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“We must have the wrong consumers” – a case study on new food product development failure

Toni Ryynänen Department of Economics and Management, University of Helsinki,

Helsinki, Finland, and

Annaleena Hakatie Verso Finland Ltd, Helsinki, Finland

Abstract

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to investigate, in detail, an unsuccessful food development project that took place in 2008-2010. The case is studied from the viewpoint of an interpretive paradigm. This article concentrates on constructing the critical elements that led to a food development project failure. The plan was to have a traditional Finnish dish updated and introduced as a mass produced high-end convenience food. The project included new convenience food development, packaging design, consumer market research and a sensory study to back up the food product development on behalf of a newly established company. Theoretical grounds for the case are based on the new product development (NPD) research process in the food sector.

Design/methodology/approach – The method applied is an explorative single within-case study. The research data were mainly obtained from qualitative materials that ranged from marketing plans to case study field notes compiled by the researchers. Quantitative data were also obtained from various types of materials but to a lesser extent.

Findings – The results of the study show that the failure of new product development was connected to the factors identified in classic NPD research. In addition, five phenomena that contributed to product development failure were constructed: path-dependency; “information condensations”; the illusion of mutual knowledge and understanding; practices of problem definition; and window-of-opportunity effects. The results are presented in a form of analytical generalisation that can be applied, with certain restrictions, to other contexts for new food product development.

Originality/value – Failure rates of NPD have remained the same for the last 30 years in the food sector. Failed NPD projects can be valuable assets for the food industry when properly analysed. Examination of successful NPD projects has provided valuable lists of success factors, but knowledge on phenomena having an effect on NPD failure is needed.

Keywords Case studies, New product development, Convenience foods, Consumer research

Paper type Case study

1. Introduction A newly founded food company became engaged in a new food development project. Its brand owners had an idea about introducing a new convenience food onto the market. Consumer research was conducted by an outsourced marketing research company. A sensory study was conducted by the university-based food research organisation and new package designs created by an outsourced design consultant were made. The prototypes of product and packs looked great. The consumer research and the sensory study were most certainly expected to back up the revolutionary ideas

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Received 31 August 2012 Revised 25 October 2012

Accepted 30 October 2012

British Food Journal Vol. 116 No. 4, 2014

pp. 707-722 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited

0007-070X DOI 10.1108/BFJ-08-2012-0215

originated from the brand owners. However, the presentation of the consumer and sensory study results turned out to be the exact opposite. The taste of the product was not as expected. It was indicated by the research that the consumers were not willing to repeat the purchase as often as they should, and the quality image of the product was not as expected. The research stated that the consumers were not willing to pay the premium price either. Consumers seemed to have been somewhat biased towards the taste and other extrinsic features of the new product. The brand owners exclaimed at the meeting: “We must have the wrong consumers!”

The development of new food products or the updating of an existing product is a risky undertaking. The vignette above describes what happened to the failed food product development project that is examined in this study. New product development (NPD) is perceived as one of the most important success factors for the food industry. However, research indicates that many new food products developed never appear on the market in the first place (Rudolph, 1995). It is also documented that the failure rate for new products on consumer food markets is somewhere between 60 and 80 per cent (Grunert and Valli, 2001; Traill and Grunert, 1997; Lord, 1999; Rudolph, 1995; Stewart-Knox and Mitchell, 2003).

The purpose of this research was to take part in discussions about the low rate of food product innovation introduced onto the market and the high failure risks involved in NPD in the convenience food sector. The article presents a comparatively new non-traditional approach of food product development, which describes and analyses successful processes of NPD. Typically, case studies are applied in comparative research settings, for benchmarking purposes or to describe and analyse food product development projects that have succeeded in the market (Rudder, 2003; Rudder et al., 2001). Only a few detailed analyses of failed food products or development projects exist. An “unwritten rule” seems to be that in a successful NPD project, all of the relevant factors have been done well. In a failed project some or all of these very same elements are missing or alternatively have been conducted poorly.

There are clear reasons for applying success stories as research material: They are easy to recognise and generally available. People are willing to reveal the successful processes and to share their positive experiences. Companies also perceive positive attention and publicity through the medium of marketing and communication with interest groups. “Best practices” thinking and “the winner takes all” attitude are also associated with a favourable analysis of successful food product development projects. The strengths and weaknesses of analysing successful projects are evident. The approach taken in this article is partly to challenge the current model. The purpose is to study an unsuccessful project in order to investigate and therefore to understand better the dynamics it embodies. It is hard to resurrect ideas that have been discarded by an organisation. On one hand, it seems that nobody would work on anything that was tagged as a failure. On the other hand, there are many expressions that refer to valuable aspects of human flaws and failures: “learning the hard way”, “learning by trial and error” and “learning by failing”. It is suggested that analysing food product development failures can be, at best, more informative or illuminating than simply repeating descriptions of success stories.

