Marketing's role in successful product development

Abstract

This paper argues, on the basis of an empirical study of leading US and UK manufacturing firms, that the marketing function has on balance a more important contribution to make in identifying and initiating product development options than the technical function. It is shown that from the manufacturer's viewpoint different types of developments revolve around: (i) old product development, which is concerned wth improving or updating existing product lines and (ii) new product development, which is concerned with new product lines. Within each of these two main types further important marketing‐related options are identified which widen the scope for product development far more than is commonly appreciated.