Marketing academics and practitioners frequently employ crosssectional surveys. In recent years, editors, reviewers, and authors have expressed increasing concern about the validity of this approach. These validity concerns center on reducing common method variance bias and enhancing causal inferences. Longitudinal data collection is commonly offered as a solution to these problems. In this article, the authors conceptually examine the role of longitudinal surveys in addressing these validity concerns. Then, they provide an illustrative comparison of the validity of cross-sectional versus longitudinal surveys using two data sets and a Monte Carlo simulation. The conceptualization and findings suggest that under certain conditions, the results from cross-sectional data exhibit validity comparable to the results obtained from longitudinal data. This article concludes by offering a set of guidelines to assist researchers in deciding whether to employ a longitudinal survey approach.

Many firms rely on external organizations to acquire knowledge that is useful for developing creative new products and reducing the time needed to bring these products to market. Cluster theory suggests that this knowledge is often obtained from organizations located in close geographic proximity. Specifically, proximity is assumed to foster heightened face-to-face communication, strengthened relational ties, increased knowledge acquisition, and enhanced new product outcomes. The authors identify the limitations of these assumptions and offer an enriched model of the influence of geographic proximity on new product development, which they test using both a crosssectional survey of 155 firms in the U.S. optics industry and a longitudinal follow-up survey of 73 of these firms. They find that firms located in close proximity engage in increased face-to-face communication, but this communication has little effect on the acquisition of the types of knowledge that lead to enhanced new product outcomes. In contrast, they find that e-mail communication leads to both enhanced new product creativity and development speed. In addition, they find that relational ties moderate rather than mediate the path connecting geographic proximity and new product outcomes. These findings imply that the new product development outcomes typically ascribed to close geographic proximity may actually be attributed to strong relational ties. In the continual search for competitive advantage, firms try to develop innovative new products as quickly as possible. The importance of new product development for long-term competitive success is widely recognized by the marketing community (for a review, see Hennart and Szymanski 2001). In general, marketing has viewed the development of new products from the perspective of an isolated firm engaged in solo activity. Thus, the major thrust of extant new product development research has been on internal processes, such as the formation and coordination of new product development teams (e.g., Olson, Walker, and Reukert 1995;Sarin and Mahajan 2001) and the role of organizational culture in new product development success (e.g., Deshpandé, Farley, and Webster 1993;Moorman 1995).Because of the growth of global competition, rapid technological advances, and increasing demands from customers, many firms realize that they need help from external organizations, such as customers, suppliers, and even competitors, to develop innovative and timely new products (Wind and Mahajan 1997). In response, an increasing number of marketing studies have begun to examine new product development alliances (Rindfleisch and Moorman 2001, 2003;Sivadas and Dwyer 2000). However, research suggests that formal alliances represent only a small fraction of interorganizational influence on new product development because much of this influence comes in the form of informal information sharing rather than formal agreements (Allen 1983;Von Hippel 1987). To date, the marketing literature has little to contribute to the nature or the i...

Strategic alliances play a critical role in global innovation. Firms can overcome resource constraints and achieve superior innovative performance not only by using internal resources but also by acquiring knowledge-based capabilities from alliance partners. In this study, the authors investigate how knowledge acquired from alliance partners affects organizational knowledge creation, which in turn leads to innovative performance. The authors propose that the knowledge–innovation relationship is stronger in international alliances than domestic alliances. The results from a survey of 127 German firms engaged in strategic alliances confirm that knowledge creation mediates the effect of knowledge acquisition on innovative performance and that international alliances strengthen the effect of knowledge creation on innovative performance. In addition, the authors find that interfirm cooperation and competition coexist in strategic alliances and that both factors increase knowledge acquisition, though from different motivational bases.

This research explores the influence of consumers’ body‐related information on beliefs and purchase intentions toward products for which the consumption experience is significantly and directly determined by body‐related information (e.g., feel, fit, sense of safety) when the products are bought in body‐absent purchase environments such as the Internet. We examine the effects of consumers’ body esteem (i.e., like or dislike of one's body) and body boundary aberration (variation in the perceived location of the edges of one's body) in the context of apparel purchases that are made on the Internet. Body esteem had a positive influence on involvement with apparel, and body boundary aberration had a negative influence on consumers’ overall concern with the fit of apparel. Involvement with apparel and overall concern with fit, in turn, significantly influenced consumers’ intentions to purchase apparel online. Consequently, consumers with high body esteem were less likely to buy on the Internet and those with high body boundary aberration were more likely to buy.

This article explains how embodied cognition and perceptual symbol systems enable product designers to influence consumers by communicating key perceptual features through subtle changes in product design elements. In this way, managers can change perceptual design elements to support line extension strategies. More specifically, design changes can be used as a tool to help evolve consumer perceptions of a product's uses and brand category membership. The role of perceptual symbols in product design is illustrated by a well-known off-road motorbike brand that planned to extend into the street motorbike segment. In order to facilitate consumer acceptance of a street motorbike from this off-road brand, the firm gradually introduced models containing an increasing number of elements of street motorbikes over a period of several years. The authors use this example to show how typical design elements of the target product category can be effectively integrated with design elements of the current product category by simply modifying key characteristics of product-shape attributes. This process is further tested in an experiment, where motorbike models differing slightly in key product features (e.g., product shape) were rated on their resemblance to street or off-road motorbikes. The results show a strong effect of these design changes on brand-category membership. Managerial implications of this approach and future research directions are discussed.