C. Anthony Di Benedetto

Identifying the Key Success Factors in New Product Launch

Effective product launch is a key driver of top performance, and launch is often the single costliest step in new product development. Despite its importance, costs, and risks, product launch has been relatively underresearched in the product literature. We reviewed the extant literature on product launch to identify the most critical strategic, tactical, and information-gathering activities influencing the launch success. We then used a retrospective methodology to gather managerial perceptions regarding launch activities pertaining to a recent new product launch, and the product’s performance in terms of profitability, market share, and relative sales. A mail survey of PDMA practitioners elicited data on nearly 200 recent product launches. Successful launches were found to be related to perceived superior skills in marketing research, sales force, distribution, promotion, R&D, and engineering. Having cross-functional teams making key marketing and manufacturing decisions, and getting logistics involved early in planning, were strategic activities that were strongly related to successful launches. Several tactical activities were related to successful launches: high quality of selling effort, advertising, and technical support; good launch management and good management of support programs; and excellent launch timing relative to customers and competitors. Furthermore, information-gathering activities of all kinds (market testing, customer feedback, advertising testing, etc.) were very important to successful launches. We conclude with observations about current product launch practice and with recommendations to management. Logistics plays a key role in successful strategy development and should receive the requisite amount of managerial attention. In particular, activities involving logistics personnel in strategy development showed much room for improvement. We also find that the timing of the launch (i.e., when the launch is conducted from the point of view of the company, the competition, and the customer) is just as important as whether the activities are performed. More managerial attention should be devoted to launch timing with respect to all of these viewpoints in order to improve the chances of success.

Multiple Multinational Tourism Positioning Using Correspondence Analysis

Multinational tourism research involves analysis of multiple origins, multiple tourist destinations, and multiple attributes for destination selection . For example, tourist perceptions of a destination may vary across countries of origin. This can have important implications for which countries to target with tourism promotion, or which of the destinations attributes should be stressed in the promotion. Correspondence analysis is a technique which can handle problems of this complexity where other multiattribute analytical methods cannot. This technique is applied to empirical tourist perception data on Singapore and other Pacific Rim countries. A discussion of how the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board can use the resulting output to improve Singapores positioning in the tourism market is presented.

An integrative model of the new product development process: An empirical validation

Previous studies of new product development have identified a series of variables that are important determinants of new product success. The goal of this article is to demonstrate the nature of the complex interrelationships that exist among these variables. Roger Calantone and Anthony di Benedetto propose an integrative model of the new product decision process. They examine data gathered from a sample of industrial manufacturing companies and test their model empirically using three-stage least squares analysis. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for new product managers.

Original ArticlesIdentifying the key success factors in new product launch

Effective product launch is a key driver of top performance, and launch is often the single costliest step in new product development. Despite its importance, costs, and risks, product launch has been relatively underresearched in the product literature. We reviewed the extant literature on product launch to identify the most critical strategic, tactical, and information-gathering activities influencing the launch success. We then used a retrospective methodology to gather managerial perceptions regarding launch activities pertaining to a recent new product launch, and the products performance in terms of profitability, market share, and relative sales. A mail survey of PDMA practitioners elicited data on nearly 200 recent product launches. Successful launches were found to be related to perceived superior skills in marketing research, sales force, distribution, promotion, RD good launch management and good management of support programs; and excellent launch timing relative to customers and competitors. Furthermore, information-gathering activities of all kinds (market testing, customer feedback, advertising testing, etc.) were very important to successful launches. We conclude with observations about current product launch practice and with recommendations to management. Logistics plays a key role in successful strategy development and should receive the requisite amount of managerial attention. In particular, activities involving logistics personnel in strategy development showed much room for improvement. We also find that the timing of the launch (i.e., when the launch is conducted from the point of view of the company, the competition, and the customer) is just as important as whether the activities are performed. More managerial attention should be devoted to launch timing with respect to all of these viewpoints in order to improve the chances of success.

