Customer Knowledge Development

What it measures

Measures the degree to which a new product development (NPD) project employs an ongoing, emergent, and trial-and-error process to develop understanding of evolving customer preferences across prelaunch stages (idea generation, concept refinement, product development, and product testing). The scale captures three defining characteristics of customer knowledge development: (1) the process is iterative and ongoing, with multiple rounds of customer feedback guiding successive iterations; (2) novelty at each stage emerges from customer interaction rather than from predefined plans; and (3) learning occurs via an action-based trial-and-error mode. Respondents are asked to rate items with respect to a specific recent NPD project in which they participated.

Response format

5-point Likert scale

Scale items

• We went through lots of iterations based on customer feedback prior to launching the product in the market.
• We developed and tested lots of new ideas over the course of this NPD process.
• The NPD process in this project involved numerous failed experiments.
• We learned about customer preferences as we worked with them through the new product iterations.
• The actual new product that we took to market was very different from our initial expectation.

Full scale items shown. Always cite the original source when using this scale in research.

Usage notes & scoring

Validated in a sample of 165 marketing managers from Canadian manufacturing firms (top 1,000 by sales revenue; response rate 20.3%; average 12.7 years experience in division; average 7 NPD projects). CFA model (with new product performance): χ² = 29.31, df = 19, p < .05; NFI = .97, NNFI = .95, CFI = .97. Construct reliability = .89. All item loadings significant (t range = 13.84–15.14, p < .01). Customer knowledge development positively predicts new product performance (β = .28, t = 3.11, p < .01), accounting for 20% of performance variance. Functions as a complete mediator of integration mode of conflict resolution and championing of product leadership goal, and as a partial mediator of cross-functional team effects on new product performance. Discriminant validity confirmed against all model constructs.

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Citation

Joshi, A. W., & Sharma, S. (2004). Customer knowledge development: Antecedents and impact on new product performance. Journal of Marketing, 68(4), 47–59.

Keywords