A Customer-active Paradigm for Industrial Product Idea Generation

Abstract

It has long been a source of concern to students of marketing research that some of the more sophisticated marketing research techniques, such as multidimensional scaling, routinely used in the generation of ideas for new consumer products, have not been extensively applied to the generation of ideas for new industrial products. Under the well-founded assumption that there is at least latent demand for improved need search and idea generation methodologies in the industrial sector,2 research is being conducted by many to explore differences in the consumer and industrial buying situations, differences that might be preventing straightforward transfer of consumer marketing research tools to that sector.