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New internet technologies are not always readily accepted by target users – especially by small companies. More effective identification of target market characteristics and requirements associated with the adoption and ongoing usage of internet‐based service systems (NCSSs) is therefore needed. Drawing on adoption theory, this research aims to assess pre‐launch survey, legacy and longitudinal data to evaluate factors that encourage small companies to use NCSSs.

The roll out and ongoing usage of a new NCSS are tracked within a single channel of dental offices over a 185‐week period. Logistic and multiple regression analyses are utilized to examine the influences of system attributes, attributes of the target user group, supplier promotional activity and system completeness on ongoing usage.

Pre‐launch survey data is an ineffective predictor of ongoing small company NCSS usage. The best predictors are indicators of organizational readiness and organizational resources drawn from the supplier firm's legacy database. Synergistic coordination of promotional activities and new system features generate the largest number of ongoing users.

Findings are not generalizable to the population of small service provider firms because the sample consisted purely of regional dental offices.

Pre‐launch promotional efforts should concentrate on capturing specific attributes from supplier firm legacy databases that more accurately predict ongoing customer usage.

As far as can be determined, this study is the first reported longitudinal examination of NCSS usage across an entire customer base. The examination of pre‐launch and legacy data as predictors of ongoing usage and the assessment of ongoing usage rather than intention to adopt or try out a technological innovation extends the adoption literature and responds to calls for research that improves current understanding of the determinants of e‐business acceptance and usage across organizations.

This paper aims to examine whether a film’s search volume causes its ticket sales in different stages of its lifecycle.

This study tests the causality between searches and sales by using an instrumental variable approach. This study exploits the ideas that consumers’ perception of a product’s consumption risk is correlated with their search efforts and consumers use multiple information sources to infer a product’s consumption risk. As an instrument for a focal film’s search volume, this paper uses review disagreement for past movies related to the focal film. This paper incorporates the ideas in a model of weekly online search volume and revenues and apply it to a movie data set.

Films’ search volume influences their revenues only until the opening week. A 10% increase in opening-week search volume generates a 7.4% increase in opening-week revenue, while the same increase in pre-launch search volume generates a 4.1% increase. Although searches are not an influencer of sales from the second week on, the random forest models and cross-validation studies find that weekly search volume is a strong predictor of weekly revenues in this period.

Testing the findings in other product categories is important for generalizing the findings.

This study suggests different usage values for online searches, depending on a film’s lifecycle stages. Furthermore, given that review disagreement has a positive influence on opening-week revenue through searches, managers should encourage diverse opinions about their films until the opening week to increase sales through searches.

Regarding the role of online search, previous studies have maintained the perspective that online search is a predictor of sales. This is the first study that finds causality between searches and sales for films.

The emergence of a pharmaceutical drug as a late entrant in a homogeneous category is a relevant issue for strategy implementation in the pharmaceutical industry. This paper aims to suggest a methodology for making pre-launch forecasts with a complete lack of information for a late entrant.

The diffusion process of the emerging entrant is estimated using the diffusion dynamics of pre-existing drugs, after an appropriate assessment of the drug’s entrance point. The authors’ methodology is applied to study the late introduction of a pharmaceutical drug in Italy within the category of ranitidine. Historical data of seven already active drugs in the category are used to assess and estimate ex ante the dynamics of a late entrant (Ulkobrin).

The results of applying the procedure to the ranitidine market reveal a high degree of accuracy between the ex post observed values of the late entrant and its ex ante mean predicted trajectory. Moreover, the assessed launch date corresponds to the actual date.

The category has to be homogeneous to ensure a high degree of similarity among the existing drugs and the late entrant. For this reason, radical innovations cannot be forecast with this methodology.

The proposed approach contributes to the still challenging research field of pre-launch forecasting by estimating the dynamic features of a homogeneous category and exploiting them for forecasting purposes.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a model to analyse what personality traits impact entrepreneurial cognitive and social strategic decision-making skills, originating from the effectuation framework.

