Product sales, especially for new products, are influenced by many factors. These factors are both internal and external to the selling organization, and are both controllable and uncontrollable. Due to the enormous complexity of such factors, it is not surprising that product failure rates are relatively high. Indeed, new product failure rates have variously been reported as between 40 and 90 percent.
Despite this multitude of factors, marketing researchers have not been deterred from developing and designing techniques to predict or explain the levels of new product sales over time. The...

Mahajan and Peterson have provided an introduction to diffusion models that bridges the disciplines and sets out the basic findings in a clear and consistent way. Their book is a lucid, state-of-the-art description of the powerful tools for investigating the temporal diffusion of any innovation. The approach they use is abstract and general, but the inclusion of a number of helpful examples makes it accessible to a wider range of readers.

Product sales, especially for new products, are influenced by many factors. These factors are both internal and external to the selling organization, and are both controllable and uncontrollable. Due to the enormous complexity of such factors, it is not surprising that product failure rates are relatively high. Indeed, new product failure rates have variously been reported as between 40 and 90 percent.
Despite this multitude of factors, marketing researchers have not been deterred from developing and designing techniques to predict or explain the levels of new product sales over time. The...