Study On Relationship Of Market-Driving, Knowledge Acquisition From Customer,and Product Innovation Performance

Prevenient research on market-driving orientation—performance relationship followedthose research paradigm of market orientation, and barely singled out the features ofmarket-driving itself, or further studied the mediator of market-driving and performance.Customer is the core of the whole market orientation research field, but at the same timethere is shortsighted. So for such a innovative type of market orientation, the influence of thecustomer's knowledge role in performance and its knowledge aquisition is still controversial.The relevant research lacked the support of evidence either. And also prevenient researchregards market-driving as a construct and lacked the research which detailed to dimensions.This research demonstrates that the three dimension of market-driving (customer-driving,competitor-driving and industry-regulators-driving) on the one hand together constitutes theconstruct of market-driving, on the other hand keeps their independent of each other whichdiffers in terms of target group, content of innovation and manner of innovation. The coreproblem of market-driving and performance chain is to reduce the risk of active innovation,which needs to acquire customer knowledge to improve market performance of innovation.However, customer knowledge acquiring ways under the different market-driving dimension,and different customer knowledge acquiring ways have different influence on innovationperformance. Dissecting above-mentioned relationships contribute to reduce the confusionwhen enterprises implement market-driving.This study adopted a method of combining qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis,case study and empirical study together. On the ground of pertinent literature and caseanalysis, three ways of customer acquisition (customer scanning, customer interaction, andcustomer joint development) serve as mediator, connect to the influence of market-drivingtowards product innovation performance. A theoretical model and research hypothesis aresuggested. Then, analyze the questionnaire to investigate the interaction of market-driving,customer knowledge acquisition and product innovation performance. Through regressionanalysis, we verify the roles of three dimensions in the influence of customer knowledgeacquisition way respectively then through structural equation SEM to verify the concept thathow market-driving, which serves as a construct, influence its relationship between threecustomer knowledge acquisition ways and product innovation performance. The mainresearch results and conclusions are as follows:1) On the whole, market-driving orientation advances the acquisition of customerknowledge. However, different dimension lead to different motive of customer knowledge acquisition. Under customer-driving, customer knowledge acquisition predicts the potentialdemands of customer and determines the direction of product development. Undercompetitor-driving, customer knowledge acquisition spot new market area and valuablechances before other competitors. Under industry-regulators-driving, customer knowledgeacquisition realizes technological and innovative commercialization through customerknowledge.2) The different dimension of market-driving can influence the decision of route ofcustomer knowledge acquisition. Customer-driving has a negative effect on customerscanning, while it did not show any obvious influence on customer interaction and customerjoint development. However, competitor-driving has a positive effect on customer scanningwhile not so obvious negative effect on customer interaction and customer joint development.Industry-regulators-driving has a positive effect on customer scanning, customer interaction,and customer joint development.3) Among the three customer knowledge acquisition ways, only the customer interactionhas a positive effect on product innovation performance and serves as a complete mediatorbetween market-driving and product innovation performance. It indicates that only whenmarket-driving is based on continued communication and interaction with customers can itsinnovation bring good market performance.4) Both organizations' customer knowledge depth and specificity negatively moderatethe relationships between customer interaction and product innovation performance, whilethey had not played as a significant moderator for the customer scanning and productinnovation performance relations. That if the enterprise limited focus on specific areas of thecustomer, or the construction of customer knowledge exist strong path dependence, these arenot good for the customer knowledge acquisition to promote product innovation performance5) There're wide differences in our domestic enterprises in terms of the degrees of theimplement of the market-driving in three dimensions. Due to the extra emphasis on industry-regulators-driving drive while low emphasis on customer-driving and competitor-driving,there is a huge difference between western literatures.