A total of 128 participants from an entrepreneurial pre-launch programme were assessed by experienced incubator and business coaches. Personality was measured by a Big Five test. Based on a confirmatory factor analysis, the relationships were analysed between personality and three core dimensions of the effectuation framework: the bird-in-hand principle, the crazy quilt principle and the pilot in the plane principle.

Specific patterns (moderation effects) as opposed to levels of personality traits proved to be relevant. The bird-in-hand and the crazy quilt principles are related to the moderating effect between sensitivity to feedback, sociability and ambition. The pilot in the plane principle was related to the whole pattern of entrepreneurial key qualities embedded in the extraversion domain. Furthermore, relationships of personality with key issues in the effectuation framework were found, examples being reflecting on a high diversity of means or on own talents, conducting a thorough risk analysis and engaging in inspirational networking. The final model revealed a direct positive influence of the capacity to conduct a thorough risk analysis on the overall capacity to apply the effectuation principles.

A limitation of this study is the exclusion of the lemonade principle from the final model. This being based on unsatisfying model fit indices. Another limitation is the cross-sectional design, as well as the chosen research context: the pre-launch entrepreneurial programme.

The research results shed a light on the impact that personality plays in adoption of effectual decision making.

The effectuation framework is widely used by individual entrepreneurs, SMEs and start-ups, to design innovative business models or implement an up-scaling strategy.

Little is known about the underlying mechanisms of the effectuation framework. Moreover, evidence-based insights are offered to entrepreneurs that intent to mobilise effectual behaviours.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insightful advice that can improve the practice of using consumers’ pre-launch awareness and preference (AP) changes to predict the sales of new movies.

This paper applies a new movie box-office revenue forecasting model based on consumers’ weekly AP measures, to take advantage of the industry’s practice of using weekly survey data containing the AP measures of upcoming new movies. Specifically, a sales forecasting model is developed on the basis of the theory that the combination of the nature of new product preference (positive vs negative) and the timing of new product awareness (early vs recent) influences entertainment product sales.

This paper shows that early awareness consumers are as important as late awareness consumers in determining new product sales, suggesting that more marketing resources need to be allocated earlier than currently practiced. This paper also shows that when negative preferences dominate positive preferences well ahead of a product’s release, marketing efforts cannot overcome the negative sentiment of the market. Finally, the empirical application illustrates that three consumer segments varying in product expertise and consumption frequency reveal different AP patterns among high-, medium- and low-performance products.

This paper is intended to provide insightful advice that can improve the AP-based approach in entertainment industries. Toward that end, the authors emphasize two major aspects in association with new entertainment product sales: rethinking survey-based AP measures and examining heterogeneous consumer segments’ differential AP patterns.

The purpose of this study is to propose a systematic method for the diffusion of forecasting technology in the pre‐launch stage.

The authors designed survey question items that are familiar to interviewees as well as algebraically transformable into the parameters of a logistic diffusion model. In addition, they developed a procedure that reduces inconsistency in interviewee responses, removes outliers, and verifies conformability, in order to reduce the error and yield robust estimation results.

The results show that the authors' method performed better in the empirical cases of digital media broadcasting and internet protocol television in terms of sum of squared error compared with an existing survey‐based method, a regression method, and the guessing‐by‐analogy method. Specifically, the authors' method can reduce the error by using the conformability and outlier tests, while the consistency factor contributes to determining the final estimate with personal estimates.

The procedure proposed in this study is confined to the presented logistic model. Future research should aim to extend its application to other representative diffusion models such as the Bass model and the Gompertz model.

The authors' method provides a better quality of forecasting for innovative new products and services compared with the guessing‐by‐analogy method, and it contributes to managerial decisions such as those in production planning.

The authors introduce the concepts of conformability and consistency in order to reduce the error from personal biases and mistakes. Based on these concepts, they develop a procedure to yield robust estimation results with less error.

Crowdfunding is an increasingly popular channel for project fundraising for entrepreneurial ventures. Such efforts require fundraisers to develop and manage a crowdfunding campaign over a period of time and several stages. Thus, the authors aim to identify the stages fundraisers go through in their crowdfunding campaign process and how their engagement evolves throughout this process.

