Fostering Alliances with Customers for the Sustainable Product Creation

Our paper analyzes close collaboration between a manufacturer of domestic appliances and consumer electronics and its customers. It reflects on the inclusion of open innovation by users that is presented in the paper on the case of the development of the refrigerator door handle, with an emphasis on design and functionality. The main research question we wanted to answer was whether a buyer (customer/consumer) might actively participate in the process of a new product development. It was interesting to test it in a highly dynamic industry setup since white goods are becoming an integral part of consumers’ life style and not just a mere home appliances used for routine housekeeping tasks. Research sample includes 146 respondents. We applied the conjoint analysis and quality function deployment (QFD) in order to test and understand how customers perceive the different attributes of a new product development process.