The world is a very competitive place, every day companies from all over the globe try to be on the edge of their fields in order to keep a good distance from competitors. They have found in the new product development process or NPD the leverage they needed to build up that differentiation required to get ahead over competitors. When looking inside the NPD we decided to focus on a very critical and interesting stage, the business analysis process. The purpose sought with our research is to provide a better understanding of how small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) carry out their business analysis stage in the process of new product development (NPD), this purpose was first obtained by stating a main problem and to facilitate the answer to this main problem we proposed two research questions that were later used to review all of the related literature, which resulted in a conceptual framework 2employed to guide this study’s data collection. We decided to use the inductive approach and the use of primary data collected with the help of interviews with companies representing SMEs using a qualitative case study approach through all interviews. It is important to mention that the interviews were also designed with the help of the research questions. The results allowed us to develop a model that shows how the business analysis process looks like in the companies studied as well as to highlight the most relevant factors for the two companies studied when performing the business analysis. Finally the research let us establish some suggestions for future researches regarding the business analysis process such as the differences between small and medium enterprises and larger firms, and the cross-functional activities involved in a business analysis process in larger firms.

Innovation and new product development (NPD) are critical to firm success and are often cited as means to a sustained competitive advantage. Unfortunately, the question of which innovation programs to pursue and how they should be funded is not trivial. This thesis examines the resource allocation and NPD portfolio problem. Special emphasis is placed on the organizational and behavioral factors that influence this problem. In doing so, we adopt a hierarchical perspective and posit that the resource allocation and NPD portfolio problem acquires a unique structure depending on the level at which the problem is considered. Beginning at the firm level, each study attempts to break open a black box to understand the drivers of effective resource allocation and NPD portfolio decisions at successively more detailed levels of analysis. We begin with an analysis of the firm's total R&D investment and we show how R&D intensity (the percentage of revenue that is reinvested in R&D) depends on a combination of NPD portfolio metrics and operational variables. We then extend the analysis to reveal how a simple evolutionary process explains the often cited consistency in R&D intensity at the industry level. Next, we analyze how the R&D investment is partitioned into "strategic buckets" consisting of NPD programs that are characterized by type of innovative activity (incremental or radical). We show how time commitment, technological/market complexity, and potential disruptions to the technology/market environment influence the balance between incremental and radical programs in the NPD portfolio. Finally, we analyze how individual NPD programs are funded and how they evolve over time in an organization setting that is defined by more or less autonomy. We find that how best to allocate resources depends on two types of autonomy bestowed upon managers: autonomy with respect to NPD funding and autonomy regarding how the NPD budget is monitored and controlled. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and managerial implications of our work.

Benefits and consequences of controversial products are debated in the public arena for the protection of consumers and to evaluate the market decisions made by industry and government. The food industry continues to develop new foods as well as processes to bring food to the market. Some of these processes bring to issue the safety of the products or the impact on the market, workers, or environment. Such controversial products or processes include BSE (mad cow disease), genetically modified organisms (GMO), antibiotics, pesticides, carbon monoxide modified atmosphere packaging, and food irradiation. This thesis sets out with the objective of understanding, developing, and utilizing methodologies similar to those used in other contingent valuation studies to evaluate how consumers are influenced by varying information using food irradiation as a focus subject. Food irradiation is a technological food process that continues to be debated and much information favoring and opposing it is readily available to the public, making it a suitable subject about which to study information effects and consumer acceptance. To accomplish this objective, consumers were surveyed in grocery stores in the state of Texas during the spring of 2006. As irradiated foods are not currently widely available, a hypothetical product, irradiated mangoes, was used to elicit information from survey participants. The survey was comprised of two parts. First general information regarding consumer knowledge and trust of food irradiation as well as willingness to pay (WTP) was collected. Second, varying information regarding food irradiation (positive, negative, or mixed) was presented and questioning was reaccomplished. Evaluation of the survey data was made in three papers, each comprising its own chapter in this thesis. The first paper evaluates consumers’ initial trust and knowledge of food irradiation and how these factors interact with information in changing WTP. The second paper assesses responses for a “cheap talk” effect. Cheap talk is informing consumers of the existence of hypothetical bias in studies of this type with the goal being to reduce this bias to real life response equivalence. The third paper evaluates not only WTP, but also how consumer trust is affected by varying forms of information.

