The role of consumer influences in the new product development of packaged food and beverage ventures

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openAccess

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Journal Title

Journal ISSN

Volume Title

A4 Artikkeli konferenssijulkaisussa

Date

2021

Major/Subject

Mcode

Degree programme

Language

en

Pages

10
3111-3120

Series

Proceedings of the Design Society, Volume 1

Abstract

Understanding and applying consumers’ needs in product development is key to success across various industries. The failure rate of new products, however, remains high because consumer demands are not adequately addressed. To investigate the role of consumers in the product development processes of small ventures, we conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews of 40 packaged food and beverage small ventures in California and Finland. Our findings showed that consumers rarely drove the design of new products, but rather functioned as a source of validation or feedback for small improvements of existing products. Consumer feedback was often unstructured and concentrated in the latter stages of the product development process. However, even though customer involvement in the small ventures’ product development was more restricted than recommended in cocreation literature their influence still brought meaningful changes to the products. Given the small ventures’ lack of resources, future research on creative, low-cost ways to co-create is called for.

Description

Publisher Copyright: © ICED 2021.All right reserved.

Keywords

Design process, New product development, Participatory design

Other note

Citation

Perttunen, E M, Jung, S D, Kirjavainen, S, Björklund, T A & Kim, S 2021, ' The role of consumer influences in the new product development of packaged food and beverage ventures ', Proceedings of the Design Society, vol. 1, pp. 3111-3120 . https://doi.org/10.1017/pds.2021.572