Does digitalization boost companies‘ new product launch success?

Digitalization and new product launch are two important topics which have been proved to have large input on companies’ success. Digitalization, because it can boost productivity, diminishes cost and raises effectiveness. New product launch, because innovation success guarantees high product margins and helps to avoid existence-threatening price competition in commoditized product markets. However, regarding shorter product life cycles, the ability to innovate and launch new products successfully, becomes an evident driver of companies’ success.  Can digitalization with its described effects help to raise new product launch success? Are companies who obtain a higher level of digitalization degree, more successful concerning new product launch results? Although this question is a relevant topic to marketing and strategic management, there has not been research on that topic. Thus, research on that subject would close a relevant gap in science.  In that sense, the objective of this article is to reveal the link between digitalization and new product launch success.This question is highly relevant before the background of the fourth industrial revolution, driven by the digitalization of business. Nevertheless, this specific question has never been asked. Also, no construct exists which allows to operationalize and measure the amount of the digitalization degree related to those digitalization measures that are relevant for new product success (= the relevant digitalization degree). This study is a first attempt to open the new field of links between digitalization and new product success. Therefore, the correlation between new product launch success and digitalization degree of German B2B traders has been inspected on the basis of an empirical survey.