First, the article concentrates on typical NPD descriptions, as to what a new product in the food sector is, and how a food product development failure is defined. Second, the article presents case research materials, methods, and the case description. Third, the

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case is studied in detail. The third section identifies what happened during the project and how various “propositions” (Yin, 2003) or “issues” (Stake, 1995) lead to the product development failure. Fourth, the article discusses five phenomena that have been constructed around NPD failure and the lessons learned. The applicability of the results to other practical food product development contexts is discussed at the end of the article.

2. NPD and the food sector Current NPD research is mostly about descriptions of processes. Although, a small amount of the research literature is devoted solely to the food industry, the most fundamental practices and principles of NPD is claimed to be common across most industries (Anderson, 2008; Rudder et al., 2001). Major types of new product development descriptions are structured, sequential process models or alternatively simultaneous and overlapping models. It is widely accepted that a good food-product development process should be flexible and continuously evolve. It is also typical to list key factors or major drivers of a new product’s success. The first stages, especially planning and evaluation phases are emphasised. In these stages the viability of a new product should be determined and decided upon. Another frequently mentioned issue is a sharp and early product definition. A detailed project definition in terms of market needs, market preferences and product specifications enables the developer to arrive at sound stop or go decisions. Other issues are a cross-functional team approach, a focus on evaluation and decision points, quality execution, quality management of development process and a multi-stage and gate approach (Cooper, 1994).

Most models of NPD define between 4-13 success factors. The most general factors driving success are typically related to market, company, project, and product (van der Panne et al., 2003). The ultimate challenge of practical NPD is to bring all of the relevant aspects of the success factors together in an effective and meaningful way. “In the real world” of product development, all of the above mentioned factors co-exist and they cannot be conveniently separated for detailed analysis. A further complication is that each of these factors is usually divided into various sub-categories. They are so inter-connected with each other in such a way that when one changes, it will probably have an effect on other factors as well.

Hoban (1998) found that a lack of strategic focus, limited understanding of the market, priorities not set or communicated, lack of financial resources, and focus only on short-term profitability are perceived as having the highest negative impact on NPD. Poor quality, limited creativity or vision and lack of support for risk-taking were also rated as having a high impact on NPD failure. Lord (1999) concluded that the major factors that have impacted on food NPD failure are the following: planning, management, concept and execution. These major factors comprise sub-factors. Planning includes strategies, competencies, distribution, market and consumer analysis. Management comprises organisational culture, support, resources, expectations and focus, development processes and decision processes. Concept includes lack of consumer benefit or unique characteristics, lack of defined market target, introduction at the wrong time, incorrect positioning, price, package and marketing. Execution comprises failure to deliver the promise, lack of taste or texture, non-functional packages and failure to execute the sales plan or to achieve appropriate display or retailer support.

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There is substantial research on NPD processes, strategies, management and best practices. It seems that research have repeatedly “verified” information on how to build successful new products. Nonetheless, failure rates have remained roughly the same during the last 30 years (Suwannaporn and Speece, 2010). It seems that researchers and practitioners of NPD know what a successful process is, but the problem lies in how one is able to detect the constituent elements of success during an on-going project. Another issue is that although the success factors are known, there are other abstract issues that have effects on NPD.

This article analyses product development failures, and argues that it can be used for organisations to build up explicit and valuable knowledge about their NPD activities. The article does not propose a solution for those problems that are faced by new food product development. However, this study takes a different stance and takes advantage of knowledge obtained from a failed project. The line of argument is that when something gets labelled as failure, valuable information is lost in the act of negative stigmatisation. It is claimed that by combining positive with negative experiences a more complete understanding about NPD by an organisation is obtained.

The profile of a failed project depends on the definition of a new product. The term NPD is utilised to describe a range of food product developments. It is summarised that the main types of new foods are me-too products, line extensions, repositioned products, new forms of and reformulation of existing products, new packaging of existing products, innovative products (changes in an existing product otherwise than mentioned) and creative or “never-seen before” products (Fuller, 2005; Linnemann et al., 2006).The case studied is about an innovative food product.

