David B. Montgomery

First-Mover (Dis)Advantages: Retrospective and Link with the Resource-Based View

This article reflects upon and updates our prize-winning paper, ‘First-mover advantages,’ which was published in SMJ 10 years ago. We discuss the evolution of the literature over the past decade and suggest opportunities for continuing research. In particular, we see benefits from linking empirical findings on first-mover advantages with the complementary stream of research on the resource-based view of the firm.© 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. We were honored to receive the 1996 prize of the Strategic Management Society (in cooperation with John Wiley & Sons) for our 1988 paper, ‘First-Mover Advantages.’ It is customary for the award recipients to write a brief article reflecting on the original work. As our paper aimed to provide a unified conceptual framework and critical assessment of the literature, we have chosen to write a somewhat longer piece to update our survey and suggest opportunities for continuing research. Our prize-winning paper began as a series of healthy disagreements between the authors, which took place over brown bag lunches during the summer of 1986. ‘First-mover advantage’ (FMA) was a term widely invoked in strategic management, marketing, and economics. We found, however, that our interpretations of the concept differed greatly. We wondered if our disagreements stemmed from the contrast in our disciplinary backgrounds, or if they reflected a broader lack of consensus among business scholars. During a sabbatical at Northwestern University,

Charting New Directions for Marketing

Four fundamental issues serve to establish the identity of the field of marketing, distinguish it from other fields and disciplines, and compel further research inquiry. These issues ask (1) How do...

Resource Commitment, Entry Timing, and Market Performance of Foreign Direct Investments in Emerging Economies: The Case of Japanese International Joint Ventures in China

This study examined whether early movers and technology leaders attained superior performance in emerging economic regions. We assessed the determinants and performance consequences of two key aspe...

Diagnosing the Experience Curve

Few strategy concepts are more likely to give misleading insights than the experience curve. As a result there is considerable disenchantment with the simplistic market share prescriptions that mar...

Learning from strategic success and failure

Abstract Organizations facing complex, ambiguous, and dynamic environments find adaptive learning a key to survival and success. This study proposes three models of organization response in such environments: 1) A model of how aspiration levels or goals adapt over time, 2) a model of the riskiness of strategic choices made, and 3) a model of the innovativeness of search activities (R & D). In each model, the difference between performance and aspiration level is posited to be an important explanatory variable. Using the Markstrat game as a research environment, the data are consistent with all three models.

New product distribution : an analysis of supermarket buyer decisions

This article explores the relationship between 18 variables and a supermarket buyers decision to accept or reject a new product. One hundred twenty-four new products are analyzed by multiple discr...

The relationship between export assistance and performance improvement in Portuguese export ventures: An empirical test of the mediating role of pricing strategy adaptation

Purpose – The article aims to test how pricing strategy adaptation to the foreign market mediates the relationship between export assistance and annual export performance improvement. It also aims to consider the effects of management international experience and export market competition.Design/methodology/approach – Structural equation modelling with WLS estimation is used to test the direct and indirect influences of the variables on short‐term export performance.Findings – Surprisingly, the findings reveal that the total effects of export assistance on annual export performance improvement are non‐significant, because although export assistance has a direct positive impact on performance, there is a negative indirect impact through export pricing strategy adaptation.Research limitations/implications – These surprising results suggest that future research is required to incorporate and test the intervening and indirect effects among variables.Practical implications – The findings also indicate that bot...

Marketing's Interfunctional Interfaces: The MSI Workshop on Management of Corporate Fault Zones

This paper first introduces the purposes and processesof the Marketing Science Institutes Workshop on “Interfunctional Interfaces: The Management of Corporate Fault Zones”. The motivatingissues of value migration and market orientation are considerednext followed by discussion of marketings paradigm shift. Thelast half of the paper deals with several management problemsand research issues which were identified during the workshop.Hopefully, these questions and research needs will help to acceleratedevelopment of research into these interface issues.

Individual Differences in Response to Consumer Promotions

Abstract This research hypothesizes important individual differences in response to promotions and tests for them using a cross-sectional multinomial logit choice model. Our hypotheses suggest interactions between individual brand preference and the effects of current promotion and past promotional purchase. To test for these interactions, we introduce a new method of measuring brand preference from past purchase data. The new method seeks to incorporate competitive purchase conditions as modifiers to observed brand purchase behavior in estimating consumer brand preference. We account for heterogeneity in the cross-sectional model by using two measures of loyalty: one to capture differences across individuals and one to capture the time-varying changes within an individual. Our empirical results, based on scanner panel data for instant caffeinated coffee, support our hypotheses and our model specification. We conclude that accounting for consumer heterogeneity both in response to promotion and in brand and size loyalty improves both fit and predictive ability.

Corporate Social Responsibility Reputation Effects on MBA Job Choice

In a preliminary study with 279 MBAs from two European and three North American business schools we find that reputation-related attributes of caring about employees, environmental sustainability, community/ stakeholder relations, and ethical products and services are important in job choice decisions. We use an adaptive conjoint analysis survey tool to discover the relative weighting of a new set of social responsibility job search criteria, including these attributes with traditional job search criteria like financial package, geographical location, etc. In addition, our results show that more than ninety percent of the MBAs in the sample were willing to forgo financial benefits in order to work for an organization with a better reputation for corporate social responsibility and ethics.