Realist Evaluation : an overview

This report summarises the discussions and presentations of the Expert Seminar ‘Realist Evaluation’ with Gill Westhorp, which took place in Wageningen on March 29, 2011. The Expert Seminar was organised by the Wageningen UR Centre for Development Innovation in collaboration with Learning by Design and Context, international cooperation

The disruptive impact of attribute information on the effectiveness of analogies in print advertising as a means to enhance consumer learning of new product benefits

The presented study had two purposes. First, it pursued to demonstrate that it is more effective to use analogies in advertisements for really new products to increase consumers’ comprehension of the new product’s benefits than not to use analogies. Second, it aimed to test the (counterintuitive) assumption that inclusion of product attribute information in the advertisement in addition to the analogy would actually frustrate benefit comprehension. The results of the experiment showed that advertisements with an analogy lead to greater benefit comprehension than advertisements without an analogy. Further, it is more effective in print advertising in managing consumer learning of a new product’s benefits to use an analogy without than with additional product attribute information. The use of analogies did not increase purchase intention however. We discuss these findings and outline directions for future research

Analogical learning of new product benefits: Between-domain analogies versus within-domain analogies.

The slow rate at which many really new products (RNPs) are adopted can at least partially be explained by the low observability of the distinct benefits. It is suggested that between-domain analogies rather than within-domain analogies are effective in directing consumer’s attention to the key benefits of and developing preferences for a RNP. The results of a laboratory experiment show a significant relationship between ads using between-domain analogies and consumer’s benefit comprehension for one of the two RNPs. The relationship with preferences for the RNP, however, is insignificant. But an increased benefit comprehension positively influences preferences for the RNP. We discuss these findings and outline directions for future research

Development time and new product sales: A contingency analysis of product innovativeness and price

Opposing theories and conflicting empirical results with regard to the effect of development time on new product sales suggest the need for a contingency analysis into factors affecting this relationship. This study uses a unique combination of accounting and perceptual data from 129 product development projects to test the combined contingency effect of product innovativeness and new product price on the relationship between development time and new product sales. The results show that for radically new products with short development times, price has no effect on new product sales. When the development time is long, price has a negative effect on the sales of radical new products. The findings additionally show that price has no effect on sales for incremental new products with short development times and a negative effect for incremental new products with long development times. Together, these findings shed new light on the relationship between development time and new product sales

Effectively Communicating New Product Benefits to Consumers: The Use of Analogy versus Literal Similarity

The main point this study wants to make is that the use of analogies in advertising for really new products is a more effective means of communicating a new product’s distinctive benefits to consumers than is the use of literal similarity comparisons. This hypothesis was tested by means of an experiment with a 3 (comparison type: explicit analogy, implicit analogy, literal similarity) x 2 (product: Auto Mower, Smart Pen) design. The results showed a significant effect of the use of implicit analogy in advertising on consumer’s benefit comprehension for one of the two really new products. The use of analogies in the ads did not increase consumer preference to a greater degree than did the use of literal similarities. We did, however, find a positive effect of benefit comprehension on product preference. We discuss these findings and outline directions for future research

The effectiveness of true analogies for consumer learning of really new products

Recent research has suggested that analogies may be useful to enhance consumer learning of really new products (RNPs). However, these studies have failed to show convincingly that analogies enhance consumers’ comprehension of RNPs as their operationalisation of analogies does not represent a “true” analogy. Besides, they examined the interaction effects of numerous moderators without showing the existence of a main effect first. Hence, it remains unclear what the effectiveness of analogies for consumer learning of RNPs truly is. It is the aim of the present study to fill this void by means of an experiment in which consumers evaluate product descriptions of three RNPs containing either an analogy or no analogy

The influence of collaborative IT tools on NPD

Information technology (IT) is the cornerstone of the modern new product development (NPD) process. A new generation of communication and collaboration tools has propagated into nearly all aspects of NPD. To better understand how these collaborative tools, such as wikis, cloud-based file sharing, social networking, blogs, and microblogging platforms like Twitter, are being used in NPD and what influence they have on NPD outcomes, we undertook a global study of collaborative IT tool use in 443 firms. We found that the usage frequency of these collaborative tools is currently low, but it is positively correlated with project performance. Our results also show that the best-performing projects use all of these tools more intensively than poorer-performing projects. In addition, the usage frequency of these tools differentiated the best from the rest in smaller and medium-sized firms but not in larger firms. Our findings suggest that NPD managers should encourage the use of new forms of communication and collaboration and should embolden and empower the migration toward these collaborative tools