The way the product development activities affect the product success: a resource allocation analysis using 'Kano like' approach

Most researchers, as well as practitioners, agree that product development is one of the important product success factors, so that companies allocate high resources for product development process. However, some researches and companies' actual data show that the relationship between product development and product success does not give a conclusive result. In order to explore further that relationship, this study applies an approach called 'Kano like' approach, which portrays the profile of the resources allocation in product development activities and their relations to product success. The result shows that product success is affected by the way the resources allocated in product development activities, rather than the total resources consumed. An ideal or success-triggering scheme of resources allocation can be generated from the 'Kano like' approach. Analyses on 25 product development projects shows that the closer the original scheme to the ideal scheme, the higher the success of the product.