When marketing and manufacturing departments integrate: The influences of market newness and competitive intensity

Although the effect of marketing-manufacturing integration on new product development (NPD) performance has been extensively studied, the question about how this integration is affected during the different stages of NPD remains unclear, especially when a firm faces a new market. In this study, we use resource dependence theory as the theoretical framework and collect survey-based data from manufacturing firms in China to investigate how market newness can affect marketing-manufacturing integration during the different stages of NPD. Our results indicate that market newness has a positive relationship with marketing-manufacturing integration during NPD's different stages, with this relationship being stronger in the early stages than in the subsequent ones. We also examine the effect of such integration during the early stages of NPD on the integration on subsequent stages of NPD. Moreover, we further investigate the moderating role of competitive intensity on the positive effect of market newness on marketing-manufacturing integration. Our findings suggest that a positive moderating effect is more prominent during the early and the final stages of NPD than during the intermediate ones. Our results provide a dynamic perspective on marketing-manufacturing integration and highlight the need for matching the appropriate level of integration with the different NPD stages.