Subin Im

Market Orientation, Creativity, and New Product Performance in High-Technology Firms

The ability to generate and market creative ideas in new products (NPs) and related marketing programs (MPs) in response to changing market needs is key to the success of a firm. This research examines the mediating role of NP and MP creativity between market orientation and NP success. The authors investigate (1) whether market orientation facilitates or inhibits creativity, (2) whether creativity influences NP performance, and (3) how to define and measure creativity in the NP development and launch contexts. They use a two-stage sampling frame to collect 312 sets of responses from managers and NP team leaders and thereby address the potential for common method bias in measures of creativity and NP performance. The findings indicate that NP and MP creativity mediates the relationship between market orientation and NP success. The authors also show that the meaningfulness dimension, rather than the novelty dimension, of creativity is of greater importance in explaining the link between market orientation and NP success. The empirical results provide significant theoretical and managerial implications for NP strategy.

An Empirical Study of Innate Consumer Innovativeness, Personal Characteristics, and New-Product Adoption Behavior

This article explores the relationships between innate consumer innovativeness, personal characteristics, and new-product adoption behavior. To do this, the authors analyze cross-sectional data from a household panel using a structural equation modeling approach. They also test for potential moderating effects using a two-stage least square estimation procedure. They find that the personal characteristics of age and income are stronger predictors of new-product ownership in the consumer electronics category than innate consumer innovativeness as a generalized personality trait. The authors also find that personal characteristics neither influence innate consumer innovativeness nor moderate the relationship between innate consumer innovativeness and new-product adoption behavior.

The effect of attitude and perception on consumer complaint intentions

The importance of managing dissatisfied consumers has increased because of severe competition from the introduction of new types of stores, such as online shopping. Focuses on consumers who complain directly to the offending firms because their dissatisfaction provides a firm with the opportunity to improve its customer service. In contrast to studies that examine determinants of complaint behavior to resolve customer dissatisfaction, examines how attitudinal and perceptual variables, influenced by generalized personal factors, affect complaint intention. Performs a path analysis to examine the links among generalized personal antecedents, attitudinal and perceptual mediators, and customer’s complaint intentions. The empirical results confirm that attitudinal and perceptual mediators positively influence complaint intention. Furthermore, three generalized personal antecedents affect attitudinal and perceptual mediators. The empirical results indicate that attitude toward complaining plays a central role in mediating between three generalized personal antecedents and complaint intention. Finally, provides managerial implications that suggest ways firms can manage customers’ complaints to enhance customer satisfaction.

Determinants of Korean and Japanese New Product Performance: An Interrelational and Process View

Firms in South Korea and Japan are designing and introducing new products to global markets, contributing to their strong export-led economic growth. To better understand how Korean and Japanese firms are succeeding, the authors conducted a study on new product development. They surveyed product developers in both countries about how strategic, organizational, and process factors influence new product performance (NPP). The authors learned that the determinants of NPP are interrelated and that the new product development process itself is central, namely the stages of initiation and implementation. These two stages directly determine NPP, though initiation appears to be more important. The stages are strengthened by factors such as customer orientation, cross-functional integration, and new product team proficiency; however, the effects are not uniform. Although the model and hypotheses are largely supported, indicating that, in general, they describe South Korean and Japanese new product development, the authors found a few differences between the countries.

How Knowledge Management Capabilities Help Leverage Knowledge Resources and Strategic Orientation for New Product Advantages in B-to-B High-Technology Firms

