Abstract

The aim of the article. The aim of the article is development of evolutional models of methods and means of satisfying the consumer needs in a form of corresponding lines of development represented by sets of successive discrete states regularly passed by these methods and means in the process of evolution. Such models are supposed to match demands of the NPD process providing objective appraisal and predicting of the consumer value of innovation taking into account the change of consumer needs of and attitude toward the methods of satisfying them under global market changes and consumer trends that these changes reflect. The results of the analysis. New product correspondence with customer needs is one of the critical terms of their market success. Existing methods of estimation of this correspondence make it possible to estimate only “obvious” needs and demands in the moment or during the period of interaction with the consumer while latent and future needs remain beyond the investigation. Consumers are not static in their needs and behaviour, their demands to level and means of satisfaction of needs change under the influence of volatile environment and as a result of consumer self-development. Collected and proceeded by traditional marketing research technologies data does not provide in-depth and reliable understanding even of present state of consumer needs structure because of difficulties of synchronization and integration of varied consumer inputs and fuzziness of consumer segments; a problem of future needs identification for successful new product development is still left in abeyance. Satisfaction of any need evolves in direction of “idealization” i.e. satisfying in a moment and place of emergence of the need free of charge on the process of satisfying. The idealization trend is realized through: 1) dynamization, integration and specialization of needs; 2) increase of level of satisfaction of every need and number of simultaneously satisfied needs; 3) reduction of consumer expenditure on need satisfaction with decreasing of concomitant to this satisfaction harmful effects. It is obvious that lines of development of methods and means of need satisfaction must match the lines of development of needs and fit the practice of successful NPD. We have distinguished several such lines among which the following ones seem to be the most obvious and robust: a line of specialization (segmentation) of methods and means of need satisfaction according to features of consumers segments; a line of dynamization of satisfaction of needs; a line of coordination of need satisfaction with place / time /conditions of need emergence; a line of reduction of number of intermediate stages in the process of need satisfaction (approaching to the satisfaction of ultimate need); a line of combination (integration) of satisfying the needs (in space, in time etc.); a line of individualization of needs satisfaction; a line of increase of consumer contribution in individualized consumer value creation and a line of simplification of need satisfaction. Main stages were identified for every line; number of stages was unified to 10 in order to simplify the further quantitative appraisal of indicators of new product consumer value [11]. Indicator of the evolutional state of consumer need satisfaction may be considered a vector: I = {Ii}, where Ii are partial indicators of the evolutional state according to certain lines of development. Quantitative value of the partial indicators coincides with the number of the stage on the corresponding line of development of need satisfaction or line of development of methods and means of this satisfaction achievement. In case of evolutionary correct new product the value of these indicators can not diminish as it conflicts with regularities of development of needs. Conclusions and directions of further researches. The evolutionary models presented by the proposed lines of development of needs and means of satisfying them are based on general laws and regularities of needs development. Therefore these models combined with empirical data concerning top achievements in the need satisfaction make it possible to get an objective generalized appraisal of current and future evolutional state of any need and means of satisfying it tolerant to permanent small shifts of individual needs in volatile environment. It means that these methods after approbation and sophistication can be successfully used for the estimation of reasonability of innovation at any stage of NPD process.

Keywords: evolutionary model, line of development, consumer’s need, new product development, satisfaction of need

JEL Classification: C53, D81, O31, O32.

Cite as: Hlinenko, L. (2014). Modelling of the evolutional methods to satisfy the consumer’s needs in new product development. Marketing and Management of Innovations, 3, 11-20. https://doi.org/10.21272/mmi.2014.3-01

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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