KEY FACTORS AFFECTING CUSTOMER EVALUATION OF DISCONTINUOUS NEW PRODUCTS

Common sense, as well as plenty of research, tells us that customer fe edback can play an important role in successful product development ef forts. By understanding the key factors that affect customers' evaluat ions of a new product, a project team improves its chances of making t he right decisions throughout the design and development effort. Howev er, customers typically lack a useful frame of reference for evaluatin g discontinuous, or really new products. In all likelihood, the key fa ctors that affect customers' evaluations of radically new products dif fer from those for incremental innovations. Robert Veryzer describes t he results of a study that examines the customer research efforts and findings of seven firms involved in the development of discontinuous n ew products. This study has the following objectives: gaining insight into the customer research inputs such companies use during the develo pment of discontinuous new products, and exploring the critical factor s that influence customers' evaluations of these really new products. The subjects in this study conducted relatively little formal customer research during the early stages of the NPD projects. The methods use d for obtaining customer input during the concept generation and explo ration stages were primarily qualitative. Although the companies in th e study still did not focus consistently on customer issues during the technical development and design stage, the less discontinuous projec ts did use such traditional quantitative techniques as concept tests, clinics, and experiments during this phase of NPD. Throughout the proj ects in this study, the real opportunities for obtaining customer inpu t came during the prototype testing and commercialization phases of th e NPD projects. Several key factors appeared to influence customer eva luations of the products that were being developed by the NPD teams in this study. Lack of familiarity was manifested in customers' resistan ce to the new products in the study. Similarly, unfamiliarity with the se new products often seemed to lead customers to focus on product att ributes that development team members viewed as relatively unimportant . Other factors that affected customer evaluation of the products in t his study included customer uncertainty about the benefits and risks a ssociated with the product, customers' ability to understand how the p roduct operates, perceptions of the product's safety, and product aest hetics.