Sungwook Min

Impact of Industry Incumbency and Product Newness on Pioneer Leadtime

This study proposes a new theoretical frame to explain intermarket differences in the follow-up firm’s market entry that determines the pioneer’s monopoly period (i.e., pioneer leadtime). The authors note that firms’ new market entry is reflective of their entry capabilities as well as entry motivations. More specifically, they argue that industry incumbency of both the pioneer and follow-up firms and product newness of the market may influence the follow-up firms’ entry capabilities and motivations, creating variance in pioneer leadtime. Their empirical findings generally support the theoretical frame and complement the conventional entry-barrier perspective. For example, for really new products, pioneer leadtime is shorter when the follow-up entrant has experiences from similar industries than when it does not. For incrementally new products, pioneer leadtime is longer when the pioneer has experiences from similar industries than when it does not.

Customer Acquisition and Retention Spending: An Analytical Model and Empirical Investigation in Wireless Telecommunications Markets

Strategic resource allocation in growth markets is always a challenging task. This is especially true when it comes to determining the level of investments and expenditures for customer acquisition and retention in competitive and dynamic market environments. This study develops an analytical model to examine firms’ investments in customer acquisition and retention for a new service; it develops hypotheses drawing on analytical findings and tests them with firm-level operating data of wireless telecommunications markets from 41 countries during 1999–2007. The empirical investigation shows that a firms acquisition cost per customer is more sensitive to market position and competition than retention cost per customer. Furthermore, whereas firms leading in market share, on average, do not have a cost advantage over other firms in retaining customers, they have a substantial cost advantage in acquiring customers, and this advantage tends to increase with market penetration. The study results provide guidelines for firms’ strategic resource allocation for customer acquisition and retention in competitive service markets.

The impact of market size on new market entry: a contingency approach

Purpose The purpose of this study is to offer explanations of the wide variation in the impact of market size on new market entry decisions – i.e. its positive impact lessens because of unreliable predictability of market size on post-entry profit and entry motivations other than post-entry profit. Design/methodology/approach On the basis of the two explanations, this paper builds a contingency frame that the impact of market size on new market entry depends on entry-context-specific variables. It validates the contingency frame, empirically analyzing 219 parameter estimates of the impact of market size on market entry obtained from 41 existing empirical studies. Findings The meta-analysis results reveal that the entry-context-specific variables used in this study – niche market entry, high-tech market entry, entry by industry incumbent firms and the year of market entry – notably moderate the impact of market size on new market entry decisions, as the research frame suggests. Research limitations/implications This study examines the various literature and study outcomes in the areas of marketing, economics and strategy to elucidate whether and when market size is a critical driver of new market entry. In most cases, the greater the new market size, the greater is the propensity to enter the market. However, the contingency arguments stated in this paper suggest that firms may and do enter a new market even if the market size is not large at the time of entry. Originality/value This paper enhances the understanding of the relative importance of market size in market entry decisions, which depend on various entry contexts. It clarifies the direction and magnitude of the impact of such entry contexts.