Market knowledge impacts on performances through front end process: empirical evidence from manufacturing plants across countries

This study investigates how manufacturing plants explore market knowledge to enhance their competitive position in global competition, particularly the impact of customer knowledge and supplier knowledge on organisational performance via the front end (FE) process. This study applies structural equation modelling to analyse databases collected from 2013 to 2016 in 220 manufacturing plants across 13 countries in the High Performance Manufacturing (HPM) Project Round 4 framework. Empirical evidence supports that the FE process would act as a mediator from input, customer or supplier market knowledge to output, organisational performance (including the success of new product development (NPD), quality, and customer satisfaction). Notably, customer market knowledge and supplier market knowledge play the primary source in the FE process in Western and Eastern countries. Empirical evidence suggests that manufacturing managers should consider customer and supplier market knowledge to enhance NPD success, quality, and customer satisfaction. Future research might explore the integration of customer and supplier market knowledge or the impact of improvements in IT technology on the FE process.