What's the Problem?

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     2. Because it costs time and money just as
         developers are pressured to work faster and
         cheaper.

From The PDMA Toolbook for New Product Development:

"First, customer research is time-consuming" at a time industries are under pressure to shorten development time "there's not much incentive to add steps that appear to extend rather than shorten NPD cycle time."

"Second, customer research requires additional resource investments." Again at a time when developers are under pressure to minimize expenses.

"Third, ... NPD does not lend itself to customer input." Typically, technical specialists are responsible for development. Marketeers responsible to sell and there is usually not much coordination between them. (Miller and Swaddling, 2002, p87-88)

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Mello agrees with Cooper:

"... 70 percent of product life cycle costs are determined during the crucial product definition phase." (Mello, 2002, p. 19)

Why so little investment in front-end customer research during new product development?

Two reasons:

1. Managers think they know better.

Mello again:

"... there is a yawning gap between how well senior managers think they address customer concerns and how well they actually do so, creating what could be called a customer-centricity gap." So of course they don't see the need to devote resources to systematically identify customer needs. (Mello, p. 4)

(cont'd above right)

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Why do it if it adds time and money?

Because the payoff is much larger than the investment.
Robert Cooper:

"Contrary to myth, taking a little extra time to execute the market analysis and market research in a high-quality fashion does not add extra time; rather it pays off, not only with higher success rates, but also in terms of staying on schedule and achieving better time efficiency." (Cooper, 2005, p. 8)

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How can you be quicker and cheaper if you take extra time and money before you've really started?

Cooper again:

Because early customer research prevents two of the worst product development time wasters: project scope creep and unstable specs. (Cooper, 2005, p. 11)

(cont'd right >>>)

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What about short cuts, like exploiting the competition's research and following them?

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