INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE: MARKETING OF HIGH-TECHNOLOGY PRODUCTS AND INNOVATIONS

ARTICLE REVIEW                                                       NISHANTH S (1311469)

INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE: MARKETING OF HIGH-TECHNOLOGY PRODUCTS AND INNOVATIONS
Author(s): Jakki J. Mohr and Nader H. Shooshtari

The papers in this special issue help push the field of high-tech marketing forward in terms of their collective contributions and insights. Each paper makes a contribution in enhancing our understanding of and appreciation for how marketing of high-tech products presents different challenges to firms than marketing for more traditional products. These challenges are many and multifaceted, emanating from, among others, the nature of the products, the players involved, and the strategies where competition in the market is played out. clearly, this special issue merely begins to address the multitude and complexity of issues high-tech marketers must understand

Moving from the firm or customer level as the focal unit of analysis, some recent research on high-tech markets focuses on the industry as the unit of analysis, and in particular, industry clusters that seem to drive many high-tech markets because of the importance of knowledge flows to sustainable high-tech industries, the idea of co-locating in industry clusters can facilitate synergies in high-tech product innovations and development. Ganeson, Rindfleisch, and Malter demonstrate that the strength of firm ties and the frequency of communication with other firms are significantly related to knowledge acquisition and new product development in the U.S. optics industry cluster. Additional research exploring the nature and dynamics of industry clusters would be useful.

In summary, the area of high-tech marketing continues to be in important, yet under-researched, area in the marketing discipline. Given the complexities that characterize high-tech markets, the issues faced by firms and customers are unique and not well-addressed by standard marketing research. The papers in this special issue offered insights that will assist in moving the field forward, and itwill stimulate additional research in this area.

It appears that a major omission in the area of high-tech marketing research is  understanding how high-tech firms balance their strategies between products and services. The fact that margins for high-tech products are continually forced down . Myriad factors has led high-tech firms to focus on revenue from the provision of services. Firms large and small alike have learned that over time, sales of services can be a sustainable source of revenue—with higher margins than from product sales alone. Yet, the academic research on the intersection of technology and services tends to take the perspective of how services firms use technologies to migrate their customers to self-service technologies as a way to save on costs and to offer customers enhanced convenience