"AIMS AND OBJECTIVESDifferent corporate all over the world aim for higher profitability and growth andtherefore are adapting the tools and techniques which are found to be slightlydifferent than its less successful counterparts. Organizations are under extremepressure of the heavy competition to deliver innovative products to sustain theirmarket share and position. What is observed in reality is that a lot of new productand services fail and thus changes the definition of innovation to be as a disaster.There are many factors that have an effect on the success of the productdevelopment but the most important amongst all is the lack of consumer involvementto support the development of product and innovations. Besides this the knowledgeof the level of consumer involvement in the process should also be emphasized as itis a critical factor. For instance, consumers are found to be a bit conservative inunderstanding the innovative product which leads to an overall failure. To avoid thisit is important to understand the needs of the customers and thus involve them in thedevelopment process to the right level. The question is not to educate theconsumers about the innovation but to understand them and then design a product.Thus, every firm should adopt the right level of research tools and techniques inorder to understand its target market and thus should accordingly involve consumersin the design process.A lot of critics have differentiated opinions; some believe a higher level of consumerinvolvement in the design process while some believes it to be marginal. As perUlwick (2005), consumers demand never remains constant and thus they do notknow about their future needs and thus cannot formulate those desires. (K. L.Janssen & B. Dankbaar, pp 511-512) Consumers are also found to be lackingforesight and they believe what they want to believe and what they desire in future.(Hamel and Prahalad, 1994) Thus they can give suggestions to improve the existingproducts (Veryzer, 1998; Grunert, 2005; Lagrosen, 2005) and therefore the level ofinvolvement is limited to the incremental product development. (Utterback, 1995;Christensen, 1997) On the other hand Christensen and Bower (1996) havedemonstrated the firms to lose their industry leadership if the degree of consumerinvolvement is too high. The collaboration of producers and consumers is found to4 be beneficial for both of them but provided a right and balanced level of involvement.Consumers’ benefits by getting better products based on their views and preferencestaken in the design process while a higher sales makes the producers better off(Heiskanen et al, 2007; KTM, 2004)The degree of consumer involvement alsodepends upon the type of industry the product operates in. For instance, there areindustries like the toiletries products, wherein the level of consumer involvement ishigher as compared to the pharmaceutical industry. It is important for anyorganization to devise a whole structure of techniques linking with each other in theoverall progression of customer contribution in the process. (Kaulio, 1998)There area lot of techniques for the association of clients to sustain the developmentofinnovations, but knowledge is lacking in the suitability of diverse techniques invarioussituations. This is, especially, accurate for consumer participation infundamental innovation. The selection procedure of appropriate techniques whichassociates the consumer involvement and product development needs to beimprovised. To do so, Marketing and R&D specialists need to be prioritized and thusthe coordination between two departments (and others) along with effectiveconsumer involvement will facilitate new opportunities in product development.(O’Connor, 1998; Rice et al., 1998; Kahn, 2001)By proper adaptation of varioustools and techniques, the probability of success rate can be increased which wouldbenefit both consumers as well as the producers.Organizations are moreover foundto be involving consumers but what distinguishes a thriving firm is the way theconsumer involvement is managed. 5 INTRODUCTIONWith the rate of development, innovation and technological advancement,companies all over the world are adopting different strategies in order to deliver thebest possible product or service to the target market. Demand never remainsconstant and hence different organization needs to understand the needs and wantsof the consumers. It is extremely a difficult task to succeed in launching a new ideaor a product despite of the huge time and costs invested in various research tools tounderstand the intended customers (Nadia Farook, 2005; Jyothi K.R, 2005;Jayasree S, 2005: 3 June 2005)Failures and success are observed in past and thusvarious debate has taken place on whether to employee the tools used in previousdevelopment process or to innovate various methods to fulfil the requirements of themarket. As a firm intends to fulfil the demand of the consumer, it is a debatable topicwhether to involve the consumers in the development process or not. The failure ratefor many new products has even exceeded by a considerable 90%, which isappalling high. (Scott Boulevard et al, 2004: n.d.) Lack of research or poor marketresearch and innovation along with other factors like incorrect positioning, inaccuracyin pricing etc. are found to be the main reasons for the failure of a new product.(Leigh Goessl, n.d.) Organizations typically invests ample amount of funds in orderto identify the target market and thus direct their resources in the desired manner inorder to deliver consumer values. It would be surprising that a successful product isdelivered after an organization thinks over 3000 raw ideas and thus goes through aprocess to deliver a final value yielding product to its consumers. (G.A.Stevens andJ. Burley, 1997; p. 9)Barclay and Benson (1990)with others have further stated thefailure rate to be as high as 30 to 40 percent for the new products and the highfailure rate has not distorted for last 15 years. The industry demands the innovation to be successful in providing a value to theconsumer market. Several factors like advanced technology, communications, higherdemands for profit and a short span of product cycle have given rise to the innaterisk (Rosenau, 1988). This is one reason why it is often said that if one stopsgrowing with advancement and innovation, it starts dying. Along with these factors,the timing of entry is of extreme importance and can be the distinguishing factor. For6 "