What’s Involved With New Product Development?

Product development is a journey that transforms a product concept into an actual product and finally takes it to the market. It is a massive part of any manufacturing process since products have limited lifespans. And organizations have to continually innovate to replace existing ones to maintain an edge in the market.

Despite the number of products that undergo the product development process, very few manage to reach the market. This is imperative to check on Avomeen to gain skills on how the market is performing, and the real competition to deliver products of superior value. The following is what is involved in new product development.

Idea Generation

With a systematic search for new product ideas, an organization will generate thousands of ideas to find only a handful of good ones. They can adopt these good ideas to go through full product development and finally reach the market. This pool of ideas can be generated from the following:

• Internal Sources – the company relies on its R/D team and employee contribution to create ideas.
• Market Research – the company can evaluate its changing needs to the new market trends.
• Customer Feedback – Customer feedback can sometimes offer valuable insights that companies can ride on while generating new ideas.
• SWOT Analysis – a company can conduct a review of its strengths and weaknesses, opportunities, and strengths to help them identifying feasible ideas. This can equally be done to their existing competitors.

Idea Screening

In this phase, ideas are filtered to select exceptional ones. Whereas idea generation creates a pool of ideas, idea screening, on the other hand, focuses on choosing the most promising ones.

Concept Development and Testing

Ideas are developed into product concepts, which are a detailed version of the new products described in meaningful terms. When developing the concept, the product has to be sent to the target market, where selected customers from the target group can test the product.

After this, the product team and the target customers engage in a brainstorming session, where they evaluate the capability of the product by asking customers questions. The customers equally seek clarity on the product’s features and how it solves their problems, even suggesting adjustments. At this stage, the business attempts to understand the perception of the customer to the product and whether they will buy the final product.

Market Strategy Analysis

The test results will help the business in coming up with a final concept to be developed into a final product. For every promising concept development, what is essential is how the market strategy is crafted. The market strategy should instill clarity into how the product will be introduced into the market.

Some of the market strategy statement include:

• The description of the target market
• An outline of the product planned price
• The product intended long-term goals

Business Analysis

It entails evaluating the business attractiveness of the product. In this phase, a review of the cost of sales and profit projections for the new product is done to determine whether the factors will ultimately satisfy company objectives.

Other important analytics to be considered may include

• Additional costs involved
• The pricing strategies
• Existing product competition
• How to Break Even point

Once it gets a nod from the management, it directly moves to the product development phase.

Product Development

The product concept is turned into a tangible product once the management approves all strategies. A prototype is built to showcase the limited product features. Other requirements initially agreed upon such as branding are also tested at this phase.

Test Marketing

Test marketing is the last stage before commercialization. Notably, in this phase, the actual product and the proposed marketing program are tested in relation to the marketing settings.

Additionally, the business tests the product and its entire marketing program, which includes targeting, positioning strategy, advertising, distribution, and packaging. The testing is done before they can decide on the final product investment.

Commercialization

Test marketing provides the management with all the information they require for them to decide whether they are going for the launch or not. In commercialization, the product is finally introduced into the market. It is usually a costly process in the beginning, especially in cases where there is a need to rent a facility, besides the huge investment that goes to adverts and the sales process.

Importantly, it is best if you consider the following aspects during commercialization:

• Introduction Timing – consider the economic status before your launch. Consequently, it is good to know when your competition will be launching their new product since you can easily hinge on their timing to beat them to the market.
• Introduction Place– it can be national, international, or just a single location, can be very costly depending on your choice; hence developing a planned market rollout is essential.

Conclusion

Despite these numerous steps, it is better to develop a product with excellent customer experience. Finally, ensure that it can survive the market by beating the competition for you to count your success in the product.