It is also somewhat unclear how a new food product success or failure is defined. Is it a product concept developed but not launched? Is it a launched new product that fails to meet the expected targets? Is it a launched new item that generates revenues but loses distribution and revenues too quickly in a defined period of time after the launch (Lord, 1999)? This study concentrates on the first definition. The analysed development project was cancelled during latest stages of the development, before the mass-manufacturing and a launch stage. Most of the NPD carried out in the private sector is aimed at producing a successful product that is distributed and sold on the market. This was also the intention in the project described in this article which can be considered a failure. It is maintained that the exploration of the particular project, whether labelled as failed or not, can serve as alternative approach to map the relatively uncharted terrains of an unsuccessful NPD. The fact is that the success factors of NPD are already known and well-established in current innovation and product development research. Despite this, NPD failures in the food industry are an everyday occurrence.

3. Research materials, methods and the NPD project 3.1 Materials and methods The method used was an explorative single within-case study. The case study method was chosen because the phenomenon under scrutiny is complex, contextual, and too context sensitive to be studied conveniently in any other way (Yin, 2003; Stake, 1995). The case was also evolving during the NPD project itself. In typical case research, a case is not an empirical project or any similar set of events as such, but a phenomenon of which the project is an example. Darke et al. (1998) suggest that it is essential to

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differentiate between a case study research project and a consulting exercise. The former should have wider interest for relevant research and practitioner communities, whereas the latter is tailored to the sponsoring organisations specific interests and is undertaken to provide results for those organisations. The research materials were collected from the company project. The project was a single NPD process conducted in a small and newly founded food company, and the case is about the dynamics of the failed food product development. The unit of analysis is particular problems in NPD: how these were framed and defined in the project and how problem solving unfolded. The selection of the single case was based on pragmatic and convenience considerations (Seawright and Gerring, 2008). The project is an exemplar of a well-resourced but failed NPD in the food sector. Researchers had a rare opportunity for unusual research access.

The research materials collected during the project included various types of quantitative, but mostly qualitative materials. Case study field notes, case study documents and tabular materials were collected during the project. Moreover, “narratives” or notes compiled by the researchers during and after the data collection were written. These notes include case analysis materials generated during the interpretation stage of the study. Notes about the interactions between the players in the product development process under study were taken. These were later analysed to determine where tensions, disagreements and problems arose in the project. Attention was also paid to those issues that seemed to be a hindrance to the project. Other naturally occurring research material included marketing materials, product positioning plans, cost figures, sales estimations, research reports created during the project and presentations of the key participants.

Qualitative materials were collected by drawing on methods of participant observation. The methodology of participant observation was utilised, and provided information about interaction in relationships. During observations, the researcher took on the role of observer-as-participant. The researcher and data triangulation has the benefit of providing an in-depth understanding and grounds for analysing multiple aspects and perspectives. One of the authors was educated as a designer and she is a representative of a product and marketing development consultancy organisation that took part to the development project from the beginning. She also participated in the consumer research and sensory study, and she was responsible for collating and analysing the case materials during the project. Another author is an unpaid academic researcher who did not participate in the development project. His contribution was to bring consumer research and case study knowledge to this study.

3.2 The NPD project The names of persons and companies involved in this study have been omitted to ensure confidentiality. Therefore the participants are simply referred as: brand owners (a new food company); a product, marketing and packaging development consultant; a public funding organisation; a marketing research company; and an university based food development and research organisation. All but the first are so-called complementors of the product development because their inputs were outwith the aforementioned food company.

The brand owners initiated the project and provided the product ideas and initial production plans. The product, marketing and packaging development consultant

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assumed the general management of the project. However, the brand owners reserved the implicit right to intervene whenever they considered it necessary. The consultant company provided both marketing materials and packaging design concepts. One of the authors participated in the project as an employee of the consultant company. A public funding organisation provided additional resources that made it possible to conduct consumer and sensory studies during the project. The university based research organisation planned and executed a sensory study after the product concepts had been chosen for further development (consumer panel n ¼ 25; professional panel n ¼ 6; all of the test subjects tasted four different products and commented on the possible names of the products and designed packages). The international marketing research company conducted a consumer survey after the sensory study had been conducted and initiated food product modifications ðn ¼ 150; 63 per cent female, 37 male; age 18-30 years 33 per cent, 31-45 years 30 per cent, 46 , years 37 per cent; interviews were conducted in market halls in the capital city area and lasted for about 20-25 minutes). Consumer studies conducted by small and medium-sized food companies are typically “good enough” or “quick and dirty” as described by one of the participants when alluding to practical consumer studies in the food industry. The implication was that consumer studies, if conducted at all, are seldom rigorous, or valid or reliable in terms of academic research. Consumer research is typically planned to provide simple answers to food companies’ practical questions. However, the participants of the NPD project did not question the results of the studies. Despite the questionable validity of their information content, both the consumer and sensory study are only briefly mentioned here. Both of the studies influenced the process in which the project ended up in failure.

