Marketing and Persistent Innovation Success

Abstract

Despite their critical role in innovation success, marketing activities are overlooked when the sources of innovation persistence are considered. Using three waves of the French CIS innovation survey covering the period 2002-2008, this paper investigates the influence of marketing activities on innovation success and in particular on persistent innovation success. Our results confirm that innovation success depends on past innovation success. Innovation marketing does not positively influence persistent innovation success in low-tech industries. The dynamic of innovation marketing is found to be more complex in high-tech industries: innovation marketing positively influences persistent innovation success for incremental innovation but negatively influences it for radical innovation. We therefore provide support to existing literature which, for the most part, associates incremental innovation success with marketing and radical innovation success with R&D resources. Innovation marketing also impacts innovation success over the short-term. However, there is no evidence of a positive carry-over effect from innovation marketing activities over time (short- or long-term). The results regarding the short-term effects of innovation marketing activities mainly hold for low-tech industries.