The Effect of Applying Customer Knowledge on Innovation and New Product Efficiency (Case Study: Samasamaneh Software Company)

In this paper, we have studied the impact of utilizing the customer knowledge on the innovation and new products’ performance in Sama Samaneh Software Co. Theoretical foundations and similar researches’ literature was reviewed to design a research model. Three types of customer engagement are identified (customer as the information source, customer as the innovative colleague, and customer as innovative) and their correlation with other variables are proposed as the main hypotheses. Ninety Sama Samaneh holding employees and managers were randomly chosen for the descriptive survey method. A questionnaire consisting of seven-level Likert scale closed questions was designed to measure the main variables. Validity and reliability of the questionnaire was measured as very good, and the data was analyzed using SPSS and PLS software. The results show that the proposed model can predict the performance of new products in 80% of the cases. They also show that the nature of customer’s knowledge impacts their type of engagement in developing new products, and the performance of new product development relies on customer’s engagement type.