Can the development of a conceptual model for UK engineering companies help understand what the customer wants from new products?

Owens, JD; Atherton, A

Abstract

The long-term survival of a business often hinges upon its ability to successfully introduce new products into the market place. These new products and their successful development can be the lifeblood of a company. Thus, New Product Development (NPD) is a major consideration for most organisations. New products can provide the stimulus for the company to grow and produce profitable returns. Additionally, new products can gain new markets and market shares and subsequently help to defend against competitive pressures. Some businesses not only want to accelerate their NPD efforts, they also like to be a ‘first to market’ business. However, this strategy has its own risks as well as competitive advantages. There are numerous cases where businesses first to launch a new product did not profit from their innovations as much as their followers. Therefore, across numerous businesses NPD is one of the leading areas for focus, as companies seek to reduce time to market, access new technologies and develop more and better products. Subsequently, the consistent development and introduction of new products that customers’ value can be an important criteria for business growth and prosperity. There has been much research into defining the NPD process and the management of its activities, and this was useful as an opening for this research. However, there is little evidence that details the specific aspect of designing for customer needs compliance. This research is exploratory in nature and provides empirical support to several propositions found in the literature on the development of new products to meet customers’ needs compliance. The findings suggest that each of the companies do perceive a difference in the needs of the customers between different product types. However, they also imply that specific types of customers have similar needs, no matter what types of products are involved.

Citation

Owens, J., & Atherton, A. (2015). Can the development of a conceptual model for UK engineering companies help understand what the customer wants from new products?

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Sep 30, 2015
• Publication Date: Nov 1, 2015
• Deposit Date: Dec 7, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 5, 2016
• Journal: Journal of Multidisciplinary Engineering Science and Technology
• Print ISSN: 3159-0040
• Volume: 2
• Issue: 11
• Pages: 3155-3165
• Publisher URL: http://www.jmest.org/vol-2-issue-11-november-2015/
• Related Public URLs: http://www.jmest.org/