Global Takeoff of New Products : Culture, Wealth or Vanishing Differences?

The authors study the takeoff of 16 new products across 31 countries (430 categories) to analyze how and why time-to-takeoff varies across products and countries. They test the effect of 12 hypothesized drivers of time-to-takeoff using a parametric hazard model. The authors find that the average time-to-takeoff varies substantially between developed and developing countries, between work and fun products, across cultural clusters, and over calendar time. Products take off fastest in Japan and Norway, followed by other Nordic countries, the US, and some countries of Mid-western Europe. Time-to-Takeoff is driven by culture and wealth plus product class, product vintage and prior takeoff. Most importantly, time-to-takeoff is shortening over time and takeoff is converging across countries. The authors discuss the implications of these findings