THE ROLE OF CONSUMER INFLUENCES IN THE NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT OF PACKAGED FOOD AND BEVERAGE VENTURES

Understanding and applying consumers' needs in product development is key to success across various industries. The failure rate of new products, however, remains high because consumer demands are not adequately addressed. To investigate the role of consumers in the product development processes of small ventures, we conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews of 40 packaged food and beverage small ventures in California and Finland. Our findings showed that consumers rarely drove the design of new products, but rather functioned as a source of validation or feedback for small improvements of existing products. Consumer feedback was often unstructured and concentrated in the latter stages of the product development process. However, even though customer involvement in the small ventures' product development was more restricted than recommended in cocreation literature their influence still brought meaningful changes to the products. Given the small ventures' lack of resources, future research on creative, low-cost ways to co-create is called for.