Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science Fall 1975, Vol. 3, No. 4, 355-368 A Conceptual Approach To Planning New Product Introductions In Sets William B. Locander, Ph.D. and Richard W. Scamell, Ph.D. University of Houston INTRODUCTION One key to corporate growth in today's competitive marketplace is the successful introduction of new products. Attempts by firms for profitable new product offerings have resulted in a high rate of new product failure. This, in turn, has brought about a documented need (King 1967; Mont- gomery and Urban 1969) to formulate new ways of conceptualizing product selections in the analysis of alternatives stage of the new product selection process. Recently, because of such environmental and economic pressures as worsening raw material scarcities, price controls, and the fear of an energy crunch, product mix decisions have become increasingly more important because firms must concentrate on efficiently utilizing scarce resources to meet their product line needs. (Business Week January 5, 1974). Com- panies have adopted a number of tactics to contend with these external problems, but most marketers agree that better planning is needed to handle "the interrelationship of products within a line and the interrelation- ship of that line to total corporate performance." (Business Week January 5, 1974). Successful new product analysis must incorporate such planning factors as (1) product interdependence, (2) dynamic product planning over time, and (3) shared resources. This paper describes a straightforward con- ceptual approach that accounts for these factors and presents a new prac- tical way to plan product introductions in "sets." 355