As the deregulation of the mobile number portability (MNP) and the emergence of such new technologies and services as PHS and 3G, the mobile telecommunications industry in Taiwan becomes highly competitive than ever. Under such competition, customer churning and profit declining have become of great concerns to mobile service providers. In response, most of providers continuously develop and introduce new value-added products and services. Frequent value-add products and services might strengthen customers¡¦ loyalty (i.e., decrease customer churning) and improve gross profits, but the corresponding marketing cost would also be increased dramatically. To lower the marketing cost and respond to market quickly, marketing staff typically adopts a pilot test based on the simple random sampling (SRS) approach or relies on marketing experts for defining potential target market for a new value-add product or service. The former approach requires a large number of respondents in the pilot test, while the latter is knowledge intensive and may suffer from unavailability of knowledge due to turnover of experienced marketing experts. In this thesis, we propose a novel approach for efficient and effective search for the target market for a new product/service. Specifically, we consider the target market of a new product or service being that of the most similar existing product/service, where the similarity of products/services can be defined based on either their product/service attributes or the similarity between the pilot test of the new product/service and the customer-base of an existing product/service. Accordingly, we propose two target market prediction models for new product/service, i.e., ¡§customer-based target market prediction model¡¨ and ¡§product-attribute-based target market prediction model.¡¨ Our empirical results show that the proposed prediction models are more effective in predicting potential customers for new products/services than traditional approaches.

The birth of the first low earth orbit satellite network for packet switched data, was received with much enthusiasm. This enthusiasm was quickly dampened as solution developers went into Chapter 11 (protected liquidation in the USA) and faded away because the introduction of new technology to the market has not been so obvious - the aspects of commercialisation was not taken care off with the necessary caution. The basis of this study is to establish and assess reasons why commercialisation has been so difficult for solution developers using low earth orbit satellite communication in the high technology market, while it has been such a long awaited technology in the remote monitoring and telemetry fields In today's economy, the marketing of innovative technologies is of critical importance. Innovations succeed or fail in the marketplace based not just on the soundness of the technology, but also on a company's skills at bringing that technology to market and getting it adopted by customers. Unfortunately, traditional approaches to consumer or industrial marketing often prove inadequate when it comes to the introduction of new products in domains such as telecommunications. This study concentrates on and defines the additional aspects surrounding the commercialisation of discontinuous high technology products in new industrial markets. Keywords: Commercialisation, product life cycle, crossing the chasm, product development, market development, sales cycle, discontinuous innovation. / Prof. L. Pretorius

Two important issues regarding international market entry strategy remain largely unexplored: international launch time window (the elapsed time between product launch in the home country and launch in the focal country) and country sequence. First, I investigate the factors that drive international launch time window and its impact on the performance of new products in foreign markets. The results show that launch time window is positively associated with word of mouth, but negatively related to prelaunch advertising efforts and foreign demand potential. Second, I examine the determinants of the sequence of countries in which firms introduce new products and its impact on performance in foreign countries. The findings include that a country‘s order in the international launch sequence of a new product affects the product‘s performance in that country. Country order is negatively related to country revenues. A country‘s cultural distance (economic openness) is positively (negatively) associated with its order in the sequence. I also find that there is cross-country spillover effect - lagged revenues from other countries and lagged marketing efforts in the home country are positively related to a new product‘s revenues in the focal foreign country. The more culturally sensitive a product, the earlier culturally closer countries are in the launch sequence for that product. Based on the cross-country performance spillover effects, I recommend a launch sequence that can maximize overall performance in foreign markets.

This diploma thesis is about a newly established company whose owner invented a new product for slackline. In the theoretical part will be explained various terms such as marketing, marketing mix and its sub-elements. Further, the methodology of marketing research will be described. The practical part of this thesis will describe the company and will analyze the external environment and the analysis of competition, analysis of marketing mix elements and marketing research on potential customers to which the company targets. Based on previous analyzes and research will be the proposals for improvement of the marketing mix of the company formed.