Stefan Stremersch, professor of marketing at the Erasmus School of Economics, and his co-authors have developed a dynamic model of new product adoption with remarkable explanatory power. The research, which has important implications for marketing managers, was chosen by the Editorial Board of the International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM) as one of the two best articles published in the journal in 2012.
Country segmentation can be a powerful instrument for prelaunch forecasts of new products, argue Stremersch and his co-authors former ERIM Member Aurélie Lemmens (Tilburg University) and Christophe Croux (Catholic University Leuven) in the award-winning article. Before the first launch, firms can study how similar products have fared in countries that resemble the target market.
In such international segmentation studies, similar countries are identified only once. Yet the authors argue that product adoption is a dynamic process: which countries make for suitable comparisons, changes over the lifecycle of a product. Indeed, "From a managerial viewpoint, ignoring dynamics in international segments is likely to lead to suboptimal marketing strategies", stresses the research team.
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