| New products and the technological changes that make them possible are increasingly important to both marketing academics and practitioners. Yet most research has either failed to focus exclusively on the technological change process or used broad industry definitions. In addition, there are few managerially useful mechanisms for monitoring technological change in a competitive environment.; Using the industrial organization (IO) approach from economics, the current research proposes and tests a model of five variables hypothesized to influence the technological change process. The variables modeled are: the number of competing firms, the level of research concentration, competitor lead time, technological focus, and technological complexity. Technological change is measured as the amount of research activity observed in specific technological areas.; The data used to test the model is the electronic patent data base available from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Patent data is historical, objective, systematically collected, and readily available. As a result, patent based research is appealing to both academicians and managers. The nature of the patent classification scheme allows the model to be tested within narrowly defined technological areas, thereby avoiding some of the weaknesses of earlier research.; The model was tested using multiple regression with ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation. The regression confirmed that the number of competing firms, the level of research concentration, the degree of technological complexity, and the interaction between technological complexity and technological focus all significantly influenced the amount of research activity observed in a technological area. |
