The Involvement of Supply Chain Partners in New Product Development: The Role of a Third Party

This paper examines the effect of supply chain and third party involvement on product innovation performance. The concept of supply chain network is studied as the type of external member collaboration for firm new product development. This study collected information about 208 manufacture firms from Taiwan; we investigated the contingent effect of supply chain member involvement on product innovation performance. The result indicate that external member involvement have positive impacts on a product innovation performance, and third party involvement within the supplier involvement is found to be as important a moderator for the relationship between external member involvement and product innovation performance. The relationship between customer involvement and market performance was positively moderated, but between supplier involvement and design performance was negatively moderated by third party involvement.