Role of careful customer need assessment in product innovation management—empirical analysis

The purpose of this study was to determine the important problems and development needs of product innovation management in five manufacturing companies, particularly focusing on studying the role and importance of customer need assessment in product innovation management. The results indicate that customer need assessment is one of the major development needs in the product innovation management of the studied business-to-business companies. The results gained from the multi-function analysis of the companies facilitate the understanding of product innovation as a complex system that is affected in various ways by the success of customer need assessment. The report for instance describes what kinds of problems and self-reinforcing vicious loops, closely connected with the success of customer need analysis, are involved in product innovation management.