Analyzing on effective factors in new product development process in Small-Medium Enterprises (selected food and drink industries of Fars province)

Subject of success in provision of new products is significant to firms’ managers and owners. This subject has also special complexity since literature shows that determining of factors influencing New Product Development (NPD) has had different results in different studies. One of reasons of this difference is related to the characteristics of industries e.g. technology, structure, size, etc. in which the subject has been investigated. In this study, only the organizational size has been concentrated on for better understanding of the small and medium size enterprises. This study is a quantitative research in which, the related literature has been extensively reviewed and structured interviews has been performed with managers of target enterprises and respectively, a questionnaire has been developed and used for data collection. Findings imply that the five factors have influence on successful development of new product of the studied enterprises. In addition, according to the detected gap between existing and the ideal situations of these enterprises, associated problem making factors have been determined and solutions have been suggested for their elimination