سوابق و پیامدهای ناشی از جهت گیری های استراتژیک در توسعه محصول جدید : مورد از تولید کنندگان چینی

The objective of the present study is to advance the understanding of the role of the strategic orientation of the firm for successful new product development (NPD), in the context of Chinese manufacturing firms. Through field research accompanied by a review of the related literature, this study identifies customer orientation and technology orientation as crucial strategic components that are important to successful new product development. This research proposes a conceptual model of strategic orientations, in which firm-internal (organizational support) and -external (environmental turbulence) factors are expected to influence strategic orientations, which, in turn, impact NPD performance. The model is tested using data collected from a large-scale survey of 232 manufacturing firms in China. The results largely support the hypotheses derived from the conceptual model. First, organizational support and environmental turbulence have a positive influence on the implementation of strategic orientations. Second, the two strategic orientations show a different pattern of performance implications.

Innovation has long been identified as the raison d'être of modern business organizations (Abernathy & Clark, 1985). With a growing level of competition across industries, new products are increasingly viewed as crucial for businesses in maintaining their competitive edge in the long run. In this context, recent years have witnessed a growing interest across disciplines in exploring product innovation as the focus of extensive scholarly research. Within the substantive stream of new product research, researchers have focused on identifying various determinants of organizational performance. As recent reviews of the literature indicate, the majority of the research to date belongs to this sub-stream (Calantone and Di Benedetto, 1990 and Krishnan and Ulrich, 2001). The primary objective of these studies lies in identifying the correlates of innovation performance. Building upon the earlier work of Project SAPPHO (Rothwell et al., 1974), the Stanford Project (Maidique & Zirger, 1984), Booz, Allen, and Hamilton (1982), Project NewProd (Cooper, 1979) and others, recent research has identified various firm-internal and -external variables that can enhance new product performance. Among the various types of performance determinants, past research has shown that the strategic orientations of the firm can play a critical role in effectively managing new product development. While there have been many attempts to address strategic issues in new product development (NPD), most research has focused on addressing project-level strategies. However, Montoya-Weiss and Calantone (1994) point out the potential danger associated with project-level studies: “project-specific characteristics may be atypical and widely variable from firm to firm, thus limiting the validity of indiscriminately combining results across projects and across firms in a single study” (Menon, Bharadwaj, Adidam, & Edison, 1999, p. 414). Following Gatignon and Xuereb's (1997) recent call for further research on program-level NPD strategy, this study investigates the role of customer and technological orientations in successful new product development. Furthermore, in developing and commercializing new products, firms have to deal with various types of organizational contingencies that can affect the effectiveness of product innovation efforts. Given that innovation performance can be measured in various ways, recent research suggests that a firm's emphasis on a particular strategic orientation rather than on other orientations will likely enhance certain, though not necessarily all, aspects of performance. That is, depending on the relative emphasis placed on various strategic orientations, firms may or may not be able to achieve their innovation objectives. The utility of a strategic orientation will likely have a varying degree of influence on different performance dimensions. To address these issues, a conceptual framework of NPD was developed to integrate key organizational antecedents, strategic orientation variables and consequences in the specific context of new product development. The objective of the present study is to answer the following research questions. First, to what extent do internal and external organizational contextual variables influence NPD strategies? This study focuses on internal (organizational support on NPD) and external variables (market and technological turbulences) that can facilitate or impede the effective implementation of NPD strategy. The second goal is related to the performance implications of NPD strategy. That is, to what extent do the customer- and technology-oriented NPD strategies emphasized by a firm influence its organizational performance? To explore this issue, it examines performance from three different perspectives. Put differently, does the utility of certain strategies vary along various performance dimensions? This study investigates these issues with empirical evidence collected through a survey of Chinese manufacturing firms. Most NPD studies have been conducted in the context of developed countries (North America, Japan, etc.). While recent research has increasingly dealt with NPD practices in newly industrialized countries such as Korea and Taiwan (Song, Montoya-Weiss, & Schmidt, 1997), few studies have investigated NPD in emerging economies such as China (Di Benedetto and Song, 2003, Jeong, 2003, Liu, 2000 and Peng et al., 2001). Given the country's growing importance in the world economy over the coming decades, there is an urgent, practical need to shed further lights on NPD practices in this major, emerging market. In the following sections, first, a brief review of the relevant NPD literature will be provided to highlight the importance of strategic orientation in product innovation. A conceptual framework is then introduced, incorporating crucial firm-internal and -external antecedents to and consequences of strategic orientation. Following the prescriptive tradition prevalent in the NPD literature, it also examines the influence of strategic orientation on performance. Next, a detailed description of the methodology, for testing a set of hypotheses derived from the framework, is provided. The paper concludes with a summary of the findings, followed by a discussion of the research implications.

