A Study On The Relationship Among Interaction Orientation, Creativity And New Product Performance

With the technology developing rapidly and customers’ demands changingsuccessively, the product life cycle is becoming shorter and shorter, so the firmsshould keep on developeing new product. And the firms always pay much attentionto the new product development, they give a lot of new products to market. However,the risk of new product development is very high, more than one third of the newproducts fail at last, sometimes there may be90%of new products fail. So it is veryimportant for firms to improve the new product performance to survival anddevelopmen.The interatcion orientation theory holds that interatcion orientation can positiveaffect the new product performance. Interaction orientation is a new strategicorientation which reflects a firm’s ability to interact with its individual customersand to take advantage of information obtained from them through successiveinteractions to achieve profitable customer relationships. Interatcion orientation hasfour dimensions: customer concept, interaction response capacity and customerempowermentand and customer value management. The firms that imply interatcionorientation can get information from the customers through interacting withcustomers effectively, so they can develop new products which meet the customers’demands that is changing sucessively. The firms that imply interatcion orientationwill empower the customers to participate in the whole operation of the firminluding the new product development, and cocreate value wtih the firm. So they canget superior new product performance. However, the exant research haven’t tested the relationship between the interaction orientation and new product performance, itis still not clear about the relationship about them.In order to make up the gap of the theory, this paper analyzes the relationshipbetween the interaction orientation and new product performance and offers a theoyframework and hypothesises about interaction orientation, creativity, marketenvironment and new product performance base on reviewing some theorys related.We think that（a）interaction orientation positively affects new product creativity,new product marketing progarm creativity and new product performance,（b）newproduct creativity and new product marketing progarm creativity can also positivelyaffect new product performance,（c）new product creativity and new productmarketing progarm creativity play the mediating role in the relationship between theinteraction orientation and new product performance,（d）markeing environment（markering turbulence, competitive intensity and technological turbulence）play themoderate role in the relationship between the interaction orientation and new productperformance.In order to exam the hypothesises, we follow a convenience sample approach toget manufacturing firms from Jilin Province as sample. We use multiple regressionanalysis to test hypothesises. First, interaction orientation positively affects newproduct performance which means that the greater the interaction orientation of afirm, the greater is its new product performance. That’s because interactionorientation can promote the accuracy of new product development; can enhance thecustomer satisfaction and positive word of mouth, so the firms that imply interactionorientation will get superior new product performance. Second, we also find thatinteraction orientation can positively affects new product creativity and new productmarketing progarm creativity. The firms that imply interaction orientation willempwer the customer to participate in new product development, so they candevelop new products that are new and meaningfulness to target customers，that menas that they can get geater new product creativity. And the the firms implyinteraction orientation would tramsform the whole oprtation inclding the newproduct marketing program to interact with their customers effectively, so they willget geater new product marketing program creativity. Third, the results also showthat new product creativity and new product marketing progarm creativity canpositively affect the new product performance. That is the same as the other research.Fourth, the results also show that new product creativity and new product marketingprogarm creativity play the partial mediator role in the relationship betweeninteraction orientation and new product performance. That means that the interactionorientation affects the new product performance partly through new productcreativity and new product marketing progarm creativity. Finally, markeringturbulence play a moderate role in the relationship between interaction orientationand new product performance, but competitive intensity and technologicalturbulence don’t play the moderate role. When the markering turbulence is high, thecustomer tastes and preferences change rapidly, the firms with greater interactionorientation can perceive the markering turbulence easily through interating with thecustomer and they can response quickly, so they can develop the new products thatmeet the customers’ demands which change successively and can get greater newproduct performance; otherwise, the firms cannot get greater new productperformance. When the markering turbulence is low, the customer tastes andpreferences change slowly; the firms that don’t imply interaction orientation can alsopredict the customer tastes and preferences through traditional method such asmarket research essily. So whether the firms imply interaction orientation or not willhave little influence on new product performance.So we get the following conclusion:（a）interaction orientation can positivelyaffects new product performance,（b）interaction orientation can positively affectsnew product creativity and new product marketing progarm creativity,（c）new product creativity and new product marketing progarm creativity can positivelyaffects new product performance,（d）new product creativity and new productmarketing progarm creativity play the mediating role in the relationship between theinteraction orientation and new product performance,（e）market turbulence play amoderate role in the relationship between the interaction orientation and new productperformance, but competitive intensity and technological turbulence don’t play themoderate role.The theory contribution of this study is mainly manifested in the followingaspects:First, we analyze and test the relationship between interaction orientation andnew product performance, which makes up the gap of the interaction orientationtheory. We propose the hypothesis that interaction orientation positively affects thenew product performance base on the interaction orientation theory, new productperformance theory and other theorys related. We find that interaction orientationpositively affects the new product performance after empirical test, which make upthe gap of the interaction orientation theory.Second, we offer a new approach to analyze new product creativity and newproduct marketing progarm creativity. New product creativity and new productmarketing progarm creativity is the key point for new product performance. Firmscan get greater new product performance through creative new product and creativenew product marketing program. We find that interaction orientation positivelyaffect new product creativity and new product marketing progarm creativity. Thatshows a new approach to analyze the new product creativity and new productmarketing progarm creativity.Third, we analyze the mechanism of the relationship between interactionorientation and new product performance. We find that the interaction orientationaffects the new product performance partly through new product creativity and new product marketing progarm creativity. We can understand the relationship betweeninteraction orientation and new product performance better.Finally, we develop and test the applicable conditions for interaction orientation.The results show that the greater the market turbulence, the greater is the positiveeffect of a firm’s interaction orientation on its new product performance.There are also some managerial contributions of this study: First, firms shouldimply interaction orientation. Second, give the firms soem theory advices on how toimprove new product performance. Third, show an effective method for firms toculture new product creativity and new product marketing progarm creativity.Finally, help firms to know whether to imply interation orientation in differencemarket environment.