Mastering the complementarity between marketing mix and customer-focused capabilities to enhance new product performance

Purpose: This study addresses the extent that the deployment of and complementarity between marketing mix, brand management, and customer relationship management capabilities provide firms the capacity to transform their market knowledge into effective responsive actions that help to achieve new product success. Methodology: A questionnaire was used as the primary means of data collection. Data from 160 large B2B firms across a variety of industries in Iran were analyzed using partial least squares regression to test the hypothesized paths. Findings: The results show that (a) market-oriented firms are better at deploying marketing mix, brand management, and customer relationship management capabilities, and these capabilities help to drive new product performance and (b) the complementarity between these marketing capabilities enhances the firm’s capacity to achieve new product success more than deploying each capability in isolation. Contributions: In contrast to many existing studies, this study is the first to examine the role of marketing mix, brand management, and customer relationship management capabilities and their complementarity as intervening mechanisms in the relationship between MO and new product performance. Further, this study extends the marketing literature by investigating the role of different forms of marketing capabilities in a complementary fashion in the context of a Middle-Eastern economy

Achieving new product success via the synchronization of exploration and exploitation across multiple levels and functional areas

While ambidexterity has been identified as a critical prerequisite for new product success, synchronizing exploration and exploitation in practice represents a multifaceted enigma. Ambidexterity is not in reality limited to a single organizational level, or a specific functional area. Firms become ambidextrous when corporate-level exploratory and exploitative strategies interact with operational-level exploratory and exploitative capabilities across multiple functional areas. Data from a sample of technology-intensive industrial firms using a multi-informant design shows that operational-level exploratory and exploitative product innovation and marketing capabilities allow firms to implement corporate-level exploratory and exploitative strategies in the context of new product development (NPD). Further, the findings reveal that the integration of exploratory product innovation–exploratory marketing and exploitative product innovation–exploitative marketing is significant for the implementation of exploratory and exploitative strategies over deploying each capability in isolation. Finally, we show that the implementation of exploratory and exploitative strategies drives new product success through creating distinct positional advantages to customers in the form of both differentiation and cost efficiency. These positional advantages help to better explain the effects of exploratory and exploitative capabilities on new product market performance.11 page(s

Driving service innovativeness via collaboration with customers and suppliers: Evidence from business-to-business services

Service innovativeness represents a key source of competitive advantage and a research priority. However, empirical evidence about how service firms successfully offer novel and meaningful services is scarce, particularly in the context of business-to-business (B2B) service firms. Drawing on the B2B collaborative perspective and KBV, we aim to investigate when customer and supplier collaboration are more beneficial to drive service novelty and meaningfulness. Using data of 186 B2B service firms, the results reveal that collaboration with customers and suppliers are not equally beneficial to drive both novelty and meaningfulness and their outcomes can be amplified or lost under specific conditions. Customer collaboration is more beneficial to increase novelty in the presence of exploratory learning and employee collaboration. Contrary, supplier collaboration drives novelty only at higher levels of exploratory learning. Further, supplier collaboration is more beneficial to improve meaningfulness at higher levels of employee collaboration. Finally, the positive outcomes of both customer and supplier collaboration disappear in the presence of knowledge tacitness. Our findings provide new insights about drivers and contingencies that affect different aspects of service innovativeness

Do professional service firms benefit from customer and supplier collaborations in competitive, turbulent environments?

publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Do professional service firms benefit from customer and supplier collaborations in competitive, turbulent environments? journaltitle: Industrial Marketing Management articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2016.02.011 content_type: article copyright: Crown Copyright © 2016 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.publisher: Elsevier articletitle: Do professional service firms benefit from customer and supplier collaborations in competitive, turbulent environments? journaltitle: Industrial Marketing Management articlelink: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2016.02.011 content_type: article copyright: Crown Copyright © 2016 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

The evolution of business relationships between technology-intensive new ventures and incumbents during the new product development process

This study investigates how technology-intensive new ventures shape and manage their relationships with incumbents to successfully develop new products. We undertake the dynamic views of business relationship to reveal under what conditions new ventures should emphasize more on transactional contract or alliance approach to develop their relationships with incumbents. Using longitudinal multiple case analysis, we show that transactional contract is less effective during discovery and development stages to facilitate knowledge share and collaborative learning between new ventures and incumbents. However, adopting transactional contract is essential during commercialization to strengthen the relationship, minimize the drawbacks of social bonds, and motivate both parties to engage in new projects. The results show that tensions between exchange partners are likely to increase when the incumbent is flexible to re-negotiate and share the fair benefits during the commercialization stage. Our findings provide new insights about the evolution of new ventures’ relationships with incumbents across NPD stages

Supporting new product commercialization through managerial social ties and market knowledge development in an emerging economy

University of Tasmania, Australi