Week 6 - Product Development Management

Reflections from the readings and videos

Considering the “products” that I personally use, I have to imagine I am not a branded company’s ideal consumer. Looking around my household, I see a plethora of “generic” brands, no real tendency towards repeat purchases, and I tend towards products that I believe best fit the need at the lowest price. I don’t wear brand name jeans, I have no preference to the electronics I buy, and vehicles, etc. are functional and practical to me (tangible goods), not status symbols (even if I was a millionaire, I would not pay $1700 for a Gucci handbag!). As for the layers of the products, I believe it is the same story – my personal PC hardware has to be powerful enough to run the specific software that I plan to use on it, anything provided beyond that is all well and good, but not particularly necessary for me.  I do look to reputation for quality and reliability for vehicles (my intagibles side). I am usually willing to try new things to satisfy needs in better ways, rather than stick loyally to a particular brand. 

This is especially true now that I have located from the US to the UK, where the land of brands is new and somewhat unfamiliar. I guess it’s a good thing that I don’t have a strong affinity for my old brands, because most of them are unobtainable in this new market, at least under their “old” names. It is interesting, because I can tell that some brands have been modified by the same parent company to better target the UK consumer, such as dish detergent. Paper towels (or “kitchen towels” as they are called here) are essentially the same thing under a different brand. About the only thing I do have an affinity to stay with is my toilet paper brand, LOL, but I guess I had better get over that as well!



Joy (US) and Fairy (US) liquid dish soap,
essentially the same product by the same
parent company, P&G.



Do these brands look familiar to one another? Bounty (US),
owned by P&G, sold its right to this product in the UK
to SCA of Sweden in 2007 with the understanding that it
would be under a separate brand.



As for new product development (PD) and product lifecycle, there are multiple examples of products becoming obsolete, ranging from the electric typewriter to music cassettes (who can forget vinyl and 8-track as well?) to 35mm camera film. And I suspect that music CD’s and DVD’s will not be long in also becoming obsolete. True, there does become something of a small niche following for the older technologies, but not on a volume based scale. The pace of emerging technology has a direct impact on PD and only the most nimble companies will be able to capitalize on new innovations, compared to those who move too slow to realize that technology will obsolete their tried and true products. The advent of digital media really drives this point home, and has been a very disruptive technology for many companies who formerly relied on older technologies to offer the same products/services. The following example highlights the 7 (or 8) step PD process, it is from a firm called Ideo, which specializes in innovative product concepts. This example in particular shows how this firm tackled a redesign of the shopping cart, getting from idea generation to prototype design in only 5 days, which I found particularly impressive. Although the product has not yet caught on in a mass market, I think it is an excellent basis on how firms can respond to shorter product lifecycles when considering their own PD needs. It was highlighted on ABC’s Nightline, and the 8 minute video can be found at the following link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M66ZU2PCIcM

Ideo Shopping Cart Concept