As the deregulation of the mobile number portability (MNP) and the emergence of such new technologies and services as PHS and 3G, the mobile telecommunications industry in Taiwan becomes highly competitive than ever. Under such competition, customer churning and profit declining have become of great concerns to mobile service providers. In response, most of providers continuously develop and introduce new value-added products and services. Frequent value-add products and services might strengthen customers¡¦ loyalty (i.e., decrease customer churning) and improve gross profits, but the corresponding marketing cost would also be increased dramatically. To lower the marketing cost and respond to market quickly, marketing staff typically adopts a pilot test based on the simple random sampling (SRS) approach or relies on marketing experts for defining potential target market for a new value-add product or service. The former approach requires a large number of respondents in the pilot test, while the latter is knowledge intensive and may suffer from unavailability of knowledge due to turnover of experienced marketing experts. In this thesis, we propose a novel approach for efficient and effective search for the target market for a new product/service. Specifically, we consider the target market of a new product or service being that of the most similar existing product/service, where the similarity of products/services can be defined based on either their product/service attributes or the similarity between the pilot test of the new product/service and the customer-base of an existing product/service. Accordingly, we propose two target market prediction models for new product/service, i.e., ¡§customer-based target market prediction model¡¨ and ¡§product-attribute-based target market prediction model.¡¨ Our empirical results show that the proposed prediction models are more effective in predicting potential customers for new products/services than traditional approaches.

Abstract The collaborative product development or strategic alliances is a contemporary trend. Although collaborative new product development is widely recognized risky and its value has been questioned, new products remain the lifeblood of businesses and the essence for firms to survive in the competitive and rapid changing world. Nevertheless, many advantages drive the enterprises engaging in the collaborative model. To bring new product to market faster, better, and cheaper, the collaborative new product development model has been demonstrated in amount of various settings as one of the most effective and efficient solutions for new product development, especially for those businesses that lack for sufficient R&D resources. The purpose of this study is to present a framework with some practitioners¡¦ new product development experience along with literature research and a case study of collaborative new platform product development project in Taiwan¡¦s steel industry. Tsang Min Chiu has been engaged in the study case as the coordinator of the project. As a participated observer, the author deeply involves the project and keeps a complete set of documents. Therefore, in addition to the literature, the data collection are mainly done by documentation and complemented by semi-constructed interview. In this study, a collaborative new product development framework with suggestions of practitioners¡¦ viewpoints has been presented. In the framework, a total of 14 successful factors have been identified and classified into internal, external, and collaborative factors with seven, three, and four components respectively. The internal key factors comprise of market-orientated product strategy, effective use of outside resources & technologies, strong organization structure and support, early involvement of team members and partners, effective internal communication, adequate resources, and good new product development process and execution. The external factors include market trend& environmental change, collaborator¡¦s support, and key external technology utilization. And, the collaborative factors consist of external communication, trust, contribution, and benefits sharing. The results of the study suggest that firms may successfully copy the collaborative new product development model by effective execution and cooperation of critical internal factors, external factors, and collaborative factors in the framework and mirroring the practitioners¡¦ experience. However the framework derived from single case under specific conditions is limited and it would require further studies for its generalization.

Competitive reaction to entry is an important issue in the marketing and economics areas. The monopolistic incumbent of a market often faces competitive entry if the market is profitable. This is a common issue that often occurs in the market transition from monopoly to competition. The entrant not only enters the market, but also wants to signal to tell consumers his quality level. The incumbent's reaction is also a signal to the consumers. Thus, how should the incumbent do? The paper "Response to Competitive Entry: A Rationale for Delayed Defensive Reaction" which is written by Ajay Kalra, Surendra Rajiv and Kannan Srinivasan (1998) and published in Marketing Science provides a completed and clear explanation of this issue. They claim that the incumbent would delay the defensive reaction to the competitive entry under information asymmetry. But it is still incorrect. Hence, we want to provide a revision to support that delayed defensive reaction is really a rational response to competitive entry, and explain this issue correctly and logically. We analyze the strategic interactions of the incumbent and the entrants which were omitted previously. Finally, we would obtain the conclusion that is also supporting this point of view¡G delayed defensive reaction is really a rational response to competitive. And it is really a Nash equilibrium, no firms would deviate.

