IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/stratm/v20y1999i7p655-670.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Product innovation, product–market competition and persistent profitability in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry

Author

Listed:
  • Peter W. Roberts

Abstract

Increasingly, strategy scholars are exploring the relationships between innovation, competition, and the persistence of superior profits. Sustained high profitability may result when a firm repeatedly introduces valuable innovations that service previously unmet consumer demands. While the returns to the firm from each innovation may erode over time, innovation ensures that, overall, the firm maintains a high performance position. At the same time, sustained high profitability may also accrue to firms that innovate less often, but effectively avoid the competition that otherwise erodes high returns. This paper elaborates these relationships before presenting an empirical analysis of the effects of differential innovative propensities and differential rates of competition on pharmaceutical firms’ abilities to sustain profit outcomes that are above those earned by competing firms. The analysis, which is situated within the U.S. pharmaceutical industry, finds support for the expected relationship between high innovative propensity and sustained superior profitability, but no support for a link between persistence and the ability to avoid competition. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter W. Roberts, 1999. "Product innovation, product–market competition and persistent profitability in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 20(7), pages 655-670, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:stratm:v:20:y:1999:i:7:p:655-670
    DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1097-0266(199907)20:73.0.CO;2-P
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0266(199907)20:73.0.CO;2-P
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/(SICI)1097-0266(199907)20:73.0.CO;2-P?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
    ---><---

    More about this item

    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:bla:stratm:v:20:y:1999:i:7:p:655-670. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/0143-2095 .

    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.