Product Management and Innovation Essays

The introduction of new products and innovations

Rosa, Porac, Runser-Spanjol and Saxon (JM 1999) "Sociocognitive Dynamics in a Product Market"
The aim of this research is to investigate how consumers and producers construct and adopt the concept of a new product category. To perform this study authors followed during six years the evolution of minivan segment that took place in the 80’s. They collected market stories from customers and producers publications and used quantitative methods to model the problem. Results suggest that when products’ attributes and nomenclature between customers and producer are agreed, the product category is stabilized. When the new product category starts taking relevance consumers and producers decrease their attention in existing similar categories. When the number of products of the category increases, customers and producers adopt the concept, nevertheless producers keep commenting about the category to maintain it alive and continue constructing concepts. As the product category becomes more mature, category members become stricter to allow products with significant differences into the category.
The article is very hard to read and extensive; the results aren’t very relevant especially for managers. Nevertheless the research technics using text mining are interesting.

Montaguti, E. (IJRM 2002) “Entry Strategy for Radical Product Innovations”
This article tries to show strategies to reduce the time to move radical innovations from the introduction to the growth phase (takeoff time). Time-to-takeoff is a phase where customers have uncertainties about the product and need more information to choose it. Managers, generally prefer to pass this phase quickly in order to achieve return on investment, to build reputation, and to avoid competitors to enter. The authors proposed a conceptual model, which is developed using theories from several authors. They have identified the following strategies: 1) penetrate the market with price and communication approaches, 2) underlie the compatibility of the product with existing solutions, 3) preannounce the innovation’s features and benefits, and 4) establish systems to serve the market by using own resources or by external alliances. External factors as technological and competitive environment, company reputation and order to entry to the market moderate the effectiveness of strategies.
The article is very useful for marketing managers, which have the challenge to bring innovations to successful products in the market.

Aboulnasr, Narasimhan, Blair and Chandy (JM 2008) “Competitive Response to Radical Product Innovations”
This research focuses on determining competitors’ responses when radical product innovations are introduced into the market. The study took place within the pharmaceutical industry. Authors collected data from radical innovations and studied the response of competitors in the next 3 years from the product launching; then they used a hazard model to predict the probability of the effects (competitors’ responses). The results suggest that competitors are more likely to respond to radical innovations when they perceive more opportunities and growth potential in the market. In other words, when radical innovations are introduced into smaller markets by larger firms or by firms that base their profits in that market, competitors perceive that these firms are taking risk but they expect good results, so they are likely to introduce their products consequently.
I liked this article because is very practical and is relevant for managers; nevertheless it would be interesting to present some strategies to neutralize competitors’ responses to radical innovations.

Alexander, Lynch and Wang (JMR 2008), "As time goes by"
The aim of this study is to analyze the implications of customer’s psychological perceptions about really new product (radical innovations) and incremental new product in purchase intention. Authors performed

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