Nwe Product Develemoent

NEW PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT (NPD)

In business and engineering, new product development (NPD) is the complete process of bringing a new product to market. A product is a set of benefits offered for exchange and can be tangible (that is, something physical you can touch) or intangible (like a service, experience, or belief). There are two parallel paths involved in the NPD process: one involves the idea generation, product design and detail engineering; the other involves market research and marketing analysis. Companies typically see new product development as the first stage in generating and commercializing new product within the overall strategic process of product life cycle management used to maintain or grow their market share.

Improving and updating product lines is crucial for the success for any organisation. Failure for an organisation to change could result in a decline in sales and with competitors racing ahead. The process of NPD is crucial within an organisation. Products go through the stages of their lifecycle and will eventually have to be replaced. New product development has eight stages.. These stages will be discussed briefly below:

Stage 1: Idea Generation

New product ideas have to come from somewhere. But where do organisations get their ideas for NPD? Sources include:

Market Research

Employees

Consultants

Competitors

Customers

Distributors and Suppliers

Stage 2: Idea Screening

This process involves shifting through the ideas generated above and selecting ones which are feasible and workable to develop. Pursing non feasible ideas can clearly be costly for the company.

Stage 3: Concept Development and Testing

The organisation may have come across what they believe to be a feasible idea, however, the idea needs to be taken to the target audience. What do they think about the idea? Will it be practical and feasible? Will it offer the benefit that the organisation hopes it will? or have they overlooked certain issues? Note the idea taken to the target audience is not a working prototype at this stage, it is just a concept.

Stage 4: Marketing Strategy and Development

How will the product/service idea be launched within the market? A proposed marketing strategy will be written laying out the marketing mix strategy of the product, the segmentation, targeting and positioning strategy sales and profits that are expected.

Stage 5: Business Analysis

The company has a great idea, the marketing strategy seems feasible, but will the product be financially worth while in the long run? The business analysis stage looks more deeply into the Cashflow the product could generate, what the cost will be, how much market shares the product may achieve and the expected life of the pro3edcewsduct.

Stage 6: Product Development

At this stage the prototype is produced. The prototype will clearly run through all the desired tests, and presented to a selection of people made up of the the target market segment to see if changes need to be made.

Stage 7: Test Marketing

Test marketing means testing the product within a specific area. The product will be launched within a particular region so the marketing mix strategy can be monitored and if needed modified before national launch.

Stage 8: Commercialisation

If the test marketing stage has been successful the product will go for national launch. There are certain factors that need to be taken into account before a product is launched nationally. These include:

• timing of the launch,

• how the product will be launched,

• where the product will be launched,

• will there be a national roll out or

• will it be region by region?

Conclusion

The eight stages of product development may seem

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