Abstract:

Product innovations are critical for the position of enterprises, since the contemporary form of competition is focused on new products and launching new products on today’s markets is a condition for development in a saturated and demanding market. Customer requirements are constantly growing, which makes it necessary to respond constantly to their needs and wishes in a faster and better way than competitors do, as well as to stimulate the needs by creating new utility values. Both an interactive dialogue with the customer and using the knowledge provided by this customer may become a source of competitive advantages in the creation of product innovations. The research objective of this study is to diagnose the importance of knowledge acquired from buyers in creating product innovations by enterprises representing the FMCG sector. The study was conducted based on a sample of 165 enterprises. The outcome of the research conducted indicates the existence of a positive and strong correlation among the number of used sources of buyers’ knowledge, as well as between the level of exploitation of buyers’ knowledge and the degree of the achievement of the objectives related to the implementation of product innovations.