The developed food product was a traditional dish produced and consumed mainly in the eastern parts of Finland. The food is typically hand-baked in households or produced in small amounts by the small local bakers. The original products are mainly sold in market trade or to a lesser degree in grocery shops as a special product. The product development idea was to introduce this as a traditional dish into the convenience food sector. The product was planned to be mass-produced and sold in large quantities in super and hyper markets. The food was positioned as “high-end ready-meal” product with distinctive quality features communicated through professionally designed branding and packaging. The context for developing the updated traditional food as convenience food was necessitated the start a new food company with distinctive brand elements. This article deals with the first product development. The product range was planned to be expanded later with line extensions and other traditional foods.

The leading figures of the product development were two persons with a considerable work record in leading product development positions in large food companies. The persons were the brand owners of the new food company. The original development idea was reasonable and well-justified. In the late 2008 brand owners applied for funding from a public funding organisation that promotes innovations and development of new products. Substantial funding was granted for NPD, and a product and marketing development consultant was commissioned to develop both the food product’s features and the brand characteristics (including marketing and packaging) of the new company in the summer of 2009. The product and marketing development consultant quickly organised co-operation with the university based food research and

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development organisation. The role of this organisation was to create recipes and test the identifiable features of the new food product. At the product optimisation phase, four “works like, looks like, tastes like” product prototypes were developed (Rudolph, 1995). The four prototypes embodied combinations of different product forms and various recipes that required breakthroughs in both formulation and processing. One of the prototypes was the brand owners’ original recipe. However, it did not meet the taste expectations of the panel in the sensory study. The product was perceived as being bulk, and its taste was described as uninteresting. Both the professional and the consumer panel of the sensory study backed-up these results. The brand owners rejected and diminished the results claiming that the participants of the panels: “. . .are not real; they do not represent the true clientele or even potential buyers of the product, because there were too many university students”. However, students are a considerable consumer group for ready-made meals.

The original idea and the prototype of the brand owners’ was chosen for further development. As the prototype was not the one recommended by the sensory study results, it was heavily contested by the consultant commissioned to develop the product, marketing materials and package design. Later, consumer research on the product’s and brand features and packaging design was conducted by an international marketing research company. The project funding was reconsidered in April 2010 based on these consumer research results. The main reasons for the reassessment of the funding were price (too expensive for everyday consumption), position of the product in the market (high-end product, suitable only for celebration and occasional consumption) and consumer willingness to buy the product (once or twice in a month at the current price, 4e, per 250 gram package). The representative of the marketing research company formulated and summarised the results by the following sentence: “There is no consumer interest towards a product that tastes like the tested one.” Research material collection and the product development ended as described in April 2010. The developed product did not appear on the market as it was intended during the development project.

The explicitly announced goal was to produce a significantly different food product that drives consumer benefit. Therefore, the aim of the project was to develop a product that would introduce a new food company onto the market and to offer higher margins to the producer and to retailers. This was planned to be achieved through providing consumer value by mixing tradition and novelty, convenience and taste satisfaction. The package development was one of the major means to communicate the new brand. However, the brand owners wanted to have a package that followed the existing dominant packaging design format. These types of packs are widely used by the rivals.

The reasons for the failure based on the literature on NPD can be categorised. It can be concluded that the food product development was product driven, not consumer or market led. It became evident that the product definition was formulated in advance by the brand owners, and therefore product features, consumer requirements, business objectives and delivery issues were already fixed. From the very beginning, consumer information and market situation analysis was based on the presuppositions of the brand owners. Following traditional markers as criteria for successful product development, the results of the consumer research can be defined as factors that resulted in the failure.

