Relationship Between Electronic Word-of-Mouth and New Product Development: A Thailand Food Industry Case

Abstract

     The development and introduction of new products can be an important determinant of sustained business performance. The success of new product development (NPD) depends on how effectively new products satisfy the needs of customers and lead to purchases of those products. Preferably, new products offer unexpected value and benefits beyond customers’ initial expectations. It is vital for a new product development team to truly recognize and understand customer needs. In the present generation, communication channels have expanded and developed extensively. Electronic communication plays an important role in people’s daily lives and influences their lifestyles. Therefore, electronic word of mouth (eWOM) has become a public means of conversation that is a highly useful channel for viral marketing. eWOM can also be a valuable platform to garner knowledge of customers’ opinions, experience, likes, dislikes, and needs for the development of new products. The main objective of this study was to describe the relationship between eWOM and NPD by proposing a framework to help developers generate ideas for NPD from eWOM messages. The first part develops a “keyword discovering instrument” that extracts words from eWOM messages to generate new product ideas. The main advantage of this tool is generating ideas for new product development through the real-time discovery of keywords. Eventually, this tool will play an important part in the new product development process by accelerating the creation of new products and increasing the competitiveness of the industry. This research explores the relationship between eWOM and NPD. It takes a qualitative approach by conducting a focus group discussion plus 10 in-depth interviews with opinion leaders in the Thailand food industry. A case study of the Thai food industry was conducted to investigate relevant aspects of eWOM for use in NPD. Analysis of the eWOM characteristics and messages was conducted to identify the features of the keyword discovering instrument. Finally, a research framework was designed consisting of two portions: NPD Process and Discovering Keywords.