Firms are increasingly using social media influencers to promote their products. We develop a two-period model to investigate a firm’s strategy for introducing a product via an influencer, where there is uncertainty in the influencer-product match. In the second period, the influencer exerts an effort to promote the product to her followers, who can spread the product information to non-followers via word-of-mouth (WOM). In the second period, the firm sells to the non-followers. We show that the firm’s pricing, production, and commission contract decisions depend on the influencer’s incentive-independent excess payoff from the promotion and on the difference between the WOM effect of followers who do or do not make a purchase rather than the WOM effect of each group. As the influencer’s incentive-independent payoff increase, the firm will increase (decrease) commissison rate and commission rate when the followers’ sensitivity to product price is relatively low (high) compared with that to the influencer’s effort. As the marginal WOM benefit of the first-period sales increases, the firm tends to reduce his unit net profit from sales. The influencer with a medium-sized follower base receives the highest commission rate and exerts the largest promotion effort. While the followers of influencers with a medium-sized follower base may pay the highest price. We also show that (i) there exists a threshold for the probability of match, above which the firm faces zero demand in the first period if an influencer-product mismatch occurs; and (ii) the firm may charge followers a lower price than non-followers, even though followers are less sensitive to price than non-followers. Finally, regarding influencer selection, we find that the firm may not be better off employing an influencer with a larger follower base.

This study addresses the problem caused by unhealthy = tasty intuition (UTI) when positioning innovative new categories of food products. Our research on Japanese consumers’ choice of soy meat hamburgers shows that UTI formed by the old category influences choices in the new product category.

Improvisation is an important firm competence in product innovation as firms increasingly face inherent uncertainty in new product development (NPD) process and frequent jolts in the external environment. While there is some empirical and conceptual work on the value of improvisation for several new product outcomes, there is lack of empirical research on the antecedents of improvisation in innovation studies. We attempt to address this gap by studying the role of team variation and team convergence traits in the occurrence of improvisation in a sample of 118 NPD teams from manufacturing firms.

The purpose of this paper is to understand how customer relationship termination (i.e., preparation and process), alone or in combination with customer involvement, contributes to the new product development outcome. While termination preparation has a synergistic effect with customer involvement, the termination process has a trade-off relationship with customer involvement.

빠르게 변화하는 해외 시장 환경 및 소비자 니즈의 변화에 발맞춰, 기업의 혁신 전략의 중요성이 강조되고 있음에도 불구하고, 경쟁전략과 신제품개발속의 관계에 관한 연구가 많이 이루어지지 않 은 실정이다. 특히, 대기업에 비해 유무형 자원의 부족에 한계를 가지고 있는 중소기업에게 있어, 해외 시장 환경의 변화에 대처하는 경쟁전략의 선택은 중요한 의사결정 요소이며, 이러한 경쟁전략 은 신제품개발속도에 영향을 미치는 주요한 전략적 요인으로 작용한다. 이에 본 연구는, 차별화전 략과 비용우위전략이 신제품개발속도에 미치는 영향을 알아보고, 시장역동성이 이러한 관계에 어 떠한 조절효과를 미치는지 살펴보고자 한다. 이를 위해 한국 중소수출업체를 대상으로 설문을 진행 하였으며, 차별화전략과 비용우위전략이 신제품개발속도에 긍정적인 영향을 미치는 것을 확인하였 다. 나아가, 시장역동성이 높을수록, 차별화전략이 신제품개발속도에 미치는 긍정적인 영향은 커지 지만, 비용우위전략이 신제품개발속도에 미치는 긍정적인 영향은 약해지는 것을 확인하였다. 본 연 구는, 경쟁전략이 신제품개발속도에 미치는 영향을 제안하고 검증하였으며, 시장이 빠르게 변화할 경우, 경쟁전략의 긍정적인 효과가 달라질 수 있음을 확인하였다는 점에서 학문적 및 실무적 시사 점이 있을 것으로 기대된다.

