enhance employee creativity. These characteristics contribute to the firm's overall work environment that supports creativity. The firm's product innovation performance is defined by two distinct concepts: new product productivity (NP productivity), which is the extent to which the firm introduces new products to the market, and new product success (NP success), which is the percentage of the firm's sales from new products. In most firms, different knowledgeable informants provided the data for the variables. The results show that firms with creativity‐supporting work environments introduce more new products to the market (NP productivity), and have more NP success in terms of new product sales (NP success). NP productivity partly mediates the relationship between creativity‐supporting work environment and NP success. The mediation model shows that the two paths from a creativity‐supporting work environment to NP success are about equally important: the direct path between creativity‐supporting work environment and NP success has a coefficient of .22, and the coefficient of the indirect path via NP productivity is .23. The creativity‐supporting work environment framework can be used in managerial practice to enhance employee creativity for product innovation. It allows applying a flexible and broad approach by influencing both social‐organizational and physical characteristics of the work environment.     

The Impact of Communication Strategy on Launching New Products: The Moderating Role of Product Innovativeness

Academic literature is filled with debate on whether product innovativeness positively impacts new product performance (NPP) because of increasing competitive advantage or negatively impacts performance due to consumers' fears of novel technology and resultant resistance to adopt. This study investigates this issue by modeling product innovativeness as a moderator that influences the relationship between communication strategy and new product performance. The authors emphasize that the impact of innovativeness to producers is different from that to consumers and that the differences have strategic impact when commercializing highly innovative products. Product innovativeness is conceptualized as multidimensional, and each dimension is tested separately. Four dimensions of innovativeness are explored—product newness to the firm, market newness to the firm, product superiority to the customer, and adoption difficulty for the customer.
In this study, communication strategy is comprised of preannouncement strategy and advertising strategy. First, the relationship between whether or not a preannouncement is offered and NPP is explored. Then three types of preannouncement messages (customer education, anticipation creation, and market preemption) are investigated. Advertising strategy is characterized by whether the advertisement campaign at the time of launch was based primarily on emotional or functional appeals.
Using empirical results from 284 surveys of product managers, the authors find that the relationship between communication strategy and NPP is moderated by innovativeness, and that the relationships differ not only by degree but also by type of innovativeness. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

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.     

The Form of Relationship between Firm‐Level Product Innovativeness and New Product Performance in Developed and Emerging Markets

This study compares the new product performance outcomes of firm‐level product innovativeness across a developed and emerging market context. In so doing, a model is constructed in which the relationship between firm‐level product innovativeness and new product performance is anticipated to be curvilinear, and in which the nature of this relationship is argued to be dependent on organizational and environmental factors. The model is tested using primary data obtained from chief executive officers and finance managers in 319 firms operating in the United Kingdom, an advanced Western market, and 221 firms from Ghana, an emerging Sub‐Saharan African market. The model is assessed using a structural equation model multigroup analysis approach with LISREL 8.5. In the United Kingdom and Ghana, the basic form of the relationship between firm‐level product innovativeness and business success is inverted U‐shaped, but the strength and/or form of this relationship changes under differing levels of market orientation, access to financial resources, and environmental dynamism. While commonalities are identified across the two countries (market orientation helps firms leverage their product innovativeness), differences are also observed across the samples. In Ghana, access to financial resources enhances the relationship between product innovativeness and new product performance, unlike in the United Kingdom where no moderation is observed. Furthermore, while U.K. firms leverage product innovativeness to their advantage in more dynamic environments, Ghanaian firms do not benefit in this way: here, high levels of innovation activity are less useful when markets are more dynamic. If the study's findings generalize, there are a number of implications for managers of both emerging and developed market businesses. First, managers in both developed and developing market firms should focus on determining and managing an optimal balance of novel and intensive product innovativeness within the context of their unique institutional environments. Second, for emerging market firms, a market orientation capability helps businesses leverage local market intelligence, enabling them to compete with multinational giants flocking to emerging markets, but typical developed market learning approaches may be insufficient for multinational firms when seeking to compete in emerging markets. Third, for emerging market firms, access to finances helps deliver product innovation success (although this is not the case for developed market firms, possibly due to strong financial institutions). Finally, unlike developed market firms, burdened by institutional voids at home, emerging market firms appear to be less capable of competing on an innovation front in more dynamic market conditions. Accordingly, policymakers in emerging markets should consider identifying ways to help businesses raise market orientation levels, and seek to create conditions that enhance access to financial capital (e.g., direct financing, matching grants, tax rebates, or rewarding firms that innovate creatively and intensely). Likewise, since environmental dynamism is likely to be a growing issue for emerging markets, efforts to help firms become more adept at keeping up with more agile developed market counterparts are needed.     

企业非市场与市场资源、策略及其绩效的整合互动

企业经营战略必须同时关注非市场环境和市场环境,它应该是由非市场和市场两部分组成的。因此,本文构建了企业非市场与市场资源、策略及其绩效的整合互动理论模型以及相关研究假设,并利用问卷调查获得的数据,进行了深入地实证分析。其研究结果表明,企业非市场与市场资源、策略及其绩效之间分别都存在一种正的相关关系,而非市场与市场资源、非市场与市场策略及其非市场与市场绩效之间进一步融合能够对企业发展产生有效的整合效果,虽然非市场资源不能通过市场活动间接影响非市场绩效水平,但还是一定程度验证了市场资源、非市场策略和市场绩效之间的互动效果。     

Externally Directed and Internally Directed Market Launch Management: The Role of Organizational Factors in Influencing New Product Success

Introducing new products remains a critical challenge for managers. Consumer acceptance of new products is key to new product success and requires the effective implementation of market launch activities. The present study describes the relationship between different types of market launch activities and market‐related, time‐related, and financial market launch success. The study's framework extends previous work on launch management by complementing the view that launch activities are predominantly outwardly directed with the notion that launch management can also be inwardly directed. More specifically, launch activities can both target customers as the external audience, for example, via communication and pricing, and address an internal audience, such as management and sales personnel, for example, using departmental coordination or employee incentives. The study also sets out to investigate how situational factors impact the relative effectiveness of both externally directed and internally directed launch activities in engendering successful new product launches. In particular, product newness, technology drivers, and firm size are considered as relevant variables. Structural equation analysis of data on 178 new products across industries provide empirical evidence that market launch success depends on the intensity of both externally directed and internally directed market launch activities. With regard to the overall impact of internally directed activities, the findings confirm that organizational factors and antecedents indeed play a critical role in new product launch and its respective performance with internally directed activities having an even stronger impact on time‐related and financial success than outwardly directed instruments. Specifically, these internal activities are often viewed as idiosyncratic resources that are hard for competitors to observe and are therefore more difficult—if not impossible—to replicate compared to externally directed activities in market launch. The paper clearly pinpoints that the successful launch of new products is a complex task that also necessitates the implementation of internally directed launch activities. Fast market penetration requires coordination among the different internal players as well as support from top management. Furthermore, the financial objectives of the market launch can only be met if employees and executives both receive the necessary incentives and support to effectively execute the new product introduction. The study also demonstrates that moderators impact the strength of the effectiveness of these two different types of market launch activities. This research provides important implications for launch management by advocating that the two foci on external and internal constituencies should not be pursued in isolation but that instead, the opposite is true.