Abstract This study is to investigate the status quo and relationship between R&D-Marketing integration in the product innovation process and organizational performance. Based on the company registered in 2003, a target population composed of 259 Switching Power Supply(SPS¡^companies is formed. Questionnaires were completed by managers responsible for marketing or R&D-Marketing departments. E-mail survey were employed to collect the data and use correlation analysis, one-way ANOVA and hierarchical regression analysis to analysis the data. It is found that the organizational factors variations exist in the integration of department and have positive influence on various activities when perpetual department was established and the manager is responsible for both marketing and R&D-Marketing department. Moreover, the result of research shows organizational factors have positive influence on department integration, and the mutual participation of members is most important. Besides, organizational factors will affect financial performance and program accomplish by integration of R&D-Marketing respectively of organizational category and chief factor. Based on the research findings, the perpetual department for developing new product and co-operated managers are suggested. In addition, mutual participation of members and establishing information network and database to reduce the gap of information between two departments deserve more attention so that the new product¡¦s performance could be improved. Keywords : switching power supply , new product development, department integration, organizational performance

As the consumption trend has shifted to personal uniqueness, the traditional mass production of a single product has already been replaced by a small amount of various production to match consumption pattern. To meet challenge imposed by the market, manufacturers must change tactics and methods in their R&D activities. Consumers have already taken the high-quality products or services for granted, hoping to obtain the desired products or services that as soon as possible. The manufacturer expects to push new products or services to the market earlier than the competitors¡¦ move in order to gain extra profit margins. Higher price can be sold for a product pushed earlier to the market than a later product with the similar function. The products that lag behind in the market introduction will suffer lower prices or no profit. The manufacturer always wants to clear out the stock of existing products to control costs, and attempts to introduce new products or new services with more new functions before followers do. The purpose is to dominate the market and let followers not to enjoy profit margins. So, how to speed up the products¡¦ lifecycle should be the goal for enterprises to pursue. Recently, each enterprise emphasizes the core competencies, keep and strengthen the strong abilities of enterprises, and conducts outsourcing the less competitive products to those companies that are familiar with related manufacturing technologies. In the process a new product is developed or the modification for the product design has taken place. Questions arise as to : (1) how to transmit information to the person who must know as soon as possible? (2) how to guarantee the product information that the research personnel receive is the correct edition? Collaborative Product Commerce between the organizations will encounter more difficulties and challenges than the Collaborative Product Commerce within the organization. And this subject has already become serious challenges in the supply chain. The products function has grown more complicated, and a lot of unconfirmed factors exist in the development of new products. While the project developed carries on, customers¡¦ requirement, manufacturing technology and restriction of engineering ability, and the restriction of the supplier's engineering ability, may all influence the new product engineering. So while the new product development project carries on, because of these changes they will cause design modification or manufacturing operation modification, in order to enable development of the products to maintain integrally, and reach the goal of the project. So how to use PLM system to coordinate with among different functional organization department, and to coordinate inter-organization project team members, have become the main issues of this thesis. For Semiconductor Industry, Taiwan is the most important manufacture area of the world, from IC design, wafer fabrication, wafer probing, IC packing and final test, etc. Taiwan has a entire and strong supply chains. Count according to Dataquest, the global semiconductor assembly and testing industry subcontractor, Taiwan got the 43.7% market share in 2005, nearly have about 30% of leading disparity with No. two U.S.A. with scale of 6,641 million dollars, it is obvious Taiwan is the leading status of the industry in the whole world. This research takes case A Company as an example, and compares the new product development procedure before PLM implementation and after, including the project workflow, data access, information sharing, knowledge sharing, decision making and information security, in order to offer a reference model for the manufacturing industry especially semiconductor assembly and testing industry of Taiwan to implement PLM System.

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<p>The thesis is conducted to investigate how packaging is taken into consideration within the new product development process and in which stages of the new product development process packaging actually is taken into consideration. Further we want to investigate if packaging has increased in importance within the activities of the new product development process, and how organizations deal with standardization of packaging for international markets in the new product development process.</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how packaging of convenience goods is an integrated part of the international new product development process.</p><p>We have chosen a qualitative approach. The study was conducted through in-depth interviews, face-to-face and by phone. The interviewees were selected through judgemental sampling. The sample included eight organi-zations producing convenience goods that are active on several markets.</p><p>It was found that packaging always has been of importance; however, it was found that packaging has increased in importance within concept development implying that packaging indirectly has increased in importance within the new product development process. Further, packaging is included in all stages in the process, but has its ma-jor significance in the concept development phase. International organizations need to consider the level of standardization throughout the process.</p>