In today’s complex and dynamic marketplace, designing, developing and managing new, innovative products and brands are essential for firms’ success. This is because introducing new products serves firms’ multiple purposes, including improving profit margins, increasing barriers to competitors’ entry, maintaining market share and remaining viable and competitive (Cooper, 2019; Jun et al., 2024). More importantly, the successful introduction remains a significant priority for both academics and practitioners as it is closely related not only with the firm’s economic growth, competitive advantage and profits (Hoskins and Griffin, 2019; Mishra and Dalman, 2023) but also contributes to significant branding outcomes and positive consumer perceptions (Gounaris et al., 2016; Fakhreddin et al., 2021).Products are broadly defined as anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy a want or need, including physical goods, services, experiences, events and more, demonstrating their diverse and complex nature. Therefore, building, launching and managing new products remains among the most challenging tasks for marketing managers. In this vein, the purpose of this special issue is to offer new insights through fresh theoretical perspectives, empirical findings and managerial implications that significantly advance our understanding of how firms can successfully introduce and manage new products and brands in highly competitive environments.The issue is particularly significant for the Journal of Product Micheli and Gemser, 2016; Rubera, 2015; Rubera and Droge, 2013), while recent research points out that service innovation is another vital aspect (Kuijken et al., 2017). Moreover, scholars underline that innovation management processes and outcomes across the various stages of the NPD Funnel are closely linked to the firm’s capacity to convert these innovations into enhanced product performance through suitable organizational structures and capabilities. Firm resources such as technological capabilities are another key input that affects a firm’s ability to develop innovative products. Less resourced firms may be rely on more incremental forms of new products by pursuing brand extension strategies to launch new products as a safer, incremental form of innovation, or by using other branding strategies, such as cobranding, to ensure the success of new introductions (Pinello et al., 2022). Researchers also agree that new products should be viewed as powerful communication tools that convey cues not only about a product’s utility and functionality but also about firm- and brand-level recognition, reputation and values. This helps customers better understand both the products and their intended use (Homburg et al., 2015; Micheli and Gemser, 2016; Mugge and Schoormans, 2012; Rubera and Droge, 2013). Therefore, they emphasize that the success of new products, which is the ultimate goal, depends greatly on how consumers interpret, evaluate and ultimately choose them (Dias and Cavalheiro, 2022; Feng, 2018). Successfully managing innovation and new products becomes a key factor in managing the firm’s portfolio of brands and associated customer relationships.This special issue connects the above topics and comprises five papers, organized into two broader groups. The first group focuses on innovative and sustainable product development, and the conceptualization and measurement of perceived product innovativeness. The first paper, entitled “Innovative and sustainable product development: A comparative study of influencing factors in large enterprises vs SMEs,” is authored by Irene Ricciardi, Martina Percuoco, Anna Prisco and Elisa Galmarini. It examines sustainability and innovation which are topics of great relevance to the field independently, and with increasing demands for organizations to consider how to strategically integrate these two together, it generates an intriguing literature contribution. The paper offers rich information to this investigation by deeply examining these factors in two disparate contexts: large companies and family SMEs. This approach allows for critical success factors to be compared and contrasted across these organizational contexts. Supplier relationships, customer involvement and innovation types receive particular attention. This research investigation is conceptually grounded in and driven by an extensive investigation into the key distinctions between these types of organizations that have been established in management research more generally. Family SMEs are found to have less structured processes and routines than the larger organizations and ownership becomes more intrinsically involved in ideation and related tasks for sustainable NPD. These organizations rely more on adaptability to generate strong sustainable NPD outcomes, while larger organizations can instead leverage resources and structure.The second paper addresses a significant gap in the existing literature by conceptualizing and offering a new consumers’ perceived innovativeness scale, a significant contribution by Jean Boisvert and George Christodoulides. While prior research has examined perceived product innovativeness, it has largely done so from the firm’s perspective. However, as the authors recognize, it is ultimately consumers who select, evaluate and adopt innovative products, thereby determining their success. Focusing on the customer’s perspective, the authors adopt a rigorous, systematic research design that combines both qualitative and quantitative insights across five distinct phases and multiple consumer samples from the