When to call the customer? Timing of customer involvement in the development of new products and services

Abstract

Involving customers in the development of new products and services helps firms understand customer needs, increasing the likelihood of meeting those needs and expectations. Although a large body of literature addresses the implications of customer involvement for project performance, the results of previous research are somewhat inconsistent. This paper explores this issue by examining the differing impact of customer involvement on the development of new products and new services. We propose that the role of customer involvement differs for these two types of innovations, with involvement in the early stages more important for products and involvement in the launch stage more important for services. Our results, based on a comprehensive dataset on customer involvement in innovation, are consistent with such a pattern, suggesting that more attention should be paid to the conditional benefits of customer involvement in different types of solution development.