ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the role of environmental uncertainty as a key contingency that defines situations in which information-based theories are likely to provide the dominant explanations for imitation. It also considers the role of context by examining what kinds of firms were followed in their new product introductions in the Japanese non-alcoholic beverage industry. In the Japanese non-alcoholic beverage industry, firms appear informative based not only on large size but also on certain origins that reflect experience and expertise drawn from elsewhere in the food and beverage sector. The chapter distinguishes the introduction of major new products for which the uncertainty of market success was high versus incremental product additions and changes where uncertainly was comparatively low. It integrates work on business imitation with elements of the strategy literature. The chapter suggests that the temporal clustering of product introductions within existing categories arises largely because firms follow competitors of similar size or of the same industry origins.
