William Rudelius

How involving more functional areas within a firm affects the new product process

Effective new product development decisions are often based on information obtained from multiple functional areas in the organization, making effective communications an important part of successful development efforts. Linda Rochford and William Rudelius examine the effects on new product performance of obtaining information from multiple functional areas during the stages of the new product development process. In addition, they explore the effects of information sharing among functional areas on new product performance. Results suggest that a surprisingly large number of functional areas in the medical products firms in the study do not contribute or use information in many of the new product development stages. However, for several stages of the new product process, obtaining information from more functional areas and sharing information among more functional areas has a positive impact on new product performance.

New product development process: Stages and successes in the medical products industry

Abstract This study investigates how firms manufacturing medical devices use the new product development (NPD) process. It compares new-to-the world products with product modifications in terms of the perceived importance of 12 NPD stages by RD NPD stages actually performed; and the relation of these activities to new product success. Although significant variations occur among the use of specific NPD stages, the firms use the NPD stages more often for new-to-the world products than for product modifications, and “high-success products” utilize the NPD stages more often than “low-success products.” Respondent perceptions of NPD stage importance are consistent with whether a particular stage is undertaken. Marketing stages generally seem less important than other stages and are less frequently undertaken. Managers interested in developing successful new-to-the-world products may want to use a more “complete” new product process. On the other hand, successful product modifications may be able to take some short cuts in the new product process without jeopardizing new product success.

Sales Force Activities and Marketing Strategies in Industrial Firms: Relationships and Implications

This study explores the role of the sales force in formulating and executing marketing strategies. Specifically, the relationships between sales force activities such as providing information about customer needs, hiring and training salespeople, and assessing new market segments and four marketing strategies (market penetration, product development, market development, diversification) are examined. Results indicate that the use of sales force activities is related to a firms strategic choices, and that the relationships vary by firm size and type of offering.

Ethics in industrial selling: How product and service salespeople compare

Industrial product and service salespeople encounter certain practices that may be ethically troublesome. Do product and service salespeople have different ethical beliefs about these practices? Answers to this question have not appeared in the marketing literature. This paper poses three potential reasons why these two groups may have different ethical beliefs and then presents results and implications of a study that examined this issue.

Selling techniques for industrial products and services: Are they different?

AbstractAlthough much marketing literature exists pertaining to whether products should be marketed differently from services, little attention has focused on whether product selling differs from service selling. This article reports the results of an empirical investigation that examined whether salespeople selling industrial products use different selling techniques than those selling services. The results suggest that product sales personnel prefer techniques that can use tangible aspects of the product to advantage, while service sales personnel prefer techniques that stress the personal assistance of customers. The implications of the results are also presented.

Increase response to industrial surveys

Abstract The results of this article support the contention that a prenotification telephone call increases the probability of response to a mail survey request. The article also discusses the practical problems associated with the use of a telephone prenotification in an industrial setting and provides a step-by-step procedure to help overcome these problems.

How Marketing Managers Use Market Segmentation: An Exploratory Study

Much of the previous market segmentation research has focused on methods of positioning total markets into segments and rarely on how marketing managers actually use market segmentation in practice. In contrast, this article first discusses the organizational environment in which marketing managers make segmentation decisions. Then it describes results of a survey of marketing managers about the segmentation variables they use, the criteria they choose to form segments and to select target market segments, and different marketing actions used to reach different segments. Suggestions are made for future research.

Forecasting for firms selling projects or jobs “to order”

Abstract Firms selling projects or jobs to specific customers on a “to order” basis face far different sales forecasting task than firms producing for inventory. The model described here utilizes a bottom-up approach in forecasting new business for a to-order firm using three key factors that can be estimated by a firms marketing or sales manager. These three factors are analyzed empirically using a sample of one years new business proposals from a large multiproject manufacturing firm.

Lagged manpower relationships in development projects

Given several important assumptions, this paper suggests that the time phasing of the various skills utilized on a development project result in reasonably stable manpower relationships. The author establishes guidelines intended to sharpen, not replace, managements forecasts of its manpower needs throughout the life of a development program. For the study, he selects five development programs from a single aerospace firm. He discusses the relationships that exist between manpower from the firms engineering operation and two other operations “downstream” in the development sequence: 1) manufacturing, and 2) quality control and testing. Using simple correlation analysis, the author explores both the time lags present in the application of manpower from the three operations to a development program and the comparative manpower requirements among the operations for given time lags.

Tradeoffs in Industrial Market Segmentation: Theory and Practice

Market segmentation is one of the basic concepts in marketing. However, the issues of costs and profits have typically been ignored in discussions of segmentation. This paper introduces a straightforward framework to assess these issues. Various revenue and cost interactions are considered, and problems in implementing this process are discussed.