文档介绍：Eric (Er) Fang
Customer Participation and the
Trade-Off Between New Product
Innovativeness and Speed to Market
To address the trade-off between new product innovativeness and speed to market caused by customer
participation activities, the author differentiates two dimensions of customer participation—customer participation
as an information resource (CPI) and customer participation as a codeveloper (CPC)—and explores the
moderating effects of downstream work connectivity and new product development process
interdependence plexity. Matched data collected from 143 ponent manufacturer dyads
indicate that CPI has a negative influence on innovativeness when downstream work connectivity is
high but a positive effect when it is low. In contrast, CPI has a positive effect on speed to market when downstream
work connectivity is high and no significant effect when it is low. In addition, CPC undermines new
product speed to market when process interdependence is high. In contrast, CPC can improve new product speed
to market but hurt new product innovativeness when process interdependence is low. The results of this article
provide specific managerial guidelines as to how to manage customer participation to improve new product
innovativeness and speed to market.
Keywords: customer participation, innovation, speed to market, downstream work
significant recent change in business markets has innovativeness refers to the extent to which the product dif-
been the increasing involvement of industrial cus- fers peting alternatives in a way that is meaningful
Atomers in manufacturers’ new product development to customers and therefore reflects meaningful uniqueness
(NPD) processes (., Bonner and Walker 2004; Kristens- (Dewar and Dutton 1986; Sethi, Smith, and Park 2001).
son, Gustafsson, and Archer 2004). As Prahalad and Speed to market reflects the time elapsed between the initial
Ramaswamy (2000, p. 80) state, in business markets, “cus- development, whi