17. Significance of Proactive Customer Orientation in Creating Product Innovations in Cooperation with the Consumer

Introducing new, innovative products to the market is nowadays a necessary condition for development in a saturated and demanding market. Customers’ expectations are constantly growing, which results in a need for constant reaction to them better than competition does. Customers, by making choices concerning a countless number of goods, demand satisfaction by being ensured both articulated and hidden needs. An interactive dialogue with a consumer, making use of the knowledge it provides, may become a source of leverage in creating innovation. Customer orientation is one of the key elements of an innovative company, and one can also observe its significance in creating new products. The aim of this paper is to diagnose the dependence between proactive customer orientation and creating product innovation in cooperation with consumers in companies from the FMCG sector. The study was conducted on a sample of 165 companies. The results indicate that there is a positive correlation between proactive customer orientation and (a) the evaluation of the significance of the buyers’ knowledge in creating product innovations, (b) the number of buyers’ sources of knowledge used and finally (c) the assessment of the degree of realising the objectives concerning product innovations. These results suggest that proactive customer orientation seeking cooperation with the consumer can influence the market success of product innovations that are created in cooperation.