The PIMS (Profit Impact of Marketing Strategies) data entail sparse time-series observations for a large number of strategic business units (SBUs), In order to estimate disaggregate marketing mix elasticities of demand, a natural solution is to pool different SBUs. The traditional, a priori approach is to pool together those SBUs which one believes in advance to be very similar with respect to their marketing mix elasticities. We propose an alternative maximum likelihood, latent-pooling method for simultaneously pooling, estimating, and testing linear regression models . This method enables the determination of a “fuzzy” pooling scheme, while directly estimating a set of marketing mix elasticities and intertemporal covariances for each pool of SBUs. Our analyses reveal different magnitudes and patterns of marketing mix elasticities for the derived pools. Pool membership is influenced by demand characteristics, business scope, and order of market entry.econometric models, regression and other statistical techniques, marketing mix, competitive strategy

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In a broad cross section of consumer goods businesses, market pioneers generally have substantially higher market shares than late entrants. In fact, the empirical association between order of entry and market share is almost as strong as the association between market share and return on investment. The authors examine theoretical sources behind this relationship. The empirical results suggest that the higher pioneer shares are derived from firm-based superiority as well as from consumer information advantages. Nine hypotheses are developed and tested empirically. The results also indicate that order of market entry is a major determinant of market share.

Are market pioneers more successful because they started with superior skills and resources? The absolute pioneer advantage hypothesis is that because market pioneering is desirable, firms with superior skills and resources naturally choose to pioneer new markets. The comparative advantage hypothesis is that market evolution changes success requirements. Market pioneer skills and resources differ from, but are not superior to later entrants. Empirical results across 171 diversification entrants tend to support the comparative advantage hypothesis. Skill and resource profiles are provided for market pioneers, early followers, and late entrants.

When entering a new market, the first entrant typically faces the greatest market and technological uncertainties. Memorable phrases reflect the associated survival risk, such as "the first to market is the first to fail" and "the pioneer is the one with the arrows in its back." Although research estimates the market pioneer's survival rate, the typical pioneer survival rate has not been compared with that of early followers. The authors' study compares survival rates for 167 first-entrant market pioneers versus 267 early followers. For these industrial goods businesses, 66% of the pioneers versus 48% of the early followers survived at least ten years. The main conclusion is that the pioneer's temporary monopoly over the early followers plus its first-mover advantages typically offset the survival risks associated with market and technological uncertainties. These results are consistent with previous research in the sense that first-mover advantages that increase a pioneer's market share also help protect the pioneer from outright failure.