ABSTRACT Purpose: Current understanding of how new product development (NPD) teams use knowledge management capabilities to acquire, disseminate, and apply knowledge resources to achieve competitive advantages is limited by a lack of compelling theory supported by empirical evidence. This study provides a theoretical framework and empirical validation for how an NPD team manages knowledge resources and strategic orientation to enhance its knowledge management capabilities, which, in turn, lead to business-to-busienss (B-to-B) new product advantages. Methodology/approach: A total of 100 sets of data was collected from B-to-B firms in U.S. high-tech industries. In order to validate the proposed hypotheses, we estimated the main effects using path analysis in AMOS, and tested for interaction effects using interaction term regressions. Findings: Our findings show that the two dimensions of NPD knowledge management capabilities—acquisition and application—are important but differential drivers of product quality superiority and product differentiation. In testing whether NPD management capabilities matter for two product advantage constructs, we confirmed that product quality superiority can be enhanced by both NPD knowledge acquisition and application capabilities, whereas product differentiation can be increased strongly by NPD knowledge acquisition capabilities. Research implications: Our research confirms the importance of strategic orientation as a driver of NPD knowledge management capabilities, which enhances understanding of how strategic factors operate under a resource-based view. Our results further provide direct empirical support for the knowledge-based view of firms, in that an NPD team’s abilities to manage and deploy knowledge-based resources by acquiring and applying NPD knowledge lead to competitive advantages, for outcomes of quality superiority and differentiation. Practical implications: Our findings have relevance for managers in three ways. First, NPD knowledge acquisition and application capabilities have differential impacts on product quality superiority and differentiation. Second, in exploring NPD resource factors as antecedents, managers should manage levels of NPD market intelligence, resource tacitness, and NPD resource deployment differentially to directly improve NPD teams’ acquisition and application capabilities. Third, managers should not underestimate the importance of market and technological orientations in enhancing NPD knowledge management capabilities. Market orientation drives both NPD knowledge acquisition and application capabilities; technological orientation drives NPD knowledge application capabilities. Originality/value/contribution of the paper: An NPD team’s knowledge management capabilities generally, but differentially, mediate the relationships of knowledge resources and strategic orientation factors with new product competitive advantage. However, simply enhancing NPD knowledge management capabilities is not a panacea for developing product competitive advantage in B-to-B settings, because of their differential effects.

Revisiting the factor structure of the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory

The original Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory, used to measure innovative (as opposed to adaptive) individual cognitive styles, has been reported to have three factors: Sufficiency of Originality, Efficiency, and Rule/Group Conformity. In exploring the construct validity of the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory, findings from a 2003 study by Im, Hu, and Toh showed the existence of two subdimensions of the Sufficiency of Originality factor—Idea Generation and Preference for Change. In this study, using a sample of 356 household participants, with an average age of 56.0 yr. (SD = 14.0), average income of

Exploring the Dimensionality of the Originality Subscale of the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory

39,700 (SD =

Strategic Givens In New Product Development: Understanding Curvilinear Effects On New Product Performance

19,200), and average of 15.0 yr. of education (SD = 2), from the Arkansas Household Research Panel, we conducted factor analyses. The results specific to our selected sample indicate that a four-factor model recognizing the two subdimensions of Sufficiency of Originality has a better fit than the original three-factor model.

Bridging the Chasm between Design and Marketing: Problems and Solutions in the Integration Between Design and Marketing

The Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory, which is a widely used measure of innovative (as opposed to adaptive) cognitive individual style, is believed to have three dimensions: Sufficiency of Originality, Efficiency, and Rule/Group Conformity. Several studies have raised concerns regarding its construct validity, specifically with respect to the Sufficiency of Originality subscale. Within this subscale, exploratory factor analysis identified two distinct subdimensions, Idea Generation and Preference for Change. In this study, we used a sample of 356 household participants (with an average age of 56 yr., average income of

Exploration of the factor structure of the Kirton Adaption-Innovation Inventory using bootstrapping estimation.

39,700, and average of 15 yr. of education) from the Arkansas Household Research Panel. We then employed Bollen and Grandjeans approach based on confirmatory factor analysis to assess whether there are actually two distinct subdimensions instead of one. Our study shows that within the Sufficiency of Originality subscale, there are indeed two distinct subdimensions, Idea Generation and Preference for Change. Further analyses indicate that dropping double-loaded items identified through exploratory factor analysis significantly improves the fit statistics. Also, allowing correlated errors for the measurement items that belong to the same subdimension can also significantly improve the overall fit of the model based on chi-square statistics.