Integrating Consumer Understanding into New Product Development: Practical Approach for Integrating Consumer Understanding into Technology Push-originated NPD Processes

In this paper, we wish to contribute to technology push -originated NPD process development by introducing an approach to increase consumer orientation in practice in NPD processes. We propose a five-step approach for this purpose. The NPD stage-specific steps in our approach are as follows: 1. cross-functional workshops in early NPD phases to generate end user-oriented product ideas from technological opportunities, 2. cross-functional workshops to develop end user-oriented product concepts from product ideas, 3. qualitative end user studies to develop more consumer-oriented cross-functional product concepts, 4. specific phase for food products: development of the sensory parameters of product prototypes in order to better meet the criteria of consumers, and 5. semi-quantitative consumer studies to validate consumers' positive buying intentions and evaluations of the subjective quality and price perceptions of the developed prototypes. We made the decision to use a comparative methodology in the quantitative consumer studies; the reference product is from the same product category as the one in which the prototype is intended to be launched. Currently, new products fail more often than they succeed on the market, especially in the case of groceries; our reasoning is that this problem is due to the overly limited understanding of end users in the NPD process. In aiming to increase this orientation, one should be ready to invest in this issue as to technology or economics and take action to understand end users earlier in the process, allocating a greater budget and know-how to this effort with a view to achieving deeper understanding.