The PDMA Handbook of New Product Development

16.3. How to Interact With the Customers?

Of interest next is the overall process of customer interaction. This entails issues such as, modes, overall style, and methods of interaction.

16.3.1. Modes of Customer Interaction

A product manager may use one or more of the following modes to interact with potential customers.

• In-depth interviews: Face-to-face in-depth interviews can be conducted to gather customer input on various aspects of the new products to be developed (see Chapter 14). The main objective of an interview is to translate the customers' definition of desired value into products or services. Therefore, a typical one-on-one interview probes a customer's whole situation to discover both general and detailed needs of the customers (Griffin and Hauser, 1993); that is, the focus should be on customer "problem-solving" because successful new products often emerge from a problem that was once unmet in the marketplace. Gillette is one company that has successfully used the situational interview technique. When developing its line of men's toiletries, Gillette researchers interviewed 70,000 men about what they liked in shaving creams and aftershaves. Also, many Gillette employees come to work unshaven and use shaving products in the company's on-site "Shaving Test Lab." The NPD staff then probes these employees' reactions and feedback via one-on-one interviews to draw out specific attributes, shortcomings, and advantages of each product concept. Gillette conducted thousands ...