抄録
The customers of industrial goods are not consumers but companies having expert knowledge. Therefore, a conventional idea appeals a stereotyped pattern that the product development process of industrial goods should conform to the expert customers' needs. However, our research on the Japanese chemical industry showed that this product development pattern is familiar to failed projects rather than to successful ones. In the successful projects, product developers directly contact the consumers—“customer's customer"—for latent needs. Based on their anticipation of these latent needs, the product developers propose new product concepts to their customers. In fact, cases of such successful projects exist. This paper generalizes the “customer's customer" strategy from this successful pattern.
