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Investigates approaches to product launch and elimination decisions in samples of UK and US companies, which is a gap which was identified in the literature. Identifies different approaches to tackling each of the decisions, and different approaches within each sample. There are also differences between the countries. These results provide new insights, as well as support for some previous empirical results. Discusses directions for further research.

The reason for this study is to help increase understanding concerning the service elimination decision and implementation since it remains a highly under‐investigated topic. In doing so, an empirical investigation of the successful vs not‐so‐successful elimination practices from eight service industries were examined.

The data were secured by means of a lengthy and structured questionnaire, instrumented through personal interviews as part of a much wider examination of the service elimination decision‐making process in Greece entitled “Project ServDrop”. The companies included in the sample were drawn from a population of 1,964 service companies listed under selected service sectors, namely, insurance, banking, advertising, professional services, freight forwarding, marine, telecommunications and lodging.

The analysis reveals that treating the elimination as a strategic issue, considering how resources can be more effectively re‐allocated, paying attention to market consideration regarding the consequences of a potential elimination and adoption of a systematic behavior, building interdisciplinary teams to deal with the decision and keeping the time between the making and the implementation of the decision short, are all important dimensions of “successful elimination”.

However, the findings should be cautiously adopted because of the limitations of the study: the use of a retrospective methodology in the data collection, the use of the key‐informant approach, the limited number of variables included in the conceptual framework are issues that cannot be neglected. Nonetheless future research that will be directed towards tackling these limitations may dispel these concerns.

Despite its limitations, this study has significant implications for practitioners. It mainly points to the strategic nature of the elimination decision and its implications. Also, it unveils certain behavioral changes that must accompany the effort to treat the elimination decision as part of the greater strategy for managing the firm's offerings. Thus, the contribution of this study is twofold. For academia, it is a step forward towards a stronger understanding of the service elimination issues, while, for practitioners, it helps to clarify certain important issues that can help improve the outcome of the decision to drop a service from the firm's portfolio.

The paper aims to offer a preliminary insight into the issue of whether service providers eliminate their offerings in various stages of their life cycle, and if so, whether elimination decision‐making differs depending on the service's life cycle stage.

Data were secured by means of a structured questionnaire which was completed through personal interviews. Respondents answered all questions having a recently eliminated service in mind. The initial calls and follow‐up efforts generated 164 usable responses (49.8 per cent response rate).

A service may be eliminated from a service provider's portfolio in any stage of its life cycle. Further, in terms of precipitating circumstances, evaluation factors and elimination strategies, the service elimination process differs depending on the stage of the service life cycle that the elimination decision is taken.

The most important implication is service providers eliminate services not only as a response to a crisis possibly caused by drops of sales volume, but also for other reasons. In this respect, service portfolio rationalization and particularly service elimination may result as a consequence of strategic management decisions taken for positive (e.g. development of a new service) or negative (e.g. competitive actions) reasons. Within this framework, the service life cycle (SLC) model, as a strategic tool for analysis and decision‐making, may well serve to guide the rationalization process.

The research questions of the study have been examined for tangible products, but this is the first relevant study that is conducted in a service context.

This paper aims to identify the problem situations leading financial firms to kick off the elimination decision‐making process for financial products in their line, measure the importance of problem situations, and assess the effects of a set of contextual variables on the above importance.

The study took place in the UK; data were collected through 20 in‐depth interviews with managers of financial firms and a mail survey to a stratified random sample of financial firms, which yielded 112 returns.

Eight problem situations are identified and their importance is measured. The results indicate that the importance of problem situations is highly situation‐specific: it varies in relation to the degree of a financial firm's market orientation, the intensity of competition, the austerity of the regulatory environment, and the rhythm of technological change.

From a theoretical standpoint, future research on the investigation of the importance of decision variables pertaining to line pruning must always take into consideration the internal and the external context of the firm. From a practical standpoint, this study has important policy implications, since it provides managers with a first picture of the effects of selected contextual forces on the importance of the problem situations triggering line pruning in services settings. The limitations of the study provide useful avenues for future investigation.

This study represents the first attempt to measure the importance of different problem situations triggering line pruning in financial services and relate that importance to a set of contextual variables. As such, it makes a clear theoretical contribution.

The purpose of this study is to offer service practitioners evidence about: the factors that financial institutions consider in order to evaluate the impact on the entire company of an eventual decision to eliminate a financial service from the range; the degree of influence that these factors exert on management; and the contextual conditions that shape the above degree of influence.

The research is based on 20 in‐depth interviews with higher echelon managers from an equal number of UK financial institutions and a mail survey of 112 specific elimination case histories from an equal number of UK banks, building societies and insurance companies.

The impact of a financial service's eventual elimination on the relationships of the company with its customers is rated as the most influential evaluation factor. Other influential evaluation factors are the impact on the public image of the financial institution and the impact on the sales and the profitability of other financial services in the range. However, the degree of influence is largely situation specific.

