IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/jmarka/v13y2025i2d10.1057_s41270-024-00320-3.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The second mover’s market research dilemma

Author

Listed:
  • Markus Christen

    (University of Lausanne)

  • David A. Soberman

    (University of Toronto)

Abstract

Several well-established research streams examine how incumbent firm behavior affects the entry decisions of later entrants, e.g., in terms of herding or differentiation. While it makes sense for a new entrant to take into account an incumbent’s behavior to inform its entry decisions, it would be risky to base such a decision solely on that information. In particular, the potential entrant may also want to conduct its own market research. Naturally, the market research should account for incumbent behavior. Yet, little is known about how a second mover decides where it should conduct market research. Is the information gained from observing the incumbent a substitute or a complement to market research? The information a second mover gathers through observation includes the incumbent’s choice of market. Even more important is the signal generated by an incumbent’s decision to exit or stay in a market. This decision signals to a second mover whether a market is viable, at least for one firm. A second mover that considers entry between an existing market (with an operating incumbent) and a new market (that has no incumbents) chooses between different types of uncertainty. Our paper addresses how this uncertainty affects the second mover’s market research decision. Should a second mover do market research in the competitor’s backyard or should it boldly go where no firm has gone before and research a new market? How is this decision affected by factors such as expected demand conditions and competition? Intuition suggests that information about a virgin market is always more valuable because the first mover already provides information about the existing market. Our research shows that this intuition is not always correct. It is correct when market research generates perfect information. However, market research is rarely perfect. When market research provides estimates subject to an error, a second mover may gain by conducting market research in a market with an existing competitor. Here, the complementarity of the competitor’s performance coupled with market research amplifies the value of the research.

