Postgraduate School of Studies in Management & Administration.
Abstract
The combined environmental effects of technological
change, increasing competition, new legislation and
increasingly demanding consumers have created pressure
within the financial services industry for change. One
outcome has been a proliferation of new products in the
marketplace. This research explores new product
development within one subset of this industry -- building
societies.
By combining the new product development, service
marketing and financial services literature, a foundation
has been developed for an empirical study into the
development practices and the characteristics of successful
and unsuccessful new products. The determinants of success
and failure for new product development have been examined
utilizing a comparative methodology, and subsequently a
discriminant model has been developed that successfully
classifies successful and unsuccessful new products.
By determining how new products are actually
developed, the findings support previous claims that
intangibility, inseparability, heterogeneity and
perishability do have an effect on the development process.
Further, the level of sophistication of the development
activities is lower than in previously reported research.
Notable variations from the development process for
tangible new products are the inclusion of system design,
system testing and personnel training stages. The majority
of societies have been found to lack strategic integration
of the development process, to apply different measures of
success and to prefer qualitative market research
techniques over quantitative approaches. As well,
considerable variation exists in the organizational
approaches used to manage the process, although
organizational related variables were found to have a
strong impact upon the predictability of a successful
outcome for a new product
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