NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT CO CREATION PROCESS: A THAI CASE OF MICRO COMMUNITY ENTERPRISES OF NON-FOOD HERBAL PRODUCTS AND R&D GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONS

This research aims to explore the best practice components affecting the new product development process in non-food herbal product sector of the micro community enterprises and R&D government organizations in Thailand. Drawn from a literature review, four components were identified with influence on the new product development process of R&D government organizations: 1) Ideation and screening including; entrepreneur characteristics, business analysis and market analysis 2) Matching technology including; technology assessment and researcher capability 3) new product development process and marketing strategy, and 4) government support. In order to seek for the best practice components for the success of the new product development, the mixed method was employed. In the first phase, the conceptual model and interview questions were subsequently designed and developed in accordance with the literature review, data were collected by in-depth interviews through purposive sampling, the interview questions were asked to ten specialists in new product development in R&D organizations as well as fifteen micro enterprise communities with experience in newly developed products and commercialization in non-food herbal product sector. During the interviews, there were discussions about the new product development process, and content and descriptive analyses were then conducted with the interview data. The second phase involved the use of questionnaire to collect data with a sample of 354 entrepreneurs from micro-enterprise communities in the non-food herbal product sector. Descriptive statistics were conducted to analyze the micro enterprise communities ' demographic data. While Pearson Product Moment Correlation was employed to analyze the correlation, multiple linear regression analysis was used to find any influence among independent and dependent variables. The current results revealed that both the R&D organizations and the micro enterprises have applied the above four components, which were found to have a correlation and factor analysis to the new product development process. In addition, findings from the questionnaire showed such other new components are Ideation and screening entrepreneur, Matching process for appropriate development, Research and product development and Coordinate product efficiency innovation to commercialization.