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The literature provides other reasons for the failure. Cross-disciplinary product development teams are typically referred to as one of the success factors of NPD (Sherman et al., 2005; Suwannaporn and Speece, 2010). However, the impact of internal and external communication, management, and power relationships can ruin otherwise functional teamwork. In this case all of the participant organisations other than the food company were treated as complementors or “outsiders” who should obey the representatives of the food company. This did not happen in the initial stage of the case project when the network of the development organisations was assembled. Many of the participating specialists wanted to be involved in the project. They saw it as an opportunity to create an interesting food product and a new brand rather than just one of the usual business cases. The NPD idea was new, substantial funding was granted, and several professional organisations involved in the development task. However, the project and product failed before the market launch. What went wrong? In the next section, the approach is changed from theory led examination of the NPD project to an appraisal of research material led examination of the case itself.

4. NPD case in the food sector – what happened? Based on the project meeting documents and observations of the actors, the participants reached no consensus about the perception of the starting point of the project. The fixed ideas of the brand owners became manifest during the project. The differing ideas became visible especially when the sensory and consumer research results were presented in the project meetings. This was most evident in situations where the new information that was introduced did not fit easily into the original product concept. Although, the product was presented as “novel, trendy, updated and probably achieving major international demand” by the brand owners at the project kick-off meeting, there was practically no room for actual product development. The product idea was fixed from the start. The information introduced during the project was also perceived differently by the various participant organisations.

The problems were mainly generated when the complementors offered their professional views and ideas about how to improve the food product. From the brand owners’ perspective they would have been better off, if the complementors had just backed them up. During brand and marketing development meetings the following point was raised by one of the consultants: “Why would anybody hire a consultant just to repeat the ideas that are already determined?” The question was left unanswered.

The NPD project turned to be more complex after each “dragging” issue was recognised. It is usual to state that a project must be re-evaluated after crucial new information appears. This is in line with the stage-gate thinking (Cooper, 1994). However, whenever a problem appears, an extensive evaluation of a product development project is practically impossible to realise. Long-lasting NPD teams have developed various procedures to deal with changing situations, but still problems are dealt with implicit ”gut feeling” or with informal problem solving practices.

“Information condensations” were found to introduce hindrance factors to the project. Basically new and mismatched ideas originated from the complementors, new information provided by the consumer and sensory researches (results presentation meetings), unsuccessful product feature experiments (changes in ingredients) and communication between the participating organisations were examples of these condensations in this case. One of the indisputable information condensations in the

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current project was consumers’ attitudes and the market situation revealed by the research. To put it more accurately: the apparent mismatch between the overtly positive expectations of the brand owners with those of consumers’ willingness to buy the new product which was found in the research data. This was a major issue concerning the whole project. The brand owners claimed repeatedly that “we must have the wrong consumers” and “consumers must be estranged from reality” when research results not compatible with their fixed presumptions emerged. The consumer research and sensory study were especially directed at the potential customers of the new product.

The aim of consumer research early in the NPD process is to identify the voice of the consumer and make it heard up front to advance and steer the concept development (Heiskanen et al., 2007; van Kleef et al., 2005). Consumers generally give reliable judgements about new products that are relatively similar to products already on the market (van Kleef et al., 2005). Intent-to-purchase turned out to be low when the price was brought to the desired level. The premium marginal profit desired seemed impossible to achieve. The brand owners were not willing to make changes to properties of the product that were identified in the research as being weak.

Another drag on the NPD in this case that was constructed from the research materials was “problem definition practices” of the project. When an issue that caused some hindrance to the project emerged, some of the team members saw it as a serious problem, others defined it just a minor snag. Creating mutual understanding about any particular problem seemed to be difficult in any given context. For example, the numerous rounds of developing the sensory properties of the product caused increased friction between the participating organisations. Similarly, when the package design started, it was decided that a distinctive premium package was to be designed in the assignment. Later, after the several re-design rounds guided by the brand owners, the package ended up looking like the contemporary dominant design on the market.

Surprisingly, professionally conducted NPD can also cause discussions to turn into debates about problematic characteristics. As mentioned, the implicit idea of packaging held by the brand owners was to follow the dominant design in the ready meals food market. The consultant brought new ideas to build a distinctive and distinguishable brand through a novel package design. However, the brand owners did not support this strategy or its new ideas. This resulted in justification and counter argumentation rounds between various representatives of participating organisations. Some of them took a biased stance against the packaging designer, others backed up the distinctive design as being innovative. This is an example of a clique of professionals having power over other participants in a NPD project. The result in the case was a partial withdrawal of the pack-designer. Consequently, she partly copied the package design that followed the original idea of the brand owners.

