No abstract

No abstract

The ability to develop and understand customer new product preferences in response to changing market trends is shown to be as a key to new product success. Given the significance of developing customer preferences and the increasing use of cross-functional new product teams in the NPD process, the authors examine how customer knowledge development is affected by characteristics of cross-functional new product teams in a market-oriented organizational context. On the basis of a study of 228 new product project managers in the R&D or marketing area, the authors find that customer knowledge development is positively influenced by customer orientation, competitor orientation, and cross-functional integration. Interestingly, lead users' involvement has a positive quadratic effect on customer knowledge development in terms of marketing respondents. However, cross-functional integration weakens the positive effects of both customer orientation and competitor orientation on customer knowledge development. Our results also reveal a clear R&D–marketing split on the main effect of the proposed antecedents.

The ability to understand and develop customer new product preferences in response to changing market trends is shown as a key to new product success. Given the significance of developing customer preferences and the increasing use of cross-functional teams in NPD process, this study examine how customer knowledge development is affected by characteristics of cross-functional teams in a market-orientated organizational context. On the basis of a study of 228 new product project managers who are either R&D or marketing specialties, the results indicated that customer knowledge development has positive effects on customer orientation, competitor orientation, and cross-functional integration. Interestingly, lead users' involvement has a positive quadratic effect on customer knowledge development in terms of marketing respondents. However, cross-functional integration weakens the positive effects of both customer orientation and competitor orientation on customer knowledge development. Our results also reveal a clear R&D-marketing split on the main effect of the proposed antecedents.