Supermarket buyer evaluations of hypothetical new products: an empirical analysis

Despite large increases in the number of new consumer product introductions, little attention has been paid to the integral role of the buyer intermediary. Although previous research by the authors has confirmed various hypotheses on the influence of relevant variables on channel intermediaries' decisions to accept a new product, it could not capture the range of options of a new product's decision environment. This article augments past research by analyzing buyers' accept/reject recommendations for a large number of hypothetical new products. Logistic regression analyses of these data confirmed certain past results: product decisions are found to vary as a function of buyer/product category, gross margin, and product uniqueness. New findings, however, suggest that overall vendor marketing strategy encompasses the most important set of individual attributes influencing buyers' decisions. Manufactures would increase the probability of having new products accepted by selecting the optimal levels of the various marketing strategy variables.