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This paper aims to investigate how the current size and structure of a branded product portfolio impacts new product performance for fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG), testing the long-standing proposition that extending a firm’s brand and product portfolio too far is a dangerous proposition that may damage the market performance of the firm’s new product launches.

Aspects associated with brand size and structure that may impact new product performance are operationalized along two key dimensions: within-category (scale) and cross-category (scope). The impact of the brand’s scale and scope on the sales performance of newly commercialized products by the brand is empirically investigated in the context of FMCG. Over 2,000 new products launched in 2009 and 2010 across 31 food and non-food FMCG product categories in the USA are included in the regression-based analysis.

The authors find strong evidence that brands with broader within-category scale and cross-category scope overall are associated with more successful new product introductions, and that these influences generally are driven more by increased product trial than by repeat or persistence. The authors argue that the higher new product performance observed for more established and proliferated brands may be attributed to advantages of firm product development abilities and product acceptance by the marketplace.

The current results serve to temper the strong cautions set forth in much of the marketing literature about the dangers of overextending the firm’s brand and product portfolio. These results also suggest that future research should be conducted to further understand more nuanced implications of how best to grow the scale and scope of the firm’s brand and product portfolio.

This research paper aims to investigate detailed relationships between market selection and product positioning decisions and their associated short- and long-term product performance outcomes in the context of the music category: a cultural goods industry with high amounts of product introductions. Market selection decisions are defined by the size, competitiveness and age of market subcategories within an overall product category. Positioning decisions include where a product’s attributes are located spatially in the category (periphery versus the market center), whether a product resides within a single subcategory or spans multiple ones and what brand strategy (single versus co-branding) is used.

Data are from multiple sources for the US music industry (aka product category) from 1958 to 2019 to empirically test the hypotheses: genres (rock, blues, etc.) correspond to subcategories; artists to brands; and songs to products. Regression analyses are used.

A complex set of nuanced results are generated and reported, finding that key marketing decisions drive short-term new product success differently and frequently in opposing ways than long-term success. Launching into very new, well-established or very competitive markets leads to the strongest long-term success, despite less attractive short-run prospects. Positioning a product away from the market center and spanning subcategories similarly poses short-run challenges, but long-run returns. Brand collaborations have reverse effects. Short-run product success is found, overall, to be difficult to predict even with strong data inputs, which has substantial implications for how firms should manage portfolios of products in cultural goods industries. Long-run product success is considerably more predictable after short-run success is observed and accounted for.

While managers and firms in cultural goods industries have long relied on intuition to manage market selection and product positioning decisions, this research tests the hypothesis that objective data inputs and empirical modeling can better predict short- and long-run success of launched products. Specific insights on which song characteristics may be associated with success are found – as are more generalizable, industry-level results. In addition, by distinguishing between short- and long-run success, a more complete picture on how key decisions holistically affect product performance emerges. Many market selection and product positioning decisions have differential impacts across these two frames of reference.

This paper aims to move beyond previous investigations juxtaposing the performance of global versus domestic brands, where domestic is referred to as “localness” in the literature, conceptualizing and developing two measures of “within-country brand or product localness.” In doing so, it uses objective localness measures, rather than consumer perceptions of brand localness, as have been primarily used previously. Then, by leveraging established theory on brand authenticity and corollary literatures on brand identity and country-of-origin effects, this research develops and empirically tests key hypotheses about how these within-country, more geographically local products or brands (referred to as simply “localness” hereafter, for brevity), influence sales outcomes through increasing perceptions of brand and product authenticity.

Two empirical studies using different archival data sets are conducted to test the hypotheses. Study 1 focuses on new product sales from 2002 to 2011 for 31 categories of consumer packaged goods US product launches initiated in 2002–2005, whereas Study 2 investigates online consumer review and retail sales data in the US craft beer industry from 2001 to 2011. Localness is operationalized as two different objective measures: in Study 1, local distribution is measured, and in Study 2, firm headquarters denotes the geographic bounds of localness. These two measures are motivated by prior consumer perceptual studies of Locavores (consumers who strongly prefer local products), which identify that local systems of production and/or distribution are the key signals of localness. Using two measures allows the localness construct to be tested for the potential firm-side boundaries of its scope and provides two empirical measures that future researchers can leverage.

Brand (or product) localness gives performance advantages over national brands in the form of increased sales across both studies. The second study, focused on craft beer, dives more deeply into the theoretical mechanism (localness operates through increased perceptions of brand authenticity) and shows that while brand authenticity directly translates into higher sales, as anticipated, localness fully mediates this relationship. When coupled with supporting marketing tactics (high price and/or product variety), the link between localness and brand authenticity grows stronger. Local brands with low prices and/or limited product variety are deemed inauthentic by consumers, so it is important for brand managers to use marketing tactics that reinforce brand authenticity to support localness as a strategy.

Future research could extend this inquiry in a number of ways. These include combining both empirical measures of localness into a single empirical inquiry, investigating additional product categories and further integrating aspects of strategy such as market positioning and innovation strategy. Newer data could also reveal how these phenomena are continuing to evolve.

Based on this study, managers can benefit by leveraging localness as a key brand or product attribute to achieve a sales advantage, but they must do so by using marketing tactics consistent with an authentic brand positioning. Efforts to expand a brand’s geographic reach over time should likely be conducted very locally at first, before extending to regional markets and then to a global footprint. It is also posited that retail store managers can benefit from allocating some shelf space to local brand and product offerings.

