New product development in an emerging economy: a multi-objective optimisation approach

Abstract

Both academia and industry accept unconditionally the significance of new product development and its success in consumer centric businesses. However, one of the key and final indicators of success of any new product “test marketing”, has not received adequate attention from both the said sources due to multiple reasons. In this paper, I provide an efficient alternative to this problem by using a “multi-objective mixed zero one linear programming” based method. This improves the performance of the new product development process and successful commercialization of the merchandise. I provide experimental design based validations to support my claim. In addition, I have focused upon a completely unorganized handloom sector consisting of small and medium enterprises in an emerging economy as the frame of reference for the said test marketing – optimization problem. The empirical primary data and business model analysis of the said study area is completely unique to the best my knowledge in terms of academic coverage. Finally, this study provides a feasible managerial solution to the long standing problems of the handloom sector through the application of appropriate optimization methodology.