Assessing the importance of the development activities for successful new services: does innovativeness matter?

This article reports on the results of a research project into the development activities undertaken during the launch of 132 new financial services in Greece. According to the results, business analysis and marketing strategy formation as well as launch are the stages of the new service development process which influence the success of a new service irrespective, for the most part, of the degree of innovativeness that characterizes it. The significance of the other three stages of the development process varies depending the degree of innovativeness that characterizes the new service and the type of objective (financial or not) that management considers in order to evaluate its actual performance.