Speed leaders and quality champions

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a concept of an alignment between market and technology orientations (MTs) and investigates the difference in new product innovation activities and performance among the four groups of high-tech firms which are classified into four categories labeled as MT, technology orientation (TO), market orientation (MO) and conservative (CO) firms. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 360 high-tech firms in China. MANOVA was used to identify whether or not new product innovation activities (i.e. timing of market entry and product quality) and performance vary across the four groups. Findings – The results indicate that the four groups of firms significantly differ with respect to new product performance and with new product innovation activities pertaining to timing of market-entry strategy and product quality. Further, the results show that first, MT firms have highest new product performance; second, TO firms are speed leaders which have first-to-market with new product; and third, MO firms are quality champions which are best for the perceived new product quality. Originality/value – This paper responds to call for synthetic studies of multiple orientations and cross-disciplinary research, especially in the areas of marketing and strategic management. This paper is the first to integrate MO and TO and examine the interactive effects of these two orientations on new product innovation. Against prior study believing the combination of strategic orientations play an important role in innovation management, the findings that TO firms are speed leaders and MO firms are quality champions suggest that the combination of different strategic orientations is not beneficial to all respects of new product innovation, such as timing of market-entry strategy and product quality.

Effects of Sustainability and Technology Orientations on Firm Growth: Evidence from Chinese Manufacturing

“…Therefore, technology orientation could be regarded as a valuable resource for a firm by incorporating advanced technology into its decision-making and organizing process, and firms with this resource could reconfigure resources to capture opportunities generated from the emerging, or potential, technological trends, thus, performing better [36]. Additionally, from the viewpoint of organizational learning, firms guided by technology orientation pay more concern to exploratory learning, and they are more likely to develop or adapt to new technologies to realize product differentiation in market competition [1]. These lead to the following hypothesis: Hypothesis 1 (H1).…”

“…Driven by the importance of managing global environmental problems like climate change, substantial attention has been paid to the environmental sustainability issue. Additionally, for any firm surviving in the modern competitive environment, new product development has been paid increasing importance [1]. However, both sustainability-related practices and technology exploration call for a large amount of resource investment, which must be guaranteed to have some impact on corporate economic performance.…”

Technology Orientation: A Reassessment and a Future Research Agenda

“…After running through thousands of results, 191 articles were detailedly reviewed and papers including TO as a variable on empirical studies were chosen for closer inspection. There were only 44 scholarly peer-reviewed quantitative research articles consisting TO at least as one of the variables where all these researches are also detailed in Tables 1, 2, and 3 (Gatignon and Xuereb 1997;Li 2005;Salavou 2005;Jeong et al 2006;Gao et al 2007;Akman et al 2008;Hakala and Kohtamaki 2010;Zehir et al, 2010;Zhou and Li 2010;Urban 2010;Urban and Barreria 2010;Hortinha et al 2011;Spanjol et al 2011;Hakala and Kohtamaki 2011;Mu and Benedetto 2011;Sainio et al 2012;Rajala and Westerlund 2012;Yang et al 2012;Surer and Mutlu 2012;Al-Ansari et al, 2013;Hyung and Dedahanov 2014;Hsu et al 2014;Chen et al 2014a;Chen et al, 2014b;Jaferian and Rezvani 2014;Lee et al 2014;Tsou et al, 2014;Al-Ansari et al, 2015;Batra et al 2015;Costa et al, 2015;Lee et al 2015;Leng et al 2015;Liu and Chen, 2015;Nakola et al 2015;Salovarji et al, 2015;Surer and Mutlu 2015;Ho et al 2016;Ibrahim and Shariff, 2016;…”

“…TO studies mostly investigated TO as a driver of new product innovation (e.g. Jeong et al 2006;Gao et al 2007;Hakala andKohtamaki 2010, 2011;Jaferian and Rezvani 2014;Leng et al 2015;Liu and Chen 2015;Salovarji et al 2015). Stating differently, TO was basically acknowledged as main component of technological innovations and way of creating unique products.…”

“…Although there was not any study solely studying TO, 44 articles investigated the relation and/or effects of combinations of strategic orientations on selected variables. Table 1 Adopted scales for measuring TO Referred sources for measuring TO Studies adopted/composed from those referred sources in their studies Gatignon andXuereb 1997 Gatignon andXuereb 1997;Li 2005;Gao et al 2007;Zhou and Li 2010;Spanjol et al 2011, Yang et al 2012Surer and Mutlu 2012;Hyung and Dedahanov 2014;Chen et al 2014a;Chen et al 2014b;Jaferian and Rezvani 2014;Lee et al 2014;Batra et al 2015;Lee et al 2015;Leng et al 2015;Surer and Mutlu 2015;Ho et al 2016;Surer 2016 Gatignon andXuereb 1997;Hurley andHult, 1998 Zhou et al 2005;Mu andBenedetto 2011 Gatignon andXuereb 1997;Hsu et al 2014Hortinha et al 2011Sainio et al 2012;Costa et al 2015;Salovarji et al 2015;Kocak et al 2017Ettlie 1983Salavou 2005 Drozier 2003 In those quantitative articles, the main source for measuring TO is seen as Gatignon and Xuereb (1997)'s study. As in Table 1, eighteen studies directly referred to study of Gatignon and Xuereb (1997) where another four mentioned their scale with other studies.…”