Innovation is the process of value creation through use of relevant knowledge, capabilities and resources for conversion of ideas into new products, processes and practices, and improvements in existing products, processes and practices. Innovations of various types and forms are crucial to achieving and sustaining a competitive advantage in the marketplace, the principal focus of competitive strategy.Product innovations play a central role in various strategic marketing contexts such as meeting consumers’ needs and wants, responding to changes in consumers’ preferences, shaping consumers’ preferences, entering new markets, enhancing a firm’s market position in presently served product-markets, differentiating the firm’s product offerings from competitors’ offerings, neutralizing the effects of competitors’ actions, and preemption and deterrence of competitors.  Against this backdrop, articles published in this volume focus on substantive issues in innovation, marketing strategy, and the nexus of innovation and marketing strategy. The substantive issues addressed in these articles include sources of innovation, customer involvement in innovation, innovations in a digital environment, innovations in an information rich environment, the role of market foresight and design orientation as organizational capabilities in new product development and new product performance, and the effects of market orientation, organizational culture, trust and commitment on business performance.

The ten papers in this volume shed light on how companies compete in their chosen markets through innovations of product, process, or business model. The five conceptual papers assess different sources of innovation affecting a firm’s brand equity, propose a taxonomy for strategic decision making, and define different types of innovation. Five empirical papers present a framework delineating market information determinants and new market outcomes of market foresight, explore customers’ willingness to pay for design attributes, and examine the business performance outcomes of market orientation culture and behaviors. -- Annotation ©2018 * (protoview.com) *

Dr. Rajan Varadarajan is University Distinguished Professor and Distinguished Professor of Marketing, Regents Professor, and holder of the Ford Chair in Marketing and E-Commerce in the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University. His primary teaching and research interests are strategic marketing, innovation and environmental sustainability.  Dr Satish Jayachandran (Ph.D., Texas A&M University) is the James F. Kane Professor of Business and Professor of Marketing at the Darla Moore School of Business. He is currently serving as the chair of the Department of Marketing. His research is in the area of marketing strategy.