The launching of a new product is an essential strategy for the survival and success of a company. However, in certain cases, it can reduce the results obtained by other products of the same company. This fact is named “cannibalism”. Following by a review of the literature on cannibalism between goods, this paper outlines a conceptual approach, showing the way it happens, its impacts, and the possibility of its uses as a marketing tool. A new product should, wherever possible, be carefully designed to avoid cannibalizing old products, unless this process is carefully planned. Concludes that creating and launching of new products are critical to companies who want to stand out next to their markets and need to survive over time. A lot of new products launched each year, coupled with the fact that most are line extensions already worked by companies, so we assume that the occurrence of cannibalism is common, or that a significant amount of resources are designed to prevent or dilute it. There is a high probability of transfer of results obtained by established products to new products, since similarity between them.

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Cannibalism,New products,Marketing,Innovation