How does concept development contribute to successful launch? Exploring the role and the sources of Hard-to-Imitate Signals

Paper in proceeding, 2012

This paper explains why CD activities are valuable from a signaling perspective. By signaling, the firm attempts to influence the behavior of a customer. However, as most signals can be imitated or faked by competitors, a signal will only be effective from the firm‘s perspective if it is perceived as reliable by customers, which requires the signal to be costly or hard to imitate. This paper explains why repeated customer interaction during the CD phase can create new or significantly improved capabilities on the one hand, and create lead users on the other hand. The creation of new capabilities and lead users are two sources of Hard to Imitate Signals (HIS) which are perceived as reliable by customers and thus contribute to innovation and market diffusion. The paper discusses some general implications of the signaling perspective for CD.