Product Concepts and Developing and Managing Products - Assignment Example

Product item refers to an individual brand or product. Product lines refer to a group of product items that are closely related in terms of benefit, function, production, etc. Product mixes refer to the summation of all the products and variants that are offered by a particular organization (Tutor2u, n.d.). Chapter 10 – Developing and Managing Products It has been observed that most of the products actually fail in the market, only a few products succeed in real. There could be various reasons behind the success and failure of a product.

Successor failure of a product depends on its features, price, relevance in the market, segmentation, positioning, targeting, promotional strategies, etc. Most of the products fail because of unattractive features, exceptional high price, wrong segmentation, positioning, targeting, inappropriate promotional strategies, lack of top management support, lack of relevance in the market, etc. Whereas the main reasons behind the success of a product include excellent product features, value for money, proper marketing strategies, full support from top management, etc.

There is a number of stages involved in the development of a new product. These are idea generation, idea screening, concept development, and testing, marketing strategy, and financial analysis, product development, test marketing, commercialization. Each of these stages is discussed below. Idea Generation The entire process of new product development starts from the idea generation stage. New ideas might be generated from the company's internal employees, customers, suppliers, distributors and even from competitors.

Idea Screening Once the ideas are generated they go through a screening process where the feasibility of each of the idea is analyzed and the one which is most feasible is chosen to go ahead. Concept Development and Testing In this staging concept of the chosen idea is developed and it is tested in the sample customers. Any further modification in the product features is done on the basis of the responses from these customers. Marketing strategy and financial analysis Marketing strategies would include strategies on 4 Ps (product, price, place, and promotion), segmentation, targeting, positioning, and sales.

The financial analysis would involve an analysis of the total cost of production, sales, and distribution. The financial analysis would also involve the analysis of the required profit margin based on which the price will be decided. Product Development In this stage, a prototype of the final product is developed and it is made to go through all the testing processes.  Test marketing Test marketing is done to find out whether all the marketing strategies are appropriate for the product as well as the target market.

  Commercialization Commercialization refers to the launching of the product nationally, but it is done only after successful test marketing (Learmarketing, n.d.).