“…On the inter-organizational level, scholars in the field of strategy, marketing and operations management have recently paid more attention to the importance of aspects of the relationship between the customer and the supplier who contributed to the customer's NPD project (Jap, 1999;Primo and Amundson, 2002;Sobrero and Roberts, 2001;Stump, Athaide, and Joshi, 2002). However, the question of when and how intensively to involve the supplier in the customer's NPD process, how to interact with the supplier, and with which supplier to interact in NPD have been addressed to varying degrees.…”