A Framework for Analysing-Consumer Orientation of Biotechnologists

Evaluation of agricultural technology development and commercial product development revealed that only a small percentage of the new products developed have succeeded in the market. Analysis of the reasons for product success or failure showed that the major factor was a poor understanding of consumer needs by the people involved in the product development. In other words lack of ‘consumer orientation’ of scientists could be the major reason for failure of many products. Consumer orientation is defined by four dimensions. They are [1] information generation from consumers, [2] provision of information to the consumers, [3] integration of different functional areas, and [4] Responsiveness to the needs of the consumers. If consumer orientation and product success are assumed to be positively correlated, then the process which increase the consumer orientation of scientists need to be spelt out. Scientists deal with different consumers participating in the process of product development. These consumers can be clubbed into two groups based on the level of control that organization can have on them, [1] those who are inside the organization, called ‘internal consumers’ and [2] outside the organization, referred as ‘external consumers’. These consumers have preferences for various product attributes which may be complimentary, or contradictory. Presence of a long chain of consumers and contradicting attribute preferences could complicate the process of defining the product attributes. Incorporating the attributes of those who really consume the product may become even more difficult. Because, many who articulate one set of attributes may actually not consume the product. Scientists have to devise ways to decide which preferences to be taken into account, how much and in what sequence. Further, the production, distribution, and utilization process may also generate externalities for various systems. For example, replacement of chemical pesticides by biological products such as B thuringiensis, NPV, and other plant derivatives could generate a positive externality for farmers, end users and ecological systems, and the pesticide firm may consider it as a negative externality for them. Hence, the nature of externality could develop support or opposition from the clients based on their perception and the actual impact of the product on them. Consumer orientation in an organization could depend on two major factors. viz – [1] scientists-specific factors such as their interest in type of problems, background, etc., and [2] organizational-specific factors such as performance evaluation criteria used, the incentive and disincentive mechanisms used and the perception and preferences of individual scientists about these mechanisms. In the present investigation our objectives are to explore the differences in the consumer orientation process between successful and less successful products and to understand the influence of scientist-specific, and organizational-specific variables on the consumer orientation process. We expect that this study could throw new insights about the process and factors influencing scientists consumer orientation. The findings could help in developing policy measures to influence the behaviour of the scientists to get closer to the consumers, listen to their voice and look beyond.