Factors affecting new product success: Cross-country comparisons*1

Although considerable effort has been devoted to identifying the factors that contribute to new product success and failure, plenty of work remains to be done in this area. For example, many studies of this subject focus on companies in specific parts of the world (in particular, North America, Europe, and Japan). It remains to be seen whether the findings from these studies apply to the new product development (NPD) efforts of companies in other regions, let alone on a global basis. Sanjay Mishra, Dongwook Kim, and Dae Hoon Lee address this issue in a study of the factors that contribute to the success or failure of NPD efforts in South Korean firms. To explore the question of whether a global set of success factors can be identified, they compare their findings with those of similar studies conducted in Canada and China. Classifying these countries in terms of stages of economic development (with China and Canada at opposite extremes and Korea in the middle), they expect to find the greatest dissimilarities in their comparisons of China and Canada. Marketing managers from 144 Korean firms provided in formation about 288 successful and unsuccessful products. Their responses indicate that the factors most closely related to new product outcomes in Korea are market intelligence, product-firm compatibility, the nature of the new product idea (for example, whether the product idea was market derived, whether the product specifications were clearly defined by the marketplace), launch effort, and general characteristics of the new product venture (such as the product's innovativeness to the market and its technical complexity). Several of these factors were emphasized in studies of Canadian and Chinese NPD success, though respondents to those studies also highlighted the importance of the product offering and proficiency of formal NPD activities. Contrary to expectations, China and Canada show the greatest similarity among the three countries studied, in terms of the relative importance of the various NPD success factors. On the other hand, China and Korea are more similar in terms of the effects of the variables studied. In other words, if a variable is related to new product failure in Korea, that variable is most likely also related to failure in China. Although some similarities are evident among all three countries, the findings in this study do not point toward a single, global formula for NPD success.