Supplier, customer and user involvement in product and service development in SMEs.

In high technology industry, product and service development speed has become tougher. Customers are increasingly demanding and there is need for products with higher quality and reliability. It is essential for companies to collaborate with the external stakeholders, such as, suppliers, customers and users in order to manage in the dynamic business environment. Especially in the case of small and medium sized companies, collaboration is important due to the constraints in SMEs resources and knowledge. The main objective of this thesis is to increase awareness of the practices, types and intensity levels in supplier, customer and user involvement in the SME context. Another objective is to find out what are the effects of the knowledge from external stakeholders on the R&D performance. The research is based on the multiple case study approach and it includes interviews from 10 Finnish high technology SMEs. This thesis shows that companies are able to improve their R&D performance by involving suppliers, customers and users in product or service development. According to the findings, supplier involvement, in general, seems to be intensive, formal and purposeful, whereas customer and user involvement is more informal and the intensity level of the involvement also varies between different contexts. In B2B context, companies collaborates more with their customers and users and may involve them in the new product development projects and continuous development. It seems that companies observe input (knowledge) from users and customers quite intensively. They are also given broad responsibilities to influence on product or service development. In B2C context, the role of consumers is limited mainly to the information and feedback provider role and the involvement intensity is low. When considering the linkage between the external stakeholders’ involvement and R&D performance it seems that there are several positive influences, especially, in continuous product development. For, example, the ideas and technical knowledge from suppliers may lead to the product usability and material improvements and better manufacturing techniques. Furthermore, customers and users suggestions can add smartness and functionality in the products, which lead to the improvements in product quality and usability.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format