Competitiveness through front-end activities: how companies can steer new products to success

This dissertation focuses on the importance of commercialization information, which should be assessed at the Front End (FE) as soon as possible. It contributes to the research question by deepening knowledge about the importance of unconscious customer rejection behavior for the commercialization aspect and, subsequently, for the product’s success. Further, to better understand customer behaviors, this dissertation also seeks to expand academic knowledge about the conscious aspects of customer innovation rejection behaviors. In doing so, this dissertation provides new managerial implications for academics and practitioners by outlining starting points for where to intensify FE work if a new product seems to fail owing to consumers’ conscious reasons against adoption. Consumer rejection information contributes to FE considerations as follows: By providing the information on whether a new product can or cannot meet the market targets, knowledge provides new insights into opportunities and measures to avoid this trend (Creusen, Hultink, and Eling, 2013). Thus, this dissertation seeks to offer guidance to avoid failure rates at the FE caused by unconscious and conscious customer rejections. These three purposes are addressed in four distinct essays. Figure 2 provides an overview of the essays, their titles, contents and methods.