USA. Through this process, they conceptualize, refine and validate a comprehensive CPPI measurement scale. The findings highlight that CPPI is a multidimensional construct consisting of four key dimensions: aesthetics, product effectiveness, novelty and user friendliness, which are covered by a 16-item scale that demonstrates strong validity and reliability scores, offering a solid research tool for future research in multiple contexts. The proposed scale also offers practical value to managers involved in NPD, presenting clearer guidance on how innovation is perceived and evaluated by consumers and how new offerings can be better aligned with consumer expectations.The second group emphasizes the connection between NPD and strategic decisions in brand management. Specifically, the third paper of the special issue, contributed by Chia-Hsien Chu, examines how ingredient brand exemplar reminders shape consumer evaluations in brand extension contexts. Although these strategies remain widely used and examined in the literature, the study takes a step further by focusing on ingredient branding as a form of cobranding that can strengthen consumer perceptions of new offerings. It moves beyond traditional perspectives and adopts an analogical reasoning lens to examine how consumers rely on familiar ingredient brand cues to interpret and evaluate brand extensions. The paper focuses on how reminders of the ingredient brand exemplar have a significant positive effect on brand extension attitudes and new product evaluations, also introducing brand strength, knowledge of extension products and similarity as core moderator variables. Overall, the study makes meaningful contributions by adopting a fresh theoretical perspective and experimental design, demonstrating how ingredient branding can support more effective brand extension strategies. It also provides useful managerial insights, especially for businesses seeking to enhance new product acceptance through strategic brand collaborations.The fourth paper of the special issue, entitled “How to identify line extensions that survive,” by Kirsten Victory, Jenni Romaniuk, Magda Nenycz-Thiel, Arry Tanusondjaja and John Dawes, focuses on how companies can distinguish successful from unsuccessful line extensions. The specific paper addresses a topic of significant managerial importance, especially given the high costs and risks associated with new product launches. It compares the performance of successful and unsuccessful line extensions across their launch years, based on two critical factors, namely, penetration and repeat-buyer rate. By adopting an “empirical-then-theoretical” approach, the authors highlight that while repeat-purchase rates remain broadly similar across both groups, meaningful differences emerge in the penetration of these new products. The penetration differences become apparent after the first quarter of launch, and the gap continues to widen throughout the launch year. Overall, the paper provides a practical framework for identifying which line extensions warrant continued support and which may require adjustment or withdrawal. It emphasizes that, despite repeat purchases remaining significant, firms should prioritize activities that create more opportunities for new product trials.The fifth paper, entitled “Building brand equity through new product introduction: The moderation mediation effect of brand storytelling and consumer engagement,” is authored by Isaac Sewornu Coffie, Re-an Müller, Elikem Chosniel Ocloo and Natasha de Klerk. The paper makes significant contributions by focusing on the effects of new products on brand equity, with a specific focus on the mediating role of consumer engagement and the moderating role of brand storytelling (brand- vs consumer-generated storytelling). By integrating NPD, consumer engagement and storytelling within a unified framework, this paper provides a more advanced understanding of brand equity formation. It is based on an experimental design that compares brand-generated and consumer-generated storytelling to evaluate their impact on the relationship between new product introduction and brand equity. The findings demonstrate that introducing new products positively affects brand equity, an effect that is significantly enhanced by consumers’ engagement. In addition, storytelling serves as a critical moderating factor, with consumer-generated narratives exerting a greater influence than brand-generated narratives. Furthermore, the paper highlights the role of storytelling not only as a communication tool but also as a mechanism for developing deeper consumer involvement. From a managerial perspective, these findings highlight the importance of engaging consumers during new product introductions and incorporating consumer perspectives into brand narratives.Overall, this special issue highlights the multifaceted nature of NPD and its strong links with innovation management and brand management. They collectively show that new product success relies not only on firm-side resources and processes but also on how consumers perceive, interpret and engage with commercialized products. Together, innovations, products and brands are core drivers of the management of successful customer relationships and for generating and sustaining a firm’s value proposition. Therefore, this special issue offers both theoretical insights and practical guidance, while also opening avenues for future research in this evolving field.
Chatzipanagiotou et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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