Relationships between engineers and marketers within new product development

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative study of the views of British and German engineers on the relationship between engineers and marketers and the conflict between them. Data have been collected from 151 British and 84 German engineers in 25 companies. Engineers who work in a variety of functions and at a number of different levels within an organisation are included. It has been found that the relationship is seen as being reasonable, with teamwork and increased knowledge of marketing by engineers both needed to make it function effectively. The engineers in both countries do not seek to dominate marketing, but they do feel that they need to obtain an understanding of management and of marketing. Conflict is not seen as being high in either country but German engineers perceive there to be lower levels of conflict between them and their marketing colleagues. German engineers see education and training differences as being the main reasons for conflict, whereas British engineers cite a lack of understanding between the two functions as the main reason. Engineers in both countries agree that better communications, more teamwork and more training are needed to improve the interface between the two functions. From this study, modifications to current theoretical frameworks can be seen and these are discussed.

An Empirical Study on the Impacts of Market Orientation and Innovation on New Product Success (Case Study: Food Manufacturers in Isfahan, Iran)

“…Nonetheless, Gupta et al (1986), argue that there are socio-cultural differences between managers in R&D and marketing departments which can influence the cooperation between the two groups. RMC is considered as the most important and most challenging crossfunctional cooperation and has so far received the greatest amount of academic attention (Becker and Lillemark, 2006;Shaw et al, 2004;Sherman et al, 2005). Wong and Tong, (2012) claim that as all the new innovative products produced by the firm are not acceptable for customers, the cooperation between R&D and marketing in order to design and make new products according to customers' prefers not only innovative but also marketable is an essential necessity for the firm.…”

PERCEPTIONS OF TOP MANAGEMENT COMMITMENT TO INNOVATION AND R&D‐MARKETING RELATIONSHIP EFFECTIVENESS: DO THEY AFFECT CSR?

“…Interdepartmental conflict has been defined as ‘the tension among departments arising from the incompatibility of actual or desired responses and goals’ (Menon et al 1997: 188). According to Shaw et al (2003, 2004), the reasons for the existence of conflicts between technical and marketing staff are the differences in education and training, divergences in the tasks, priorities and objectives of both departments, or the stereotypes used by each department. Studies show that this is one of the main obstacles to coordination and integration between departments (Maltz and Kohli 2000, Shaw et al 2004).…”

Trying to Buy a New Product: What Does Advertising Do Nowadays?

“…Ottman, 1998;Shaw et al 2004;Stock and Balachander, 2005). These concerns arise since new products may possibly fail to achieve the expected market acceptance because customers find it difficult to accept a product with unknown quality (Yao et al 2009).…”