This study examines organizational processes that contribute to new product performance, with survey data collected from Chinese manufacturing firms. In general, it provides empirical evidence that organizational antecedents will have a significant impact on the strategic orientation of the firm, which in turn influences new product performance. While the results may not necessarily be generalizable to firms outside the defined populations (i.e., sample limited to firms in the Shanghai area), it provides the following summary of findings concerning Chinese NPD practices. First, the findings suggest that organizational support can play a crucial, positive role in the effective implementation of NPD strategies. Consistent with general expectations, the extent of support is associated positively with the firm's customer and technological orientations. Thus, it appears that a greater degree of support toward innovation facilitates strategy implementation by fostering an innovation-friendly environment within the organization. Given that the strategic thrusts represent an important means of achieving the firm's goals in NPD, the existence of a supportive environment should be placed at the forefront of organizational priorities. Thus, the results provide empirical support for the conclusions of Quinn (1985) and Desphande et al. (1993) that organizational support is critical to effective management of product innovation. Put differently, without sufficient support, the strategic orientations are not likely to work. The environmental factors also impinge on firms' strategic orientations. High levels of environmental turbulence put pressure on firms to adapt by becoming more efficient and effective. For firms, innovations often represent a means to deal with the turbulence of the external environment. At the core of strategic orientation is market intelligence, which entails generation and dissemination of and responsiveness to information on the external environment (Kohli & Jaworski, 1990). In markets that are highly uncertain, a strategic orientation has a positive influence on new product performance. In turbulent environmental settings, the development of a new product creates the need for more market scanning and networking with users to identify customer needs. Therefore, the role of strategic-oriented marketing activities is crucial to gathering information to exhibit superior responsiveness in dealing with the turbulences in the environment. The findings also demonstrate that the proposed strategic orientations have important performance implications. The results, therefore, can be taken within the tradition of the research stream, which has emphasized a strategy-driven approach to product innovation (Day, 1975, Day, 1990 and Prahalad and Hamel, 1990). As Cooper (1993) points out, the NPD strategy is a “strategic master plan” which provides the direction of a firm's innovation efforts. It is worth noting, however, that the influence of each strategic orientation is manifested differently depending upon the nature of the performance measures. Taken together, customer orientation has a strong positive influence on customer acceptance, but a lesser impact on technical performance. However, technology orientation leads to better technical performance and profitability of new products with a less significant impact on customer acceptance. Above all, the results suggest that customer orientation does not have a significant, positive effect on all performance measures. Consistent with general expectation, it appears to enhance the customer acceptance of new products. It also marginally increases technical performance. However, customer orientation does not have any significant impact on the profitability of new products. This is in contradiction with the findings in the study of Calantone et al. (1996), in which marketing proficiency and skills were found to relate strongly with new product success. The following plausible explanations can be offered for the lack of relationship. First, the characteristics of the Chinese market can be related with the issue. Since the 1979 economic reform, the Chinese government has begun to open its market, gradually embracing market principles and encouraging competition among businesses. However, China's market economy is still in its infancy. Only recently have Chinese firms begun to accumulate a limited amount of experience in Western marketing activities. As Calantone et al. (1996, p.344) point out, “while the reforms have introduced some forces of a market economy, marketing competency is still developing, and marketing is a fairly new phenomenon in China.” Therefore, it is plausible that many firms in China do not fully appreciate how to effectively implement the concept of being customer-oriented in their NPD process. Another plausible explanation is related to the danger of focusing NPD efforts on customers only. Despite the persuasive rationale behind the marketing concept and the customer-focused strategy offered in the marketing strategy literature, a customer orientation alone may not encourage sufficient willingness to engage in innovative ideas and to take risks (Slater & Narver, 1995). For example, a potential danger for many businesses to be customer oriented lies in the “tyranny of the served market” (Hamel & Prahalad, 1991, p.83). This danger is the result of narrowly focusing innovation efforts on current customers and markets, thus ignoring emerging technologies and true innovations (Hayes & Wheelwright, 1984). This caveat underlying the customer orientation concept, coupled with the aforementioned characteristic of the Chinese market, may explain the (albeit partially) lack of performance implications of customer orientation in this study. On the other hand, the results indicate that technological orientation can have a strong positive effect not only on technical performance but also on the profitability of new products. This result is in line with past research that has emphasized technological capability and proficiency as a critical source of new product performance, in particular, and a firm's competitive advantage in the market. Technology orientation also appears to positively influence customer acceptance of new products to a lesser degree, however, compared to the effect of customer orientation. Technology orientation may not necessarily guarantee strong customer receptivity toward new products. It is interesting to note that, when the performance implications of customer and technological orientations are considered together, the results are in direct contrast with each other. Customer orientation has a more significant influence on customer acceptance, while technological orientation has a greater impact on technical performance and profitability. The findings suggest, therefore, that while technology orientation can generally be an effective strategic option for Chinese firms, a customer-focused strategy is also necessary to enhance the customer receptivity of new products to a significant degree. Based on evidence from a large number of firms, it attempts to provide insights into NPD practices in China. It is not without limitations, however, which offer opportunities for further research. First, though the sample involves more than two hundred firms, it does not include firms outside the Shanghai metropolitan area. Nationwide sampling would have generated a more representative group of firms. Given that typical survey procedures in China entail a significant amount of effort, time and cost, an innovative research design would help overcome the sampling limitation. For instance, Dickson and MacLachlan's (1996) study suggests that, compared to conventional survey methods, fax surveys can yield responses more quickly and in greater numbers. To the extent that a nationwide survey in China involves a large number of firms that are hard to get access to, use of fax machines may offer a useful alternative tool for handling the sampling problems. Second, the present study has examined a limited aspect of NPD performance — namely, customer acceptance, technical performance and profitability. It appears that these performance measures are widely accepted and used in North American contexts. Though the field study confirmed that these measures are extensively used in Chinese firms, further research needs to be carried out to examine whether Chinese firms employ any different sets of measures from those used by their Western counterparts. Third, key objective of this study is to examine the role that strategic orientation plays in the context of new product development performance. Zaltman, Duncan, and Holbek (1973) posit that the organizational dimensions (formalization, centralization, and departmentalization) may relate innovation process. Moreover, these organizational dimensions have been identified as potential antecedents of strategic orientation (Kohli & Jaworski, 1990). Further research should be needed to examine these relationships.