A certain kind of “path dependency” can also turn out to be a problem. The choices made early in the project will have profound effects on decisions that will be made in the future. The written project plans and presentations in the kick-off meeting described the project as creative, innovative, and open-minded. On the contrary, the project was revealed to be quite rigid from the beginning. In this context, new opportunities or ideas can suddenly turn out to be major hindrances to a process. When a certain path is chosen and executed, it is not easy to change its direction. Moreover,

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when the direction of a project is changed, it will add costs and calls for major revamping solutions.

A typical problem that arises from conducting consumer research relatively late in a process is that the product is almost finished when consumer-testing occurs. In such cases possible alterations that are needed are costly and time consuming. However, this was not a problem in this project, since sensory study and later the consumer research were conducted in the early phases. The problem was the interpretation of the results and an unwillingness to react upon the new information. Finally, the impatience of the financing sponsor put the project on hold. A rational analysis would state that the major factor for the failure was the unsuccessful positioning of the product. A high quality image was promoted artificially. In that the product did not live up to expectations, and the price category was determined based on this image. Repositioning the product was seen as being too costly because of the path dependency effect. The high-quality character of the product would have been lost, if the ingredients were changed to the cheaper options available.

The problematic collaboration and communication between the participants and organisations that took part in the NPD turned out to cause light but enduring loss of momentum. The initial positive atmosphere and mutual respect diminished during the project. This was related to the differences in company cultures and working methods. The brand owners were staunch advocates of a traditional product development culture, whereas the consultant and representatives of the sensory study organisation were pursuing a different cross-functional model of product development. When problems became critical, the personal aspects of the issues emerged. This manifested in a tendency to turn into stereotypical, organisational or personal traits, when negative outcomes and hindrances surfaced. It is suggested in the literature that product development teams make better stop and go decisions than individuals, and teams make better decisions when members are located in different offices or spaces (Schmidt et al., 2001). An exemplar of this was the structure of cross-functional product development team in the current project. However, the participant organisations were in practice individual actors rather than a seamless product development team committed to the same initial objectives as the brand owners.

Strong project leadership and top management commitment to the project are mentioned as success factors in NPD. However, project management was scattered amongst the various actors in this case project. Although, the general management of the product development was assigned to marketing and packaging consultant, the participating organisations were managing their own processes. Furthermore, the management was implicitly in the hands of the food company whose somewhat stubborn views guided the ultimate direction of the project. A certain kind of “buyer” or “outsourcing” attitude characterised the relationships between the brand owners and the complementors. The brand owners positioned and regarded the complementors as outsourced assets, although the complementors were experienced professionals in their own fields. Taking due cognizance of the full potential of these professionals would have probably resulted in a more positive outcome.

What managers involved in a NPD process believe to be the important success factors cannot always guarantee a successful outcome (Suwannaporn and Speece, 2010). In addition, van der Valk and Wynstra (2005) argue that visible evaluation processes need to be in place at different organisations and organisation levels to allow

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learning experiences to be passed on. In this case study project these procedures were mainly missing.

5. Results and the lessons learned Given the exploratory nature of this study and the corresponding need for insights into the dynamics of product development failure, the case study method was used in this study. The detailed analysis of the NPD project lead to a range of observations that contributes to the knowledge of how this project changed from a successful beginning into failure. The studied case shows that knowledge divisions matter greatly in identifying problems and drawing on NPD collaboration (Andersen and Munksgaard, 2009). When focusing on managers “dimensions of thinking” instead of singular success factors, the role of marketing research, strategic approaches, communications issues, company experience and competencies were considered as dimensions that drive success (Suwannaporn and Speece, 2010).

Listening to the consumer does not always end with the birth of the product idea. The case showed that information acquired from consumers needs to be applied in a constructive way and as early as possible. The significant question is about what parts of the information are valuable from the NPD point-of-view. That is, how the information will be turned into knowledge that is useful in a particular NPD situation? There is some evidence that consumer research has its limitations, and sometimes the information provided can steer the development project out of its intended course (Ahlgren et al., 2005; Costa and Jongen, 2006; Heiskanen et al., 2007; Linnemann et al., 2006; van Kleef et al., 2005; van der Panne et al., 2003; Trott, 2001). In the current case the consumer research and sensory study results were systemically downplayed or even disregarded completely by the brand owners.

