Ne Product Development - Critical Analysis of Article in IJOPM

Introduction

The traditional approach to new product development (NPD) can be described to start and end with the customer (Slack et al., 2004). However, the focus on NPD has evolved over the years, from having an internal company view to external market view.

The article titled, Customer Support and new product development (Goffin & New, 2001), takes us a step further in the approach to NPD. It discusses a study undertaken by the authors to understand the importance of evaluating the customer support requirements during new product development (NPD) stage. They stress how important it is to include customer support requirements at the beginning of the design process, rather than at the end.

The study was conducted with the help of five companies, each of which are in different industries, to identify how customer support is evaluated at design stage and its importance in NPD. The results show that customer support is highly important in different markets with vastly different products.

Many companies use customer support not only as a means of gaining competitive advantage but also to increase their revenues.

The following seven key elements of customer support were identified for the study:

i.         Installationii.         User-trainingiii.         Documentationiv.         Maintenance and Repair         v.         Online Supportvi.         Warrantyvii.         Upgrades

The five companies which formed part of the study placed varying degree of importance to the above elements in the NPD process. This is evident from the fact that they are not only manufacturing different products but are in totally different industries.

Although previous studies were undertaken to assess the importance of customer support and NPD, no clear relationship could be established between them. In addition, no methodology was developed to evaluate the requirements of customer support.

This was the first study to understand the relationship between customer support and NPD and how customer...