Marketing

This article examines the time between product development and market launch, and its relation to the subsequent diffusion of consumer durables. We find that this "incubation time" is long. Further, it is a useful predictor of the shape of the subsequent sales diffusion curve. Using the Bass model as a base, we find that the longer the incubation time, the lower the coefficient of innovation (p) and the longer the time to peak sales. Further, using the incubation time in a Bayesian forecasting model significantly improves forecasts early in the life cycle.

This international best-selling book explores the revolution in marketing that focuses on the experiences of customers. Moving beyond the traditional "features-and-benefits" marketing that was developed by marketing scientists for the industrial age, Schmitt presents a revolutionary approach for the branding and information age. Schmitt shows how managers can create experiences for their customers through sensory, affective and creative associations as well as lifestyle and social identity campaigns.

Consumers make multi-category decisions in a variety of contexts such as choice of multiple categories during a shopping trip. While complementarity gives managers some control over consumers' buying behavior, co-occurrence or co-incidence is less controllable. Other acts that may affect multi-category choice may be household preferences or household demographics. Not accounting for these 3 factors simultaneously could lead to erroneous inferences.

Different theories, areas of substantive interest, and methods are needed to prevent consumer behavior from becoming increasingly isolated and of marginal relevance in market research. More progress will be made by focusing on relatively underresearched areas, such as: 1. focus on time, 2. the adaptive consumer, and 3. relevant dependent variables. Avenues for substantive focus include: 1. important decisions, 2. not just price and advertising, and 3. the impact of major events. Issues that arise with respect to the methods used to study consumer behavior include: 1.

This article analyzes how Knowledge Management (KM) is likely to affect competition in the management consulting industry. KM represents a fundamental and qualitative change in this industry's basic production technology. Because management consultants acquire information directly from their customers, for these firms, KM technology exhibits increasing returns to scale. As such, although KM clearly represents an opportunity for some consultants to build a sustainable competitive advantage, it is likely to lead to a shake-out.

For most firms, successful new product introductions are rare, and failed products represent substantial monetary loss, particularly at the market launch stage. Unfortunately, the ability to reliably predict successes/failures early in the new product development process remains an elusive goal.

Generalized knowledge comes from cumulating results across studies, a process known as meta-analysis. Efficiently increasing generalized knowledge in a defined area-estimates of price or advertising, for example-is one important goal for research. Because (1) most meta-analyses are based on highly inefficient and unbalanced natural experiments or designs and (2) additional studies are costly, carefully selecting the next study is important.

It has been suggested that evaluations may be based on a "How-do-I-feel-about-it?" heuristic, which involves holding a representation of the target in mind and inspect feelings that this representation may elicit. Previous studies have shown that reliance on such feelings depends on whether they are believed to be representative of the target. This paper argues that it also depends on whether feelings toward the target are regarded as relevant.

The authors discuss the long-run future of decision support systems in marketing. They argue that a growing proportion of marketing decisions can not only be supported but may also be automated. From a standpoint of both efficiency (e.g., management productivity) and effectiveness (e.g., resource allocation decisions), such automation is highly desirable. The authors describe how model-based automated decision-making is likely to penetrate various marketing decision-making environments and how such models can incorporate competitive dynamics.