This paper conceptualizes and measures localness in new ways compared to the previous literatures. It develops objective measures of within-country localness instead of using consumer perceptions of localness and/or considering domestic brands as being “local” compared to global brands; builds key linkages between concepts of localness, authenticity and sales performance; and uncovers when and how within-country localness is a key brand or product attribute associated with increased sales success.

This study aims to focus on the role of niche brands in online retailer assortments and the general market positions of niche brands, no prior study has explicitly focused on if and when brick-and-mortar retailers should include niche brands in their category assortments.

The authors empirically analyze the category performance implications of focusing assortments on niche brands, at the expense of mainstream brands, in two product categories that have significant niche brand presence, namely, coffee and beer. The empirical data include sales, distribution and marketing tactical information for 50 US geographic markets from 2001–2011.

This research finds that a mainstream brand focus has a generally positive impact on category performance. However, a store’s strategic shift toward niche brands is beneficial in certain cases such as when a store has higher average prices or product form variety or when they are part of a powerful chain. The authors also find that a niche brand focus strategy is becoming increasingly viable over time for brick-and-mortar retailers.

Little is known about the parameters that might make a brick-and-mortar retailer more or less likely to pursue a niche brand focus strategy and when doing so might improve category performance. This analysis helps clarify the conditions under which a brick-and-mortar retailer may experience category level sales increases from focusing assortments on niche brands.

This research aims to investigate the relationship between customer‐based performance measures (marketing measures of firm success) and business growth performance (strategy measures of firm success), in the context of strategic marketing positioning decisions and suggests customer‐based metrics may play a key role in measuring overall business achievements.

This is an empirical survey of 209 business‐to‐business services firms.

Customer‐based performance (marketing measures) is associated with the choice of generic positioning and segmentation strategies, while strategic positioning choice (i.e. low‐cost vs differentiation) is indirectly, rather than directly, associated with business growth performance. The “both” strategy, where firms simultaneously pursue both low‐cost and differentiated strategies, leads to improved performance in these B2B services firms.

The study potentially has industry‐ and/or service‐specific limitations.

This research suggests that firms that cannot measure performance at the customer level may be failing to understand the outcomes of successful marketing programs and decisions. In addition, this research suggests that both operational efficiency and differentiation are keys to growth in B2B services.

This study reinforces the continued applicability of Porter's generic positioning and segmentation strategies for B2B services but suggests that performance differences between strategies in this context are best captured using a customer‐based measure (share of wallet, lifetime value, retention rate and return on marketing investment) rather than a more general business growth measure.

New product development (NPD) is a noteworthy field that has attracted the attention of scholars for its relevance for firm success. Based on bibliometric indicators and spatial distance network analysis, the authors outline the general structure overview of NPD research through the last 40 years of scientific production; identify and categorize key articles, authors, journals, institutions, and countries related to NPD research; identify and map the research subareas that have mostly contributed to the construction of NPD intellectual structure. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The work uses the Web of Science Core Collection and the visualization of similarities viewer software. The analysis searches for all the documents connected to NPD available in the database. The graphical visualization maps the bibliographic data in terms of bibliographic coupling and co-citation.

The general NPD citation pattern evidences a construction of knowledge and learning, as evidenced in different subjects, such as biology or physics. Relevant contributions and contributors are highlighted as journals, articles, researchers, countries and institutions in overall NPD research and in its constituent subfields. Five subareas related to the NPD field based on journals and authors network are identified: marketing; operations and production; strategy; industrial engineering and operations; and management.

This paper contributes to the NPD literature by offering a global perspective on the field by using bibliometric data graphical networks, providing insights about the influence of individual actors and its contributions to build bridges between the different subfields of research in NPD.

The products of some firms emerge neither from new technology developments nor from attempting to address articulated consumers’ needs, but from a company-internal design-driven approach. To explore this design-driven approach, we propose a construct, design orientation, as a firm’s ability to integrate functionality, aesthetics, and meaning in its new products. We hypothesize relationships between a firm’s design orientation, customer orientation, technological orientation, and willingness to cannibalize on its new product performance.

We use data from surveys of senior marketing executives entrusted with design in 252 US firms, we validate the construct of design orientation and establish its distinctiveness from related constructs of creativity, technological orientation, and customer orientation. Using a structural equation modeling approach, we test the hypotheses and find support for them.

Individually, design orientation, technological orientation, and customer orientation improve new product performance. In addition, customer orientation decreases the positive effect of design orientation while willingness to cannibalize increases the positive effect of design orientation on new product performance.

More than two-thirds of respondents (69%) perceive that their firm can improve its new product performance by increasing its design orientation, an overlooked organizational capability.

Although practitioners have acknowledged the importance of design as a strategic marketing issue, there is little in the literature on how firms can benefit from building capabilities in the design domain, the issue we focus on in this research.

States that the level of consumer involvement in a product category is a major variable relevant to advertising strategy. Suggests product category is often segmented by the level of consumer involvement; however, consumers are rarely segmented. Points out that different involvement clusters have different responses to advertising effectiveness for the same product. Presents a case study segmenting a market using the consumer involvement degree, exploring the characteristics in order to determine the relationship between advertising effectiveness and the level of consumer involvement. Shows results suggesting that a high degree of consumer involvement directed a high advertising effect and is therefore an important indication for advertising strategy.