The Influence of Marketing in New Product Development

This dissertation examines two aspects of influence of marketing in new product development (NPD) teams: marketing’s influence within the firm and influence tactics used by the team member who provides market information to the NPD team. A study of 159 NPD teams showed that decision influence of the marketing function and four influence tactics (rationality, upward appeal, coalition, and assertiveness) significantly affected the project leader’s acceptance of market information, which in turn significantly impacted team utilization of that information. These findings suggest that, beyond team integration, a team member who supplies market information can leverage the use of that information through the project leader’s compliance (i.e., source -> leader -> team). A second research objective is to examine the functional background of the NPD team member who provides market information. Findings indicated that, while all functions had similar concerns with customer information, the marketing and sales functions supplied more types of competitor information but fewer types of product-specification information than did other functions.