Overcoming late entry: The importance of entry position, inferences and market leadership

There are two key unresolved questions that need to be addressed in order to understand the challenge of a late entry. Do late entrants that achieve market share leadership actually incur a market share penalty associated with their entry position? Is their specific entry position a contributing factor or irrelevant to their success? To address these questions, this article uses a consumer scanner data-set containing 360 late entrants, 38 of which achieved market share leadership, to inform a regression analysis examining late entrant performance. As a result of our investigation exploring how late entrants can use marketing mix instruments to challenge incumbents, we propose that although late entry generally leads to a market share disadvantage, several opportunities remain for late entrants to excel.