The survival of new products

We study the survival of new products in a market with horizontal product d ifferentiation and rapid product turnover. Our data set consists of monthly sales for all new products in the Swedish beer market during 1989-1995. Re sults show that products with low and decreasing market shares have high ha zard rates. The hazard rates are also dependent on firm characteristics; pr oducts from firms with the largest market shares face a greater risk of bei ng withdrawn. We argue that high hazard rates of new products can help to e xplain high failure rates of new firms.