Proceedings of 7th Asia-Pacific Business Research Conference
25 - 26 August 2014, Bayview Hotel, Singapore ISBN: 978-1-922069-58-0
The Key Success of Product Innovation in Four to Five Star of
the local entrepreneur, One Tambon (Sub-District) One Product
(OTOP) in the Northern of Thailand
Raumporn Mala* and Boonthawan Wingwon**
This research objectives were: 1) to explore the product innovation in four
to five star of One Tambon One Product (OTOP) , which was the locally
made and marketed products of each Thai Tambon, i.e. sub-district,
entrepreneurs in the Northern region of Thailand; 2) to investigate the key
success antecedent factors to build up the innovative products of four and
five star of OTOP entrepreneurs and lastly 3) to verify antecedent variables
comparison as a key success of four and five star of OTOP innovation. The
samples of this study were entrepreneur leaders, group clusters, other
relative group clusters and OTOP customers. The research methodology
was Participating Action Research, i.e. PAR. The research data was
collected using the observation, in-depth interview, focus group discussion,
sub-group meeting and workshop. The data was briefly analyzed and
synthesized by using descriptive statistics data for the quantitative data,
while the qualitative data was analyzed by using the data synthesis and
triangulation.
The research results revealed that the product innovation in four to five star
of OTOP entrepreneurs was the incremental innovation in all a large array
of OTOP, namely traditional handicrafts, cotton and silk garments, pottery,
fashion accessories, household items and processed foods from old
products to created new products. The additional innovative product from
the existing craft product was to raise sales and profitability from the
product attraction innovation. The adoptive and adaptive innovation from
the variations on trend of product ideas, knowledge, devices and artifacts
were to meet the trend of global brand innovation. The open innovation
with the targeted research and development collaboration such as the
government co-financed development organization, university partnerships,
and Non Governmental Organizations.
The finding on the antecedent factors to construct four and five star of
OTOP product innovation were consisted of two dimensions from internal
and external entrepreneur factors with four components, i.e. knowledge
ability, marketing strategy, technology sourcing, network alliance and
budgeting investment. In the final research result showed that when
comparing between four and five star OTOP, the antecedent key success
factors of product innovation were the mixed innovation factors, application
of technologies and knowledge data which were varied on both scale and
level between these four and five star entrepreneurs.
Key words: Product Innovation, Entrepreneur, Key success factor
_______________________________________________
Raumporn Mala* and Assoc. Prof. Boonthawan Wingwon**
Faculty of Management Sciences Ph.D. Program Lampang Rajabhat University, Thailand
*Corresponding author. E-mail: rareerak@yahoo.com