| Abstract [eng] |
The main purpose of this master thesis is to evaluate the process of new product development within small and medium-sized enterprises in Lithuania. The work consists of four main parts; the analysis of literature, the methodology, the research and its results, conclusion and recommendations. Literature analysis reviews the procedure of new product development (NPD), presents the main concepts of NPD, introduces NPD models and shows their pervasion and importance as well as indicates the benefits and the disadvantages of every model. After the literature analysis the author creates the methodology of research in which future research methods and choices are discussed. Also, the the author has carried out a study about the factors of NPD stages that have an impact on three major results of the NPD process – financial outcome, employee satisfaction and consumer satisfaction within small and medium-sized Lithuanian high tech companies. 6 Lithuanian companies were interviewed in order to confirm the relevance and importance of the problem in Lithuanian enterprises and to find out factors that are relevant to this study for creating a purposeful questionnaire. Furthermore 32 Lithuanian companies have presented the answers to the prepared questionnaire. The main purpose of the questionnaire was to find out what NPD stage factors have an impact on the NPD process results in small and medium-sized Lithuanian high-tech companies. The results of the research were statistically processed with the SPSS program batch. Cronbach’s Alpha coefficient was used to determine the alignment of the Likert scales; in all cases, it was higher than 0.6, which indicates that the scales used were consistent. In order to establish a correlation between NPD stage factors and NPD process results, Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used. The performed research revealed that there is significant link between employee satisfaction and management as well as between employee satisfaction and quality of the product. Employee satisfaction increases when the management aspect improves or product quality increases. Besides, there is a significant link between customer satisfaction and management, product development speed and customer expectation. A decrease in customer expectation results in a decrease in customer satisfaction, but improved management and product development speed increase customer satisfaction. The conclusions and recommendations summarize the main concepts of the literature analysis as well as the results of the performed research. The author believes that the results of the study could give useful guidelines to the small and medium-sized Lithuanian high-tech companies that take part in the product development process. |
