The path travelled from thinking to perception. A comparative analysis of new service's success

Both academics and practitioners recognize the importance of certain variables such as organizational culture, a company's size and age or the entrepreneur's profile in explaining the success of a new company's service. However, it remains unclear if there is a direct and significant relationship, especially when the entrepreneur uses different indicators for measuring the performance of a new released service. (1) objective indicators, -such as financial- , or (2) subjective indicators, -based on entrepreneur's judgements, preferences and expectations-. The analysis of a sample of 354 Spanish SMEs belonging to the service sector that have developed new services in the last two years confirms that the importance and significance of these variables vary according to the type of indicator used.