The Role of Marketing in Developing Successful New Products in South Korea and Taiwan

Developing new products is an important activity for firms in the global, competitive marketplace. While marketing plays an important role in the process of developing new products, few studies have examined marketing's role in developing new products in East Asia. This research focuses on comparing marketing's contribution to the new product development process in South Korean and Taiwanese firms. South Korea and Taiwan have rapidly expanding economies that depend heavily on foreign exchange. In addition, these two countries have successfully transformed themselves from producing mainly low-value, labor-intensive goods to producing many high-value, high-technology products that require significant marketing savvy and proficiency. In this article, a model of the interrelationships among marketing resources, skills, activities, and new product performance is developed and tested using data on 372 recently developed South Korean new products and 306 recently developed Taiwanese new products. The results generally support the model, though some interesting differences were found between the two countries. It was found that merely possessing large quantities of marketing resources is not a key to new product success. Rather, the marketing skills derived from marketing resources and the proficiency in conducting marketing activities are important for successfully developing new products in South Korean and Taiwanese firms.