Market Information and New Venture Performance: Differences Between Established and Emerging Technology Standards

The authors examine the significance of formal processes for market information acquisition and use as antecedents to success of Chinese new ventures. Building on insights from the entrepreneurial planning literature, the authors construct a theoretical model in which formal processes for market information and market utilization have direct, positive main effects on new venture financial performance, and in which the existence of an established technology standard has a direct effect on performance and also affects the relationship between market information processes and performance. The authors test hypotheses derived from the model using a dataset comprising 222 Chinese new ventures. Consistent with expectations, the authors find that new venture financial performance was positively associated with the use of formal processes for the generation of market information. However, the impact on performance of formal processes for market information utilization depended on the firm´s technological environment. In particular, for firms facing an established technology standard, the use of formal processes for market information utilization did not significantly affect performance. In contrast, the use of formal processes for market information utilization had a significant impact on performance among ventures that faced an emerging technology standard.