Surprising problems arose, as they occurred in this project, when consumers perceived the new product different to what was expected. Typically, these situations initiate and implement changes to a concept when participants of the NPD project do not question the research results. As previously stated, the choices made and executed earlier in a process are hard to change later. In any event, corrective actions will generate extra product development costs. If the path dependency effect is strong enough, it will manifest as a downplaying of the various elements of research (e.g. “consumers must be estranged from the reality”) or as questioning of the validity of the research. Another tactic is to downplay the influence of consumers (“They [consumers] cannot know what they want, because this product is completely new. There are plenty of examples of successful products the consumers initially disliked when asked in the early stages”). In addition, other external factors are typically incurred: Extra costs, time constrains, already planned phases of the development process cannot be postponed, required workforce to conduct the changes is missing, and new contracts have to be negotiated and executed for subcontractors. There can also be accusations that are subjected to project management, either to a single person or to an organisation.

It has been suggested elsewhere that rather than providing room for creative imagination and construction of new product ideas, external knowledge and information from collaboration partners are primarily used for testing and modifying one’s own ideas, which initiates further corroboration of existing ideas (Andersen and Munksgaard, 2009). A similar set of interpretations can be easily attributed to the

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studied project. The original idea was firmly established before the collaboration took place. From the standpoint of the brand owners the external actors raison d’être was to consolidate the fixed decisions and to develop state-of-the-art packaging and branding for the new product. However, valuable information generated in various meetings and research created an unfavourable twist to the original plan. The project started to encounter negative hindrances, because the new research information that needed to be reacted upon was neglected.

5.1 Five phenomena and the NPD failure First, the path-dependency was strongly evident in the project. This meant that the start and especially the early phases of the product development project determined the structure of the later phases of the project. The beginning of NPD is often called the “fuzzy front end” because of its initially unstructured and unclear nature (Simms and Trott, 2010). However, when the fuzziness decreases, the chosen path starts to guide the project. The decisions made in early stages will steer the future decision making, and it becomes increasingly harder to change the chosen direction. Alternatively, the experiments are more time consuming and costly in the later stages. The minds of the people involved, including management, are also harder to change. Justifications for large changes become problematic. Path dependency, or that path a project is on, is hard to define. The influence of path dependency is seldom perceived but it is probably implicit. It is more likely to be visible before the implementation of NPD. Even then members of the NPD team can interpret it differently. It is manifested in the feeling that an already developed and perhaps completed stage of product development may have to be redone. Researchers have found that crucial decisions should be made early on in the process, when the changes are more easily conducted (Grunert et al., 2011).

Second, information condensations are specific situations that occur in the stream of an NPD project. In these situations new information or otherwise relevant issues suddenly emerge, and caused delays to the project. These moments will change the nature of the NPD project, and typically they call for fast and radical intervention. In this case study project new information provided by the sensory study and consumer research, diverging ideas of complementors and numerous product feature tests conducted by the sensory study organisation provided such unwanted delays. The delaying issues were not solved, and the project started to generate friction. The drag can turn out to be a problem for a project where iteration is not tolerated or when project managers want to stick strictly to the plans they made earlier. New products take time to design, develop, and launch. The requirements changed during the project, but the original product idea was kept unchanged. The concept did not accommodate new needs generated and discovered during the project.

Third, the illusion of mutual knowledge and understanding is related to the idea of a product development project as being a clear and manageable whole. Participants of the studied project seemed to share a uniform vision of the roles and goals of the project in addition to the product under development. However, the perceptions differed in various senses. Examination of the case materials revealed that there were widely divergent opinions as to how this product development ought to proceed. The participants came from different backgrounds and had no previous working experience together as a team. There was also certain ambiguity about project management, which had a negative effect on the working atmosphere. The full

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potential of the capabilities and experienced professional know-how of the team was not fully utilised. Valuable time and resources were misspent over negotiations concerning professional roles and power relationships. Andersen and Munksgaard (2009) suggest that both multiple knowledge contexts and balanced relationship atmospheres are necessary prerequisites for developing new marketable ideas successfully. They proposed that imbalanced relationships lead to dominance of one actor’s ideas and perspectives, and leads to the exclusion of alternative problem framings.

Fourth, NPD can be identified as both problem defining and a problem solving activity. NPD processes are seldom clear and straight forward. The development of innovative and radical new products especially faces a multitude of challenges during the stages of development. The difficulty in problem framing in NPD is the complex nature of the creative practice. Problem defining practices have an effect on how the problems should be solved. The bigger the product development team the harder it is to define the problems. It also has to be defined who has responsibility for certain problems in an organisation. Issues of responsibility, complexity and problem framing practices are vital in a fast moving NPD project (Andersen and Munksgaard, 2009). Problems should be seen in bundles, since solving single problems whenever they emerge is only “putting out small fires”. Proactive problem framing and solving calls for professional experience of perceiving relevant issues holistically.

