A contingency approach to marketing high technology products

Little conceptual and empirical effort has been directed toward differentiating high technology from low technology products, and identifying effective strategic alternatives for marketing technology‐based products. The purpose of this paper is to answer such fundamental questions as: what a high technology product is; what dimensions differentiate between high and low technology products and their marketing strategies; and what types of marketing strategies high technology companies should use. These issues are tackled from a contingency theory perspective with the assumption that marketing of high technology products, compared to that of low technology products, is influenced by different industry/market situations, and thus strategies should be designed and used differently. The paper reports the results from a survey of over 100 Australian firms, which examined the environment‐strategy‐performance link for low versus high technology‐based products. It discusses the implication of the results for marketers of high‐tech products.