10.1177/0092070303253635 ARTICLEJOURNAL OF THE ACADEMY OF MARKETING SCIENCE SUMMER 2003Lee, O’Connor / LAUNCH STRATEGIES New Product Launch Strategy for Network Effects Products

In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the link between launch strategy decisions and new product performance. Much of that research focuses on investigat-ing successful launch strategies for innovative, high-tech-nology products. With the rapid growth of information technology as one high-technology sector, in certain in-dustries, network effects occur, which change the competi-tive game. The existing literature offers little decision-making guidance to managers on how to successfully introduce a product that exhibits network effects. The au-thors discuss the influence of network effects on the dy-namics of market competition and on consumers’ consumption behaviors. They argue that, because of these changes, the priority of particular performance objectives and the impact of specific launch strategies differ for prod-ucts that exhibit network effects from what current wisdom and empirical results prescribe. These ideas are formal-ized in a conceptual framework and a series of research propositions