IN SEARCH OF A BETTER APPROACH TO THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEW PRODUCTS

According to most textbooks, the widely accepted Booz, Allen and Hamilton (BAH) conceptual framework is supposedly the best way to go through the new product development process. That is, the textbooks imply that companies will achieve the best results if they follow the BAH conceptual framework. The authors studied ten new products to identify how marketing research was utilized during their development and introduction. The actual “practice” of marketing research usage was then compared with the BAH framework. The comparison showed that marketing research usage in practice was noticeably different from the usage implied by the BAH conceptual framework, thus suggesting that the latter does not hold up perfectly. The authors offer some suggestions as to when the conceptual framework for marketing research usage should be modified, and what the nature of those modifications might be.