Using the Analytic Hierarchy Process in New Product Screening

The initial screening of a new product idea is critically important. Risky projects (i.e., those with high probabilities of failure) need to be eliminated early before significant investments are made and opportunity costs incurred. Unfortunately, previous research suggests that it is often difficult for managers to kill new product development projects once they have begun. Furthermore, recent studies (including some centering on PDMA members) suggest there is much room for improving new product screening, because this decision often is taken informally or unsystematically. Whereas tools such as Coopers NewProd software are available to aid in the screening decision, management science decision support models for screening are not used frequently. In the present study, the authors illustrate the use of the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) as a decision support model to aid managers in selecting new product ideas to pursue. The need for flexible models that are highly customized to each firms challenges (such as AHP) to support the screening decision and to generate knowledge that will be used as input for a firms expert support system is emphasized. The authors then present an in-depth example of an actual application of AHP in new product screening and discuss the usefulness of this process in gathering and processing knowledge for making new product screening decisions. Finally, the authors explain how a customized AHP process can be incorporated into a sophisticated information system or used as standalone support.

Brand Equity in the Business‐to‐Business Sector: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

Posits a stagewise learning process involved in the building of brand equity: brand birth; the creation of brand awareness and associations; the building of quality and value perceptions; the emergence of brand loyalty; and the launching of brand extensions. Also reports on an empirical study which explored the evolution, existence and extensibility of brand equity in a particular business‐to‐business market. Concludes with practical implications for managers in business‐to‐business product or service firms.

International technology transfer: Model and exploratory study in the People's Republic of China

Adoption of foreign‐developed technology by firms in developing nations will accelerate the speed by which they become globally competitive in new product development. In this study, we build and empirically test an extension of the technology acceptance model (TAM) – the “extended TAM” – applied to the study of international transfer of product technology. The extended TAM model derives from the TAM of Davis et al., extensively used in information technology applications. The extended TAM is built on the premise that a persons attitudes toward a behavior influence their intentions to perform that behavior, and behavioral intentions influence the actual performance of the behavior. In the extended TAM, perceived ease of use is operationalized as two independent variables, technological compatibility and ease of adoption, and anticipated benefits of adoption are operationalized in terms of technical and economic benefits to the adopting firm. These antecedents have direct and indirect effects on attitudes toward the adoption of foreign‐developed technology by managers from developing countries, and on behavioral intentions to adopt such technology. We conduct an exploratory empirical test of the model using a convenience sample of respondents representing several industries in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). Strong support is found for all hypotheses in the model. We conclude with research and managerial implications regarding international technology transfer and new product development.

Distinctive Marketing and Information Technology Capabilities and Strategic Types: A Cross-National Investigation

The authors examine the relationship between strategic type and development of distinctive marketing, market-linking, technology, and information technology (IT) capabilities to implement innovation strategy. They hypothesize that prospectors must build technical and IT capabilities, whereas defenders develop market-linking and marketing capabilities. The authors collect data from 709 firms across the United States, Japan, and China. They find support for their capability hypotheses, as well as for some of their cross-national hypotheses that are based on cultural and business environment differences among the three countries. In particular, they find support for the hypotheses that Japanese firms have greater technology and IT capabilities than U.S. firms of the same strategic type. They conclude with implications for management.

A Heterogeneous Resource Based View for Exploring Relationships between Firm Performance and Capabilities

The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm has gained much attention in recent years as a means to understand how a strategic business unit obtains a sustainable competitive advantage. In this framework, several research studies have explored the relationships between resources/capabilities and firm performance. This paper seeks to extend this line of research by explicitly modeling the heterogeneity of such relations across firms in various different industries in exploring the interrelationships between capabilities and performance. A unique latent structure regression model is developed to provide a discrete representation of this heterogeneity in terms of different clusters or groups of firms who employ different paths to achieve firm performance vis-a-vis alternative capabilities. An application of the proposed methodology to a sample of 216 US firms were provided. The paper finds that the derived four group latent structure regression solution statistically dominates the one aggregate sample regression function. Substantive interpretation for the findings is provided. The paper contributes to the understanding of the performance effects of investing in capabilities in the RBV framework.

A Comprehensive Review Of The Tourism Forecasting Literature

Major reports of tourism forecasting studies are classified by forecasting method employed, reviewed, compared, and critiqued. Apartial meta-analysis is used to attempt to gauge relative accuracy of the various approaches used in differing situations. Summary statements on the relative usefulness of the different methods in specific forecasting situa tions are provided. Some conclusions are drawn to aid future conduct and reporting of tourism forecasting reports.