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 takeoff varies across products and countries. They test the effect of 12 hypothesized drivers of 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 United States, and some countries of Midwestern Europe. 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.