Managing User Involvement in the Early Stages of New Product Development (RIKON Group)
Managing User Involvement in the Early Stages of New Product Development (RIKON Group)
Lynch, Patrick and O'Toole, Tom (2002) Managing User Involvement in the Early Stages of New Product Development (RIKON Group). In: 17th Annual International Marketing and Purchasing Conference, Dijon, France.
The literature primarily focuses on two aspects of user involvement in the new product development process. Firstly, how new product development (NPD) relationships form and mature (Milson, Raj and Wilemon, 1996) and secondly the variables that impact on collaborative user involvement (Gruner and Homburg, 2000; Biemans, 1992). However, research on user participation is incomplete as little if any research has been devoted to determining how widespread or deeply embedded partnerships are in the NPD process. Additionally, managerial models for the involvement of users in the new product development process are scarce (Labahn and Krappel, 2000). The purpose of this exploratory investigation is to develop a conceptual model for the management of user involvement in the early stages of the NPD process.