INTEGRATING EXPERT CUSTOMERS IN NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT IN INDUSTRIAL BUSINESS - VIRTUAL ROUTES TO SUCCESS

Customer integration in new product development processes (NPD) has become a potent idea in the innovation literature and enjoys increasing attention in business. In general, methods of customer integration can considerably improve a firm’s knowledge base for new product development, particularly when customer knowledge can be incorporated, which otherwise remains tacit. Interestingly, no method has been developed yet which can help to exploit customers’ expertise at exactly those stages in the NPD process where user’s wants and aspirations have to be translated into product specifications. The emerging new methods of Virtual Customer Integration represent promising new methods for filling this gap. However, these methods must fulfill certain requirements in order to gain competitive advantages from customer integration. We introduce a framework that helps to select the most appropriate method and tool of customer integration, according to the particular requirements of an industrial organization in the design and prototyping stage. Establishing these criteria is critical as they directly derive from a firm’s innovation strategy. Hence, those criteria have to be elaborated in detail. This article provides a business case which shows how to do that and what implications can be derived for choosing appropriate methods of virtual customer integration.