TITLE:
Customer Needs in Market-Driven Product Development: Product Management and R&D Standpoints
AUTHORS:
Jukka Majava, Jouko Nuottila, Harri Haapasalo, Kris M. Y. Law
KEYWORDS:
Product Development; New Product Development (NPD); Product Management; Customer Need; Market-Driven; Research and Development (R&D); Stakeholder
JOURNAL NAME:
Technology and Investment,
Vol.5 No.1,
February
7,
2014
ABSTRACT:
Meeting customer needs is considered to be vital for new
product success. This study explores customer need identification and related
challenges in product management and research and development (R&D) in a market-driven
context, where a large number of customers exist. This paper reviews the
literature on customer interaction and needs in a product development context.
Despite the rich literature, product management and R&D angle have not been
sufficiently addressed. Thus, customer need identification and challenges from
product management and R&D managers’ perspectives are studied in two new
product development (NPD) projects: one in business-to-business (B2B) and the
other in business-to-consumer (B2C) market. While differences between B2B and
B2C markets exist, the results indicate that product management professionals
must collaborate with various stakeholders and utilize many information sources
to obtain and interpret diverging customer needs. Recommended practices for
companies to tackle various customer-need related challenges include systematic
ways of working, small cross-functional teams in product definition, and
avoiding early handovers between product management and R&D. Besides internal
collaboration, product management and R&D professionals should aim for some
direct contact with selected external customers to clarify the real and project
specific needs, and to build overall understanding about customers.