"instance, if an industry responds poorly to the competitive product introductions, itmay losea considerable share of consumer market and thus profits. (Kotler, 1988)Ifan industry do not innovate the production method, they are more likely to fall behindtheir competitors and thus may lead to a failure of activities in an increasinglyassorted and saturated global market. Innovation is meant to meet the consumer demand and requirements and hence ithas been argued by many that whether consumers should be involved in the designprocess or not? However what makes it more critical is how the involved consumersshould be managed.Design is considered to be as a tool in thriving innovation but ifthe managers are unclear about its value, it is assumed to be of low profile. On theother hand, the increasing competition from rival firms makes it a necessity in theoperating environment. (Bartlett and Goshal, 1995)As argued by Abernathy(1978), an industry desires to achieve the organizational objectives in an efficientmanner to attain maximum benefit out of the existing product; on the other handthere is some urgency to back the existing products with innovation in order torespond to the changing consumer demand and thus technological advancement.However, the short term risk is likely to be increased when innovation is brought intoeffect; thereby minimizing competence and output for the firm but certainly is inclinedto long term growth. The result of innovation also depends upon the operatingenvironment of a firm and thus its level of uncertainty.The product development process starts with the idea generation concept and isfollowed by a series of steps consisting of idea screening, concept testing anddevelopment, research, business analysis and proceeds towards the final phases ofthe process. However, research is found to be given a high degree of importance asit is designed in order to position the balanced level of consumer involvement andthus to identify the potential market for predicting the organizational performance.7 LITERATURE REVIEWImmense literature about the new product development process has focused on aseries of steps including idea generation, screening, evaluating, concept and producttesting, business analysis, development and therefore commercialization. Themodern techniques would also lay its emphasis on significant level of consumerinvolvement in different stages to subsequently succeed in the plan. (Booz, Hallenand Hamilton, 1982; 516)However, the changing times have also considered thedevelopment of improved rather advanced versions of the process with a differentperspective of NPD process. For instance, the stage gate model regarded theprocess to be as cross functional and therefore stressed on relevance of parallelactivities. (Cooper 1993; n.d) The third generation model recognized the informalmethods of development aimed at cycle time reduction. (Cooper, 1994) Further, thefourth generation model added the importance of linking internal and externalnetworking of the NPD process. (Rothwell, 1994) Much emphasis has been givenon consumer involvement by successfully adopting various innovative techniquesand procedures.Internet models have gained significant importance in developing new techniques tosignificantly involve consumers at different levels. The research methods and theconcept testing are the major facets of Internet usage in the NPD process. Thedifferent steps involved in the process have equal importance as compared to othersin deciding the future of the product and therefore the firm. Internet based activitieshave therefore received higher attention in regards of the research processes as wellas the product and concept testing. (Dahan and Srinivasan, 2000; Dahan andHauser, 2002) As per various studies in US and Europe, concept testing via Internetis widely used and is deemed to identify new opportunities and hence development. (Ozer, 1999)The research is conducted in various products and services sector in order to gainthe knowledge concerned with structural changes in turbulent business environment.The different perspectives have been laid upon the success as well as failure factorsbut moreover, underlined undue attention on design and engineering processeswithinnovative techniques with a vision of new product success. (Brown andEisenhardt, 1995) Others have reviewed the engineering design literature with8 excellence and also has emphasized on marketing perspective. (Finger and Dixon;1989a, 1989b) However, the consumer involvement remains a subtle issue in theresearch. Consumer involvement research is conducted widely mainly in the physicalstate of products or “tangible products” (Cooper, 1976; Cooper and Kleinschmidt,1987a; Rothwell et al., 1974) However, the recent studies have inspected newservice sectors (de Brentani, 1989) but again limited to business to consumers(B2C) activities but not business to business. Studies in financial services have latelybeen observed but found limited in variables terms. (Easingwood and Storey,1991)Much of the focus has remained on the NPD process (Cooper and Kleinschmidt,1986; Johne and Snelson, 1990) which should rather have been on theconsequence of the product. However, the product besides the offered benefits isconsidered to some extent. There is lack of research in the actual contribution of theenlarged product. Further, the marketing activities process in the NPD process hasgreatly been ignored which can certainly lead to enhancement of the new productperformance. Booz, Allen and Hamilton (Inc.) (1982) studieshardly found anydistinction between new and existing products and acknowledged marketing strategyto effectively gain the competitive advantage. However, this is found to be limited inspecific sectors like financial services wherein similar products are offered bynumerous providers. The concept of marketing is more likely to favour the consumerproducts in spite of new industrial products. Thus, a need for marketing research inNPD process is of vital importance.9 "