Mining product maps for new product development

Many enterprises have been devoting a significant portion of their budget to new product development (NPD) in order to distinguish their products from those of their competitors, and to make them better fit the needs and wants of customers. Hence, businesses should develop products that fulfill the customer demands, since this will increase the enterprise's competitiveness and it is an essential criterion to earning higher loyalties and profits. This paper presents the product map obtained from data mining results, which investigates the relationships among customer demands, product characteristics, and transaction records, using the Apriori algorithm as a methodology of association rules for data mining. The product map shows that different knowledge patterns and rules can be extracted from customers to develop new cosmetic products and possible marketing solutions. Accordingly, this paper suggests that the cosmetics industry should extract customer knowledge from the demand side and use this as a knowledge resource on its supply chain for new product development. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.