AI가 시장의 패러다임을 바꾸는 새로운 혁신 기술로 주목받고 있다. 기업은 AI 의 기술적 이점이 잘 반영되면서 동시에 시장의 수요를 충족하는 방법을 적용하여 신제품을 개발해야 한다. 하지만 업계에는 이러한 요건을 충족하는 방법론이 부재하다 보니 기업들은 기존 제품개발 방법론을 이용해 AI 기반 제품개발을 추진하고 있다. 이로 인해 AI의 기술적 이점이 충분히 반영되지 못하거나 AI의 기술적 잠재성이 시장 가치로 연결되지 못하게 된다. 이러한 한계를 극복하기 위해 이 연구는 AI 기반의 신제품을 개발하기 위한 새로운 방법론을 제시한다. AI 혁신이 기존 방식과 다른 차별적 속성을 확인하고, 이러한 속성이 반영된 제품 설계 프로세스와 방법론을 제시한다. 이 연구는 AI 제품개발이 양손잡이 접근(Ambidexterity approach)을 지향해야 함을 강조하며, 테크놀로지 푸시(Technology push) 기반의 아이디어 생성, 마켓 풀(Market pull) 기반의 소비자 요구조건 분석, 제품 설계 구체화 등을 포함하는 AI 기반 제품의 설계(Design) 프로세스 및 구체적인 개발 방법을 제안했다. 이 방법론의 현 실 적용 가능성을 검증하기 위해 사례연구를 실시, AI 기반의 차량용 인포테인먼트 시스템 개발 전략을 도출한다. 기술적 가능성에 기반하여 13개의 혁신 아이디어를 생성했고, 카노 (KANO) 분석과 TOPSIS의 결합에 의한 소비자 요구조건 분석을 통해 총 6개의 신제품 개 발 전략을 도출했다. 이 연구제서 제안하는 방법론은 기업이 AI 기반의 혁신제품을 통해 신 시장을 개척하거나 기존 제품의 고도화를 통해 시장 확장을 펼치는 데 유용하게 활용될 수 있다.

The nature of NPD is conducive to SMEs improvising at all stages of the process. This has the potential to create new knowledge, which, if retained and harnessed, can then be applied at higher strategic levels within the firm. This paper examines this phenomenon, through a preliminary qualitative study.

This study is an empirical research to find out the effect on the management performance of hidden champions of food manufacturing companies when using blue ocean strategy for new product development. In order to achieve the purpose of this study, we conducted a questionnaire survey on hidden champions in the domestic food manufacturing industry and proceeded empirical analysis. When small and medium-sized enterprises in food manufacturing industries develop a new product, searching for non-customer, rebuilding the market boundary, and linking the external networks have a significant impact on their management performance. However, the fair procedure did not have a significant effect on the management performance. In terms of relative influence, rebuilding the market boundary was most affecting, followed by searching for non-customer and linking the external networks. On the other hand, this study implicated the management performance of hidden champions of food manufacturing industries when new products is developed by using the blue ocean strategy. Obtained results are as follows. If small and medium-sized enterprises of food manufacturing industries develop new products, it will be able to improve the management performance by utilizing strategies such as searching for non-customer, rebuilding the market boundary, and linking the external networks. In particular, the rebuilding the market boundary among the blue ocean strategies has a relatively high impact on management performance.

The purpose of this study is to provide the priority of the front-loading factors in the design stage of the automotive parts development process in order to efficiently and effectively respond to the demands of the car maker (customer). Front-loading is defined as a strategy in order to improve development performance by shifting the identification and solving of design problems to earlier phases of a product development process. Two approaches of the front-loading are project-to-project knowledge transfer and rapid problem solving. For the study, a survey was conducted on the R&D department in the automobile parts company and analyzed by AHP (Analytic Hierarchy Process) method. The result of the survey shows the cost savings is the highest weight in terms of front-loading effect and in terms of front-loading factors, it gives priorities as “the problems of past project” first, “Design Review” second, “CAE (Computer Aided Engineering)” third, “FMEA (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis)” fourth, “benchmarking” and SR (Sourcing of Requirements). The results of the study will be helpful to provide practical value for improving product design of component development.

The purpose of this research was to test the effects of entrepreneurship and technological innovation capability on new product performance in SMEs and the moderating role of absorption capability. For this study, Research data were collected through questionnaire instruments from the sample of 374 employees in 18 SMEs of metropolitan area. The 336 sample was selected and analyzed by hierarchical regression technique. The results showed that entrepreneurship and technological innovation capability had a positive effect on new product performance. And also found out absorption capability had the moderate roles between all the three factors of technological innovation capability factors and new product performance, but not between all the three factors of entrepreneurship and new product performance. With the research results, the implications for technical management of SMEs were discussed, and the directions for future research were suggested.