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The role of customer participation in building new product development speed capabilities in turbulent environments

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Abstract

In a sample of 204 SMEs, this study investigates how customer co-creation impacts firms’ ability to increase new product development (NPD) speed. The results show firms that collaborate with customers in the NPD process at greater levels are able to increase NPD speed capabilities and commercialize products at a faster rate. In addition, environmental turbulence is investigated as to how it may impact the relationship between customer participation and NPD speed. The results show that customer participation in NPD allows firms to better manage turbulent environments by enhancing the speed at which new products are brought to market. Finally, the results show that NPD speed mediates the relationship between customer participation and the performance of new products, thus highlighting the importance of developing new products faster. The principle contribution of the study is the examination of an additional moderating factor in regard to customer participation and NPD speed. The second contribution of this research is that while previous studies have examined the individual impacts of customer participation on NPD speed and NPD speed on NPD performance, this research statistically demonstrates the mediating process among the three constructs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management, Haworth College of Business, Western Michigan University, 1903 Western Michigan Ave, Kalamazoo, MI, 49008, USA

    Todd Morgan

  2. Department of Management and Entrepreneurship, Herberger Business School, St. Cloud State University, 720 4th Ave S, St. Cloud, MN, 56301-4498, USA

    Sergey Alexander Anokhin

  3. School of Engineering and Entrepreneurship, National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University, 30 Lenina Pr, Tomsk, Russia

    Sergey Alexander Anokhin & Natalia Chistyakova

  4. Department of Marketing, California State University San Bernardino, 5500 University Parkway, San Bernardino, CA, 92407, USA

    Chanho Song

Authors
  1. Todd Morgan
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  2. Sergey Alexander Anokhin
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  3. Chanho Song
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  4. Natalia Chistyakova
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Correspondence to Todd Morgan.

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Morgan, T., Anokhin, S.A., Song, C. et al. The role of customer participation in building new product development speed capabilities in turbulent environments. Int Entrep Manag J 15, 119–133 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11365-018-0549-9

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