Exploring new product launch strategies in the pharmaceutical industry: A contingency approach

Despite the critical role that new products play, the firm’s product launch strategies have not been extensively studied in operations management and strategy research. This study attempts to direct attention of these fields to this important topic, which has been addressed mostly from a marketing and product innovation perspective. This dissertation suggests that the knowledge of this topic can be substantially enhanced by drawing on critical insights from operations management and strategy. Any product launch strategy is multifaceted and involves various actions that are further influenced by a myriad of factors related to the launch operations process. This study employs a coalignment approach to examine product launch operations and strategy. Accordingly, the study examines the impact of the coalignment among product launch strategy, a firm’s operations resources and its competitive environment, on new product performance. China’s pharmaceutical market is used as the study context to test the argument. The study results support the hypotheses that coalignment approaches in product launch strategy contributes to better performance.