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This article has been withdrawn as it was published elsewhere and accidentally duplicated. The original article can be seen here: 10.1108/eb008100. When citing the article, please cite: C. Merle Crawford, (1984), “BUSINESS TOOK THE WRONG LIFE CYCLE FROM BIOLOGY”, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 1 Iss: 3, pp. 5 - 11.

Some product innovation strategists today urge managements to try to be the first to market major advances. Innovation holds many answers to competition within an industry, to market regeneration, and to international pressures. Yet other product innovation strategists urge managements to be innovative imitators, or quick seconds, or early adapters—in other words, second but better. Followers frequently take the advantage away from innovators. Is there an answer for innovators? This article describes one: foreclose on the options left for the followers by bringing your own stream of follow‐ons to market. The author tells how to implement such a policy and what some of the risks are.

Business has struggled for many years in an effort to utilize the product life cycle concept in marketing and business planning. Controversy has swirled around the concept, particularly in recent years, and business has pretty much decided that the concept is as dangerous in many situations as it is helpful in others. Several authors have encouraged its abandonment.

Data collected from 202 large and 92 small consumer goods manufacturing firms were analysed to examine the perceptions and experiences of these companies with test marketing as part of their new product development strategy. Seventy six per cent of the large companies and twenty four per cent of the small firms in the study test marketed their new products before full‐scale introduction. Chi‐square analysis indicated a relationship between firm size, type of business/industry, the scope of marketing operations, and whether the firm conducted test marketing or not. Cost, time constraints, and the generic nature of the product were the most prominent reasons cited by all firms for not conducting test marketing. In addition, small firms cited their size as amajor reason they did not engage in test marketing.

Considers how research carried out during trade shows can help industrial firms to manage the new product development process. Discusses the NPD process and offers a scheme for classifying trade fairs, thus making the selection of appropriate events easier for the industrial marketer. Develops recommendations for the conducting of new product research at trade shows and concludes that while not a substitute for traditional NPD research methods due to cost limitations and the different types of attendees present at various events, good opportunities exist for industrial exhibitors to use NPD stages such as idea generation, screening and testing at trade shows rather than concentrating on the commercialization of new products.

Examines some recent developments of the status of model building in marketing in the UK. Uses many examples from both the UK and the USA to emphasise developments, with Crawford, Koller and Little, with figures uses for extra emphasis. Investigates problems of modelling marketing processes and also recent development in marketing model building. Closes by discussing the present state of the art that involves literature and differences between the UK and USA in marketing and model building.

Both the Product Life Cycle (PLC) and a new version, the Product Evolutionary Cycle (PEC), are more than just descriptive marketing tools based on historical sales data. Rather, they represent dynamic instruments to enable an entrepreneur‐or coporate manager‐to estimate market development. The S‐curve, the growth part of the PLC and the PEC, makes it possible for an entrepreneur to time capital requirements, labor force recruitment, promotional efforts, distribution channels, target markets, and pricing. In the case of new products, research can be utilized to construct an S‐curve in advance of an innovation's introduction in the market‐place. Such information is invaluable to an entrepreneur, since it serves as a guide to future market development.

It has been three years since an OPAC workstation at Indiana State University Libraries (ISU) was designed and constructed. During the planning stages, two surveys helped determine user preferences at the time. More recently, a third survey was conducted. The purpose of this survey was two‐fold: to assess how well the workstation was actually meeting users' present needs, and to provide guidance in the construction of future OPAC workstations. In particular, the survey sought ideas both on what new equipment should be purchased for a future workstation and how to better arrange the equipment that is already part of the present workstation.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the historical approach to concurrent engineering (CE) which has resulted in product line management (PLM) and then evaluates the theoretical models that have been proposed for design for Six Sigma (DFSS) in order to determine which model is able to provide the most consistent approach with historical development of PLM.

The approach begins with an overview of the approach taken by the Union of Japanese Scientists and Engineers (JUSE) in the development of a coherent quality methodology for structured analysis and problem solving – the Deming Wheel of plan‐do‐check‐act (PDCA) which has become the standard model in Japanese total quality management to define a logical decomposition in process management. In Japan, PDCA is the single logical model which has been broadly accepted as the construct for understanding how to develop both strategic and operational quality methods. The second step in the approach is to examine a similar American development of the model for statistical problem solving that is applied in the Six Sigma method for statistical problem solving: define‐measure‐analyze‐improve‐control (DMAIC). Next, the paper examines the historical sequence in the way the product development process has developed over the past forty years, with emphasis on its military origins (especially CE) and which resulted in the generic model for PLM. The final part of this paper examines the models that have been proposed to implement DFSS over the past ten years and evaluate their logical congruence with the engineering community's design process.

Problems in alignment with the engineering design process were identified with all of the DFSS models and with the non‐structured or “heuristic” approach to developing a coherent body of knowledge related to DFSS.

This paper provides a challenge to the quality community as well as to the academic community. The paper points out the need for rigorous examination of logical models that are proposed for guiding the thinking of practitioners in the use of quality methods for both the engineering of products and business systems. An expose of lack of rationality in the way an approach to DFSS has been investigated calls for more responsibility in the management of the development of this body of knowledge.

Proposes a new product implementation process which is designed to reduce the risk inherent in new product introductions in consumer markets. Defines the stages of this process as idea generation, idea screening, conceptual development and testing, business analysis, product development, test market, and product introduction. Concludes that this process differs from previous models in suggesting a team be created to manage the development, speeding up the tasks in each stage.