Suggested Citation

  • Markus Christen & David A. Soberman, 2025. "The second mover’s market research dilemma," Journal of Marketing Analytics, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 13(2), pages 552-569, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:jmarka:v:13:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1057_s41270-024-00320-3
    DOI: 10.1057/s41270-024-00320-3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41270-024-00320-3
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41270-024-00320-3?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. William Boulding & Markus Christen, 2008. "Disentangling Pioneering Cost Advantages and Disadvantages," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 27(4), pages 699-716, 07-08.
    2. Sanford J. Grossman & Richard E. Kihlstrom & Leonard J. Mirman, 1977. "A Bayesian Approach to the Production of Information and Learning By Doing," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 44(3), pages 533-547.
    3. Raphael Thomadsen, 2007. "Product Positioning and Competition: The Role of Location in the Fast Food Industry," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(6), pages 792-804, 11-12.
    4. H. Damar, 2009. "Why Do Payday Lenders Enter Local Markets? Evidence from Oregon," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 34(2), pages 173-191, March.
    5. Marvin B. Lieberman & David B. Montgomery, 1988. "First‐mover advantages," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(S1), pages 41-58, June.
    6. Soberman, David A., 2009. "Marketing agencies, media experts and sales agents: Helping competitive firms improve the effectiveness of marketing," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 21-33.
    7. Robert Feinberg, 2008. "Explaining the Credit Union Entry Decision, and Implications for Performance," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 33(1), pages 81-91, August.
    8. David B. Ridley, 2008. "Herding versus Hotelling: Market Entry with Costly Information," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 17(3), pages 607-631, September.
    9. Sumon Datta & K. Sudhir, 2023. "The Agglomeration-Differentiation Tradeoff in Spatial Location Choice," Customer Needs and Solutions, Springer;Institute for Sustainable Innovation and Growth (iSIG), vol. 10(1), pages 1-25, December.
    10. Glen L. Urban & Theresa Carter & Steven Gaskin & Zofia Mucha, 1986. "Market Share Rewards to Pioneering Brands: An Empirical Analysis and Strategic Implications," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 32(6), pages 645-659, June.
    11. Yang, Nathan, 2020. "Learning in retail entry," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 336-355.
    12. Dixit, Avinash K, 1989. "Entry and Exit Decisions under Uncertainty," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 97(3), pages 620-638, June.
    13. Asher Wolinsky, 1983. "Retail Trade Concentration Due to Consumers' Imperfect Information," Bell Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 14(1), pages 275-282, Spring.
    14. Qiaowei Shen & Ping Xiao, 2014. "McDonald's and KFC in China: Competitors or Companions?," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 33(2), pages 287-307, March.
    15. Miklos Sarvary & Philip M. Parker, 1997. "Marketing Information: A Competitive Analysis," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(1), pages 24-38.
    16. Markus Christen, 2005. "Research Note---Cost Uncertainty Is Bliss: The Effect of Competition on the Acquisition of Cost Information for Pricing New Products," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(4), pages 668-676, April.
    17. Dominique Olié Lauga & Elie Ofek, 2009. "Market Research and Innovation Strategy in a Duopoly," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 28(2), pages 373-396, 03-04.
    18. Caplin, Andrew & Leahy, John, 1998. "Miracle on Sixth Avenue: Information Externalities and Search," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 108(446), pages 60-74, January.
    19. Ozge Turut & Elie Ofek, 2012. "Innovation Strategy and Entry Deterrence," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 21(3), pages 583-631, September.
    20. Piotr Tarka & Elżbieta Jędrych, 2023. "Toward an exploratory framework of determinants of marketing research effectiveness in business organizations," Journal of Marketing Analytics, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(3), pages 503-522, September.
    21. Marion Debruyne & David J. Reibstein, 2005. "Competitor See, Competitor Do: Incumbent Entry in New Market Niches," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(1), pages 55-66, December.
    22. Chamley, Christophe & Gale, Douglas, 1994. "Information Revelation and Strategic Delay in a Model of Investment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(5), pages 1065-1085, September.
    23. William Boulding & Markus Christen, 2003. "Sustainable Pioneering Advantage? Profit Implications of Market Entry Order," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(3), pages 371-392.
    24. Harrington Jr. , Joseph E., 1995. "Experimentation and Learning in a Differentiated-Products Duopoly," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 66(1), pages 275-288, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mitsukuni Nishida, 2018. "A Structural Analysis of Entry Order, Performance, and Geography: The Case of the Convenience-Store Industry in Japan," KIER Working Papers 993, Kyoto University, Institute of Economic Research.
    2. Mitsukuni Nishida, 2025. "Entry Order, Performance, And Geography: The Case Of The Convenience‐Store Industry In Japan," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 66(2), pages 787-822, May.
    3. Halberstadt, Jantje & Kollhoff, Sophia & Kraus, Sascha & Dhir, Amandeep, 2022. "Early bird or early worm? First-mover (dis)advantages and the success of web-based social enterprises," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 181(C).
    4. Nathan Yang, 2011. "An Empirical Model of Industry Dynamics with Common Uncertainty and Learning from the Actions of Competitors," Working Papers 11-16, NET Institute.
    5. Koh, Paul S., 2023. "Stable outcomes and information in games: An empirical framework," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 237(1).
    6. Picone, Gabriel A. & Ridley, David B. & Zandbergen, Paul A., 2009. "Distance decreases with differentiation: Strategic agglomeration by retailers," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 27(3), pages 463-473, May.
    7. Fuentelsaz, Lucio & Garrido, Elisabet & González, Minerva, 2020. "Ownership in cross-border acquisitions and entry timing of the target firm," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 55(2).
    8. Zhe OuYang & Peng Cheng & Yang Liu, 2020. "The role of product line breadth, product pre-entry experience, and market uncertainty in explaining followers’ speed of feature entry," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 14(6), pages 1221-1249, December.
    9. Christian Peukert & Imke Reimers, 2022. "Digitization, Prediction, and Market Efficiency: Evidence from Book Publishing Deals," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(9), pages 6907-6924, September.
    10. García-Villaverde, Pedro M. & Ruiz-Ortega, María J. & Parra-Requena, Gloria, 2012. "Towards a comprehensive model of entry timing in the ICT industry: Direct and indirect effects," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 47(2), pages 297-310.
    11. McMullen, Jeffery S. & Fitzsimmons, Jason R. & Shetty, Khyati & Ramoglou, Stratos, 2024. "A temporal typology of entrepreneurial opportunities: Implications for the optimal timing of entrepreneurial action," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 39(1).
    12. Mitsukuni Nishida, 2017. "First-Mover Advantage Through Distribution: A Decomposition Approach," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(4), pages 590-609, July.
    13. Caballero, Ricardo J., 1999. "Aggregate investment," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & M. Woodford (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 12, pages 813-862, Elsevier.
    14. Fang, Di & Richards, Timothy, 2016. "New Maize Variety Adoption in Mozambique: A Spatial Approach," 2016 Annual Meeting, July 31-August 2, Boston, Massachusetts 235388, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    15. Gaballo, Gaetano & Marimon, Ramon, 2021. "Breaking the spell with credit-easing: Self-confirming credit crises in competitive search economies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 1-20.
    16. Raffaele Morandi Stagni & Juan Santaló & Marco S. Giarratana, 2020. "Product‐market competition and resource redeployment in multi‐business firms," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(10), pages 1799-1836, October.
    17. Comino, Stefano, 2006. "Entry and exit with information externalities," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 85-99, May.
    18. Louise Allsopp, 2004. "An Experiment to Investigate the Externalities of Search," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 80(251), pages 423-435, December.
    19. Kim-Sau Chung, 1997. "Inefficient Delays in Strategic Trades," Research in Economics 97-06-057e, Santa Fe Institute.
    20. Caplin, Andrew & Leahy, John, 2000. "Mass layoffs and unemployment," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(1), pages 121-142, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:jmarka:v:13:y:2025:i:2:d:10.1057_s41270-024-00320-3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.