New Product Launch Success: A Literature Review

This review article deals with the current state of knowledge on the topic of launching new products on the market and the success factors that constitute launch success. As things stand today, it can be stated that the existing research work already covers a broad range of topics and that there is an extended pool of relevant results, which, however, appear rather confusing for the most part due to the lack of comparability of methods and indicators and a large number of specific topics dealt with. It also reveals many gaps of science for future research. The method of this article uses integrative review approach with elements of semi-structured methods to analyse the content of studies concerning the research topic and is thus providing an up-to-date overview of the object of research, which reflects the state-of-the-art on questions relevant to practice and science. Therefore, databases like Google scholar and the university catalogues of the university in Dortmund and Cologne have been used, focussing only on sources that were also listed in Scopus and the Web of Science. The current change through megatrends like the digitalization is also taken into account. Literature on this topic is evaluated to determine the influence of current and future megatrends on the optimal design of product launches. The result is that on the one hand there is already a secure pool of success factors, best-practice methods, typologies and investigation of phenomena encompassing the product launch. On the other hand, the introduction of products to the market is a complex process whose orientation towards the maximum prospects of success must be individually aligned to the respective specifics of the market, product, business model and target group (internal and external), so that there can be no general recipe for success, which applies to every situation. The new opportunities provided by digitisation will also play a key role in this respect.