Why some new products are more successful than others

Abstract

Product innovation is increasingly valued as a key component of the sustainable success of a business's operations. As a result, there has been a noticeable increase in the number of studies directed at explicat-ing the drivers of new product success. To help managers and researchers synthesize this growing body of evidence, the authors con-duct a meta-analysis of the new product performance literature. Of the 24 predictors of new product performance investigated, product advantage, market potential, meeting customer needs, predevelopment task profi-ciencies, and dedicated resources, on average, have the most significant impact on new product performance. The authors also find that the pre-dictor-performance relationships can vary by measurement factor (e.g., the use of multi-item scales, subjective versus objective measures of per-formance, senior versus project management reporting, time elapsed since product introduction) or contextual factor {e.g., services versus goods, Asian versus North American markets, competition in high-tech-nology versus low-technology markets). They discuss the implications of these findings and offer directions for further research