Know-How Exchange : Other

I believe the large number of companies have a varying degrees of product launch planning. Most has a poor if any plans for product launch. In general sense, a consumer product would need minimum 18 months of planning after the initial launch decision is made. From initial market viability study (before the decision to launch) to prototype, trade feedback, consumer feedback, tweaking the product, marketing message, pre-launch marketing, PR, there are so many things to be done (including packaging, retailer buy-ins, etc). Ideally, i would appreciate company giving me a 24 months. Timeline is a must to make sure you hit each milestone. The plan for launch needs to be manuverable. Many of these cases are for specialty products.

may want to look up a book by Schneider of Schneider & Associates. She put out a book a few years ago that was very insightful.

also check out https://launchpr.typepad.com/

Good luck

Dear Robert,

I think the term "success" in marketing and product launch depends on the:

market or niche market,
product's appeal,
product's cost to manufacture,
product's retail cost,
cost of the marketing,
reach of the marketing,
marketing's message,
competition from other brands,
values and benefits the product convey
demographics and psychographics of the users
manufacturer's brand equity
manufacturer's time line for returns on its investment
manufacturer's time line for upgrades or revamps.

and so on. It's all pretty subjective.

I'm sure different companies calculate investment returns in different ways. but if it's just from a marketing standpoint, the best question is probably, did the marketing bring in more in terms of revenue than it cost to produce? if it did, the marketing could be said to have been successful. But it rather depends who is asking and what 's being asked.

When manufacturers, marketers, and retailers define what they mean by success in a tighter category, they'll be closer to an answer that helps them.

Success in one area can mean disaster in another.

I hope this helps.

Gary Bloomer
Wilmington, DE, USA

Good input from above. Here are two excellent resources to answer your question:

“ ... only 15% to 20% of new products succeed. P&G's success rate is a little over 50%. But we were at that industry average in the '90s. We improved our batting average by clarifying and simplifying the innovation process. We set checkpoints with clear measures for each phase of the process from ideation through development and commercialization. If a project looks like it will not make it, we drop it. You learn more from failure than you do from success but the key is to fail early, fail cheaply, and don't make the same mistake twice.” https://tinyurl.com/cprk2r

“ ... success rates of new products are less than 10% & consume significant portion of financial, management & technical resources of companies. Though definition of success is a relative term, there is no doubt that survival of many companies depends upon the success of their new products.” https://tinyurl.com/prvsk9

hope these help,

Steve

One of the things that has really cut down on successes for new products in the consumer packaged goods markets is the slotting fees that supermarket chains require just to get the product on the shelf. It now takes about $10-12 million to get national distribution in the United States, and that's money that could be used to advertise and promote a new product directly to consumers. Instead it goes into the pockets of the distribution channel.

I'm personally familiar with a number of "failed products" that might have made it if they had those slotting fees available to generate awareness and trial. There was nothing wrong with the products or the positioning; it was just a question of not having sufficient funds to finance the inventory, receivables AND slotting fees all at the same time.

Dear Robert

Cooper and Kenschmidt wrote a paper wrote a paper on the success of new products in 1990:

Cooper, R.G. & E.J. Kleinschmidt. Oct. 1990. New Product Success Factors: A Comparison of 'Skills' Versus
Successes and Failures. R & D Management 19 : 46-63.

The duo also wrote a paper on in 1995:

Cooper, R.G. & E.J. Kleinschmidt. Oct. 1990. New Product Success Factors: A Comparison of 'Skills' Versus
Successes and Failures. R & D Management 19 : 46-63.

What you must remember here is that whilst their analysis was sound and the papers were peer reviewed (You should be able to trust them) they come from an R&D perspective rather than a perspective of corporations and individuals offering products for sale in the retail environment.

His book Winning At New Products: Accelerating The Process From Idea To Launch, Second Edition Comes from the perspective of new product development, market introduction and subsequent success or failure of the product. It’s a bit low-brow for academics but offers useful guidelines for manufacturers. I certainly wouldn’t use it as a basis for working out how to choose a winning product in the retail environment – more a guide for NPD managers to get relevant products to the market feasibility, launch and follow up stages. Success rates vary across the board, so your 10% is relatively meaningless in any specific context.

You should also read: Jeffrey A Timmons - New Venture Creation; Guy Kawasaki - Rules for Revolutionaries; Peter F. Drucker - Innovation & Entrepreneurship but remember that these offer guidelines about the conception and development of innovative products which can then be moved into the sales arena. They do not dwell on retail specifics which are totally relevant to your question.

You might refine your search by defining what you mean by success and over what period you are going to measure it.

For example, it is perfectly acceptable to measure success in retail marketing by different measures over the product lifecycle. A success in one part of the cycle for a given new product would be measured as a failure in another part of the cycle.

Likewise success for one product in the introductory phase measured by, say turnover might be a failure for another product, based on turnover in the same part of the cycle.

Defining success in any phase of the cycle can be based on turnover, profit, market share or even the ability to manufacture accurately to meet short order cycles and low inventory could all be measures of success.

To get references which meet your criteria will require you to refine your definitions in much more detail otherwise you could be reading all year!

There is however a very interesting paper which offers a global insight which it then relates, very successfully to the retail market in Nepal, of all places. If you re-work the methodology for your own market, the global references used could be equally applicable to your situation. By a mighty coincidence, it also cites the works of Professor Cooper and his collaborators as references. It too is peer reviewed, so you should be able to trust it. Having re-read it, I like it so much that I feel that I must get to know the author who is Bed Nath Sharma

The reference is:

https://www.nepjol.info/index.php/JNBS/article/viewFile/483/470


Good luck – this is a vast subject and the work you have set yourself is akin to learning Rachmaninoff’s 3 rd piano concerto – Monumental and Titanic!


Steve Alker
Xspirt