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Summary of all articles SellingNewProducts
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Summary of all articles discussed in the final exam of the course Selling New Products
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Week 2 : Sales and NPDArticle : Sales, Marketing, and Research-and-Development Cooperation Across New Product
Development Stages : Implications for success
Author : Holger Ernst, Wayne D. Hoyer, Carsten Rübsaamen
Year : 2010
Summary :
This study investigates the effect of cooperation between the Sales, Marketing and R&D department
on the NPD (New Product Development) project performance. The study proposes that marketing
and sales need to cooperate in order to get the best customer insight in the NPD process in order to
stimulate adoption. While marketing holds a more strategic stance towards customer insights where
the insights are broadly acceptable to a large customer segment, Sales has a more operational and
stronger link to individual customers which provide deep and unique customer information.
The NPD process involves a wide set of tasks that require specialization which requires the integration
among functional departments as each department holds specific information required for successful
NPD. In the literature the NPD process usually consist out of three processes which are Concept
Development, Product Development, and Implementation.
The study proposes that the integration between Sales and Marketing has a positive impact on the
concept development stage as they have complementary orientations. Combining the marketing
knowledge with the sales knowledge reduces the risk of a to specific and short-term oriented
solutions. Eventually this information needs to be shared with R&D in order to increase successful
ideas and decrease the likelihood of R&D failing to recognize an important future. The shared
customer insights also ensures that features of the product are aligned with customer requirements
and that the customer perceive the unique selling point.
At the product development stage, the study proposes that R&D needs to be integrated with both
sales and marketing. The sales department can help R&D select the best reference customers for
prototype testing which results in the integration of customer feedback in terms of technical product
design. In addition R&D needs to be integrated with marketing as , marketing can test market
acceptance with techniques such as test-marketing, which result into more broader and strategic
information which can lead to modifications in the technical product design.
Regarding the implementation stage, the study proposes that R&D does not play a critical role,
however R&D might help with product training and support at end-user level. The sales and
marketing integration however is assumed to be critical as sales can help marketing identify
customers who are crucial for the diffusion of new products such as innovators and early adopters.
The results show that at the concept development stage, sales and the integration with both R&D
and marketing has a positive and significant effect on NPD performance. Sales and the integration
with R&D at the product development stage has a positive impact on NPD performance. In contrast
to what is proposed, the cooperation between sales and marketing does not have a significant effect
on NPD performance in the product development stage. As proposed the cooperation between sales
and R&D at the implementation stage does not have a significant effect on NPD performance, and the
cooperation between sales and marketing does have a positive significant effect on NPD
performance. However this effect is weaker than in the early stages of the NPD process.
,Conclusion :
Sales , Marketing and R&D cooperation have a positive and significant effect on product innovation,
however the effectiveness of the cooperation between the department is dependent upon the stage
of the NPD process. At the early stages, the cooperation between sales and R&D is important as sales
can supply R&D with specific customer insights and can help identify customers who can be used for
prototype testing. At the implementation stage sales and R&D cooperation is not important as there
is no significant effect on NPD performance. The cooperation between sales and marketing is most
important at the concept development stage as both have complementary orientations. Sales has a
strong operational link with customers providing specific customer insights where as marketing has
more strategic and broadly appliable customer insights. The integration of both insights results to the
best customer insights which R&D can use to align the technical product features with the needs
from the target market.
, Article : Operationalizing thought leadership for online B2B marketing
Authors : Barry J.M., Gironda, J.T
Year : 2019
This study aims to operationalize the concept Thought Leadership and how it can be used in online
B2B marketing in order for bridging social capital to occur. The inductive process suggests that the
thought leadership construct consists for what thought leaders are recognized as, and what they are
recognized for. The thematic analysis suggest that thought leadership to be operationalized as two
constructs : trusted authority recognition (recognized as) and thought leadership competency
(recognized for).
Thought leadership competency (recognized as) :
‘The intellectual firepower of a firm or individual capable of earning attention and trust of prospects
and customers based on forward thinking insights, original ideas, novel perspectives or helpful
education that passionately drives conversations, champions new directions or inspires actionable
strategies.’
Trusted authority recognition (recognized for) :
The degree of trust vested in and authority assigned to an individual’s or firm’s voice on matters
capable of shaping their prospects and customers point of view in favor of the individual's or firm's
proposed business solution.
As for the ‘Thought Leadership competency’ results show that this construct has four content and
character attributes
1. New ideas
2. An ability to advance ideas in provoking new mindsets
3. An ability to lead
4. Ingenuity to continuously enlighten their audiences
The ‘Trusted authority recognition’ construct consists of two attributes
1. Authority assigned to an area of expertise
2. Trust placed in their advice
For B2B marketers it is interesting how the dissemination of their digital content through social media
channels can be detected by the customer who credit the marketer as a thought leader. Success is
dependent on social networking capacity. This can best be explained by social capital theory which
suggests that social networks have a range of value and are dependent upon network size and
interactivity. In this study the concept ‘bridging social capital’ is used.
Bridging social capital:
A metric for assessing content resonance or the ability of a marketer to move content through an
engaged online network.
Bridging social capital allows a thought leader to 1. Facilitate their targeted buyer’s knowledge search
sharing activities, 2. Expose their thinking to communities that can amplify messages in support of
their ideas or perspectives.
Therefor the first hypotheses is H1: A firms or individuals thought leadership competency will
influence its bridging social capital for content resonance.
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