Fifth issue identified can be summarised as the window-of-opportunity effect. It became evident that a NPD project has to move forward at a fast pace. Time is a powerful enemy not only in terms of product launch and the actions of business rivals, but more so internally. It was noticed that if a problem or a hindrance was not solved expeditiously, it tended to escalate. For example, the sensory study and design of concrete product features became prolonged because the brand owners wanted to create a “perfect” product. This was respectable goal in its own right, but most of the later prototypes or tests with different ingredients were only minor details in the development. A considerable amount of resources and especially time were spent on making insignificant changes to the product concept. A similar issue was faced with the package design, which was revised on a number of occasions. The prolonged designing process eventually resulted in a compromise package. The innovative elements were cut out one-by-one and the package ended up looking like other typical convenience food packages sold on the market. It seems that when an issue under development takes an undue amount of time the focus can get lost, resources are spent in vain, and the end result can turn out to be a tedious compromise.

5.2 Discussion There are common denominators for a successful NPD. As indicated at the beginning of the article, the most general factors driving success are related to market, company, project, and product (van der Panne et al., 2003). According to Lord (1999), the major factors that have impacts on NPD failure relate to planning, management, concept and execution activities. The importance of these categorisations was validated by this case study. The mentioned factors driving success or failure of the food product development can be found in the studied case. A downside of the traditional approach to study NPD is that one can only define the significant factors for a certain NPD project afterwards. It would be beneficial to create a knowledge base that can aid

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participants to notice potential failure factors as early as possible in the process and thereby circumvent them. This is the reason why the reviewed research suggests that the first stages of a NPD are most important. The same stages are typically the fuzziest. It seems that the identified and crucial factors in NPD are generally only recognised during the development processes itself. It is harder to indicate when these factors are not working in practice as they should, and what should be done when a problem in NPD project is perceived. This is a research gap the article tried to address, and that needs to be addressed in greater detail in future studies.

The five phenomena constructed and described in this article are suitable categories for examining any NPD development phase, participating actor or market, company, project, and product related factors. Although, they are on an abstract level, the five phenomena indicate when a project has encountered problems. Path-dependency highlights the importance of the early stages of a project, and by definition also every major subsequent decision made during that project. These situations determine the forthcoming paths a development project can take. It is typically hard to cancel or change previous decisions without substantial costs. Information condensations are specific situations that introduce specific problems into the NPD processes. These situations are potential sources that drive product development failure, since new information has to be evaluated and acted upon quickly. When neglected, information condensations have negative consequences by introducing drag in a project. The illusion of mutual knowledge and understanding relates to communication practices. As a source of bias, participants of NPD typically assume that everybody has a shared understanding of the goals and procedures to achieve the desired target. In the current case this objective seemed to be illusory. Ostensibly the same goal is revealed to be something else or understood differently by the participants. People pushing different goals are a particular source of failure. Practices of problem definition and problem solving are connected to disagreements about how to proceed with the project. This can be identified as a management problem, but it is not always apparent. There can be implicit differences in problem framing that are affected by organisation cultures or preferred courses of action. Various problem definitions and problem solving practices can fragment team work and lead to failure. Last, the window-of-opportunity effect is visible when participants of the NPD do not know how to proceed with the project. When a project loses momentum, a series of minor and insignificant changes are introduced. When a clear vision of understandings of how to advance a project is missing, the window-of-opportunity quickly closes. In this case study these situations led to misspent resources and inefficient work. Moreover, pointless work had a negative effect on the social atmosphere of the team.

What can be claimed based on just one case? Statistical generalisations describing a certain population are not possible. However, an analytical or theoretical generalisation can be drawn. In NPD projects in the food sector there are common factors that are frequently repeated. Therefore, the usefulness of the case study results lies in its relationship to NPD practice conducted elsewhere. It can be claimed that when participants of NPD projects notice phenomena described and examined in this article they should be able to intervene and change the course of action. Becoming aware of phenomena around NPD will improve the quality of processes and offer the possibility of recognising otherwise implicit hints. The framework to analyse negative cases or failed product development projects are suggested to be a catalyst for the general

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improvement of NPD. A better understanding of the factors in food NPD remains an important issue, because all of the products developed cannot be successfully introduced into the market. Failing quickly in the NPD process avoids failing big.

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Corresponding author Toni Ryynänen can be contacted at: [email protected]

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