The Research On The Effect Of Team Communication Content On Decision Quality In New Product Launch Screening

New product launch screening is the decision-making process in which firms evaluate the market potential and conduct market screening of the new products that have completed technology development before they are commercialized.The results determine not only how to allocate the firm’s scarce new product marketing resources,but also whether the firm can ultimately obtain the success of new product commercialization.However,the quality of decisions on the screening of new product launches is not satisfactory.In fact,some firms underestimate the market potential,falsely eliminate new products with great market value prospects,make drop mistakes,and consequently lose the best opportunity for development and growth;some firms overestimate the market potential,wrongfully choose new products with little market value prospects for commercialization,make misuse mistakes,and waste a lot of already scarce new product marketing resources.How can firms make high-quality new product launch screening decisions? The communication content of team members in the new product launch screening plays a decisive role in the quality of the firm’s final new product launch screening decision.Specifically,due to the complexity,unknown,uncertainty and other characteristics of the market potential of new products,firms always set up a new product launch screening team to maximize the advantage of diversified information in order to accurately assess the market potential of new products.During the new product launch screening team meeting,team members share information and opinions with each other,and then make the final decision through in-depth discussion.Thus,what kind of information and opinions are shared and discussed among team members determines not only whether the team can effectively use its diversified information advantages,but also how the new product launch screening team evaluates the market potential of the new product.Obviously,the communication content of team members in the new product launch screening plays a decisive role in the quality of the firm’s final new product launch screening decision.Although much has been done to study the new product screening and a lot of valuable conclusions have been produced,there are still some important research limitations that lead to little understanding of how firms manage team communication content in new product launch screening to make high-quality decisions.Specifically,first,most of the existing research studies investigated the decision-maker of new product screening from the individual level,but the new product screening is actually a team decision,and the existing research does not explore the decision-making unit from the team level;Second,existing research has more discussions on the screening of new product ideas,but the screening of new product launches has the characteristics of completely focusing on the evaluation of the market value prospect of new products,and existing studies have less discussion on them;Third,the existing research only explored the differentiated role of different team communication modes and team communication processes,however,the content of team communication in the launch screening of new products not only affects whether the diversified information advantage of the team can be effectively played,but also determines how to form the market potential evaluation of new products,the existing research has not paid enough attention to this;Fourth,the existing research only explored how to improve the quality of new product screening decisions from the dimensions of correctness,and confuses different types of decision-making errors,but the formation mechanism of different types of decision-making errors and their impact are completely different.Only by further studying how to avoid different types of decision-making errors,can we effectively improve the quality of new product screening decisions.The existing research lacks in-depth discussion.It can be seen that the research conclusions of the existing research have limited practical guidance for the team’s communication content in the screening of new product launches.This study takes the communication of the new product launch screening team as the research object,comprehensively uses the grounded theory,secondary data,survey and other research methods to systematically explore the relationship between team communication content and decision-making quality in the new product launch screening,including a qualitative study and four quantitative studies,as follows:Study 1 is a qualitative study,which constructs a theoretical model of the impact of team communication content on decision-making quality in new product launch screening.Study 1 apply the grounded theory approach,clarify two types of team communication content in the screening of new product launches from the perspective of market-oriented theory,namely customer image type and competition comparison type.On this basis,based on the team effectiveness model,a systematic theoretical research framework on the relationship between team communication content and decision-making quality in the screening of new product launches is constructed.Study 2 examines the direct effect of team communication content on decision-making quality in the screening of new product launches.Based on the theory of team decision-making information processing,current study applies the combination of survey and secondary data methods,and empirically tests the direct effect of customer image team communication content and competitive comparison team communication content on decision-making quality in the screening of new product launches.It is found that customer image team communication content has a significant negative impact on decision-making quality,and competitive comparison team communication content has a significant positive impact on decision-making quality.Study 3 examines the direct effect of team communication content on decision-making errors in the screening of new product launches.Decision quality consists of two dimensions: correct decision and wrong decision.In order to further explore how to avoid different types of decision-making errors,and thus,effectively improve the quality of new product screening decisions,the decision-making errors are further divided into the type I decision-making errors(misuse errors)and the type II decision-making errors(drop errors),and the differential impact of team communication content on different types of decision-making errors in the screening of new product launches is empirically verified.The results show that customer image team communication content has a significant positive impact on the type I decision-making errors(misuse errors),and competitive comparison team communication content has a significant negative impact on the type II decision-making errors(drop errors).Study 4 examines the moderation effect of team heterogeneity in the screening of new product launches.Focusing on how to effectively avoid different types of decision-making errors,based on the team effectiveness model,this paper empirically tests the moderating effect of team heterogeneity(team composition)on the relationship between team communication content(team process)and decision-making error(team output)in the screening of new product launches from the aspects of functional heterogeneity and gender heterogeneity.It is found that team gender heterogeneity can significantly reduce the direct effect of customer image team communication content.Study 5 examines the moderation effect of new product novelty in the screening of new product launches.Focusing on how to effectively avoid different types of decision-making errors,based on the team effectiveness model,this paper empirically tests the moderating effect of new product novelty(team task)on the relationship between team communication content(team process)and decision-making error(team output)in the screening of new product launches from the aspects of technical novelty and market novelty.It is found that the technical novelty of new products can significantly reduce the direct effect of competitive comparison team communication content,and the market novelty of new products will significantly enhance the direct effect of competitive comparison team communication content.This study makes innovations in terms of research view and research content,and makes theoretical contributions to existing research:First,this study focuses on the screening of new product launches,systematically explores the specific impact of team communication content in new product launch screening from the team level,expands the research on the decision-making unit and stage type of new product screening,and enriches the theoretical connotation of the team effectiveness model.Second,from the perspective of market-oriented theory,this study clarifies two types of team communication content in new product launch screening,which provides a new research perspective for the research on team communication related to existing new product screening.Third,this study reveals the differentiated impact of team communication content on the type I decision-making errors(misuse errors)and the type II decision-making errors(drop errors)in new product launch screening from the dimensions of errors of decision quality.It not only expands and enriches the research on the decision-making quality of existing new product screening,but also enriches the theoretical connotation of market-oriented theory from the specific implementation level of enterprises.In addition,the research conclusion can effectively guide firms to pay attention to the importance of communication between new product launch screening teams,and provide an important decision-making reference for enterprises to dynamically adjust the communication strategy of new product launch screening teams,select new products with the most market potential for commercialization,so as to obtain the success of new product commercialization,use the market to amplify the value of innovation results,and realize a virtuous cycle of innovation.