Meta-analysis of the relationship between product innovativeness and new product performance

The topic of identifying factors that result in new product success and failure has drawn substantial attention. Among those factors, product innovativeness is deemed to a critical one. Despite years of research in the relationship between product innovativeness and new product performance, the empirical results show conflicting conclusion. To offer much needed clarity, the authors conducted a meta-analysis of 39 correlations from 24 studies on the topic. The findings reveal that product innovativeness has a positive correlation with new product performance. Using bivariate analysis and meta-regression analysis, the findings also reveal that the two measurement factors about innovativeness and performance and two contextual factors about country and industry of sample are found to report a weaker product innovativeness-new product performance relationship. In addition, there is publication bias in this study through the analysis of funnel plot and Egger's regression analysis.