The implications are twofold. First, in managers' attempts to project the impact of a financial service's eventual elimination from the range they may avoid imitating competitors. Second, managers may avoid being mechanistic in evaluating the impact of eventual elimination decisions.

This paper represents the first empirical attempt to shed light on the way in which service companies evaluate the impact of a service's elimination from the range.

This research represents the first attempt to examine the product elimination decision over the Product Life Cycle (PLC). Two research hypotheses were put forward proposing that: (a) a product may be dropped from a company′s product line irrespective of its position on the PLC, and (b) the stage of the PLC does influence the product elimination process. These exploratory propositions were assessed against data from a cross‐sectional sample of British manufacturing companies. The data were secured by means of a mail questionnaire and involved 156 recently discontinued products. The results of our study confirm both research hypotheses. Products may be eliminated irrespective of their position on the PLC and the elimination decisions made at the early stages of the PLC are triggered by different problem situations and involve different evaluation factors and elimination strategies than those made at the later stages of the PLC.

This paper aims to consider decision speed’s role in the largely neglected decision area of product elimination.

Drawing on an inter-disciplinary theoretical background (e.g. organisational, decision speed and product elimination theories), the authors develop and test a framework for decision speed’s effects on the market and financial outcomes of a stratified random sample of 175 consumer product eliminations.

In contrast to decision speed research that hypothesised (and often failed to confirm) linearity, results show inverted ∪-shaped decision speed-to-decision outcomes relationships, with curvatures moderated by product importance, environmental complexity and turbulence.

Findings are suggestive of several implications for the above theories (e.g. contribution to the dialogue about performance-enhancing value of rational vs incremental decision-making; evidence that excessive decision speed may become too much of a good thing). Certain design limitations (e.g. sampling consumer goods’ manufacturers only) point at avenues for future inquiry into the product elimination decision speed-to-outcomes link.

Managerially, the findings suggest that product eliminations’ optimal market and financial outcomes depend on a mix of speed and search in decision-making and that this mix requires adjustments to different levels of product importance, interdependencies with other decision areas of the firm and environmental turbulence.

The paper makes a twofold contribution. It enriches decision speed research, by empirically addressing speed’s outcomes in relation to a decision area that is not necessarily strategic and represents the first explicit empirical investigation into outcomes of decision speed in product line pruning decision-making.

Industrial product management benefits from efforts to distinguish more clearly between product elimination and product replacement problems. Two basic approaches to the product elimination problem are contained in literature: the theoretical/normative approach to modelling the decision process, and the empirical approach based in observation, description and analysis, of how firms actually detect and eliminate or replace weak products. Several authors have commented about the difficulty of reconciling apparent differences in the two approaches. Reports an intensive involvement in an in‐depth case history of a major firm′s behaviour when confronted by a significant product elimination decision. This study attempts to bridge the gap between theory and practice and suggests several propositions that await verification.

The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework that provides insights into major environmental and organizational forces underlying greater levels of organizational responsiveness to the environmental sustainability imperative by a growing number of firms, worldwide.

The paper is conceptual in its focus, and the proposed framework builds on extant literature from multiple literature streams.

Societal progress toward environmental sustainability is a shared responsibility of consumers, corporations, and the government at various levels. A potential avenue for societal progress toward environmental sustainability is fostering a macroenvironment that is conducive to the elimination of consumption certain products, reduction in consumption certain other products, and redirection of consumption of still other products from ecologically more harmful to ecologically less harmful substitute products (and relatedly, demand elimination, demand reduction, and demand redirection).

An implication for corporate sustainability responsibility is that firms while planning and formulating strategies for increasing their market footprint must also concurrently plan and formulate strategies for decreasing their environmental footprint. An implication for government sustainability responsibility is that even under conditions of high levels of commitment by a large and growing number of firms and consumers to engage in environmentally sustainable behaviors, in the absence of supporting infrastructure for engaging in such behavior, they may find it necessary to engage in environmentally unsustainable behaviors.

Issues relating to environmental sustainability have been the focus of a large body of recent research in a number of academic disciplines including marketing. A cursory examination of numerous articles published in scholarly journals on issues pertaining to environmental sustainability, and in the business press pertaining to the myriad environmental sustainability initiatives of firms worldwide is indicative of its growing importance.

Discusses product line change ‐ the process by which a company alters its product offering ‐ and how it is one of the most important kinds of business activity. Suggests that product modification and product elimination decisions be treated together as two amongst a number of alternative courses of action. States that the concern is with the “weak product identification” stage of the product modification/elimination process. Posits that there are a number of key performance dimensions/criteria though some of the approaches in this category are concerned only with identifying weak products. Aims to put forward some empirical evidence with regard to the identification of weak products. Implies, in conclusion, that the study indicates that the identification of weak product activities does not resemble the normative models in this area. Identifies that further research needs to be conducted and that these researches should include performance measures to allow normative conclusions to be drawn, perhaps using company interviews