Following a multiple case study research design analysing six successful campaigns, the current study suggests a taxonomy of stages the fundraisers go through in their crowdfunding campaign management process while identifying the types of engagement displayed and their relative intensity at each of these stages.

The study proposes a five-stage process framework (pre-launch, launch, mid-campaign, conclusion and post-campaign), accompanied by a series of propositions outlining the relative intensity of different types of engagement throughout this process. The authors show that engagement levels appear with high intensity at pre-launch, and to a lesser degree also at the post-launch stage while showing low intensity at the stages in between them. More specifically, cognitive and behavioural engagement are most prominent at the pre- and post-launch stages. Emotional engagement is highest during the launch, mid-launch and conclusion stages. And social engagement maintains moderate levels of intensity throughout the process.

This study focuses on the campaign process using engagement theory, thus identifying the differing engagement patterns throughout the dynamic crowdfunding campaign management process, not just in one part.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the potential influence of friendship on entrepreneurial teams (ETs) and on venture formation and development. The theoretical framework is built on the literature around friendship ties, the interaction of friendship ties and professional ties, and ETs.

Taking an interpretative methodological approach, the authors carried out qualitative interviews with ten business founders in Paris, France.

The authors identified different four profiles or types of ETs according to how friendship ties interact with professional ties among team members, which the authors designate as “fusion” and “separation”, and describe the orientation of this interaction, which the authors label as “affective” or “strategic”. These profiles affect the emergence of the idea and the choice of members in the formation of teams. They also shape the functioning of teams in terms of decision-making processes, recruitment and investment.

The findings underline the difficulties of studying friendship in ETs empirically and recommend longitudinal approaches for further research.

Findings offer insights in to why and how ETs based on friendship ties approach the pre-launch, launch and development phases of businesses as well as in to the interactions between professional and friendship ties, which is helpful to both practitioners and academics. The authors also discuss the consequences and implications of the different team types in terms of their risks and strategies for mitigating these risks.

This is one of the first empirical studies to examine how friendship and professional ties may combine and evolve in ETs, and their influence on the entrepreneurial process as it relates to venture formation and development.

While an increasing number of colleges and universities offer classes that teach students how to write a business plan, in practice the majority of new ventures are launched without the benefit of formal planning. The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual model to guide students and entrepreneurs through the process of pre‐launch investigation and planning.

To create the methodology, the authors rely on the stage‐gate model from the product development literature. The stage‐gate model is a conceptually sound set of steps that guide engineering students, practicing engineers, and product development specialists through the pre‐launch stages of investigating the merits of new product or service ideas. Using the spirit and structure of the stage‐gate model as a guide, the authors propose a model of the front end of the entrepreneurial process.

The model includes five distinct steps, starting with the identification of a business idea and progressing through feasibility analysis, business planning, and the ultimate launch of the venture.

The model proposed in this paper provides students and entrepreneurs a more structured and logical way of thinking through the merits of a business idea than is currently available.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether managers should have a different approach for the development of very innovative services from that of incremental new services.

This paper is based on a large‐scale survey to examine hotel innovation projects to gain insight about the impact of level of innovativeness on the factors that are linked to new service success and failure.

The research results show that there are two global success factors regardless of their degree of newness – market attractiveness and strategic human resources management. Several other factors, however, are found to influence the outcome of incremental projects, such as: service advantage, empowerment, training of employees, behavior‐based evaluation, tangible quality and marketing synergy. For very innovative new hotel services, market responsiveness and pre‐launch activities are found to be related to success.

Further research should investigate whether the results are applicable to other countries and other service segments as well as to consider a staff or customer outcome perspective.

Managers who design new service development processes that are tied to the key success features in innovative or incremental new service development (NSD) increases the likelihood of success.

The differences in success factors between innovative and incremental new services has not been clearly articulated to date. Innovativeness is linked to levels of risk, ambiguity, necessary resources and complexity and this paper shows that firms should have different priorities and approaches when developing new services.