Product Innovation, Launch And Marketing

PRODUCT INNOVATION, LAUNCH AND MARKETING Name: Course: Tutor: Institution: Location: Date: PRODUCT INNOVATION, LAUNCH AND MARKETING For a significant period of time now, product innovation and development of new products have been relevant topics in the fields of business administration and marketing. Innovation and new product development is viewed by scholars as a fundamental process of research and management that is aimed at relevant results of financial success and popularity of the product in subject. Therefore, when a company introduces a new product in to its market, it is its responsibility to devise ways of managing the product’s innovation, select reliable launch strategies of the product in different locations of demand and the best forms of marketing the product by providing its background, financial and performance information to the people. In this paper, SafeHom Company has an aim of introducing a high technology home security system called Guarant Secure in a country in Africa, called Malawi. The accumulative literature review on the topic of innovation management and new product development, and on the product under review, proves the hypothesis that although it might be significantly expensive for a company, the innovation and marketing strategies are the most important stages that guarantee the success of any product in the market. Theories of New Product Development. This part of the paper discusses the main concepts of new product development that will apply in innovating, launching and marketing the product. The first concept deals with the innovation of the product. In this context, this theory is used to explain the innovation process of the product during the early stages termed as the idea generation stage. Other additional definitions in this stage include idea screening, development of concept and concept testing (Trott, 2011). In detail, this stage represents the creation and development of the initial idea that triggered the interest to make Guarant home security camera and its other related products before the actual making of its physical form. This is the point that SafeHom creates an abstract of the funding process and the total cost of the product. This stage is hugely theoretical as it entails thorough research on the nature of the product, an analysis on the type and the approximate number of people or audience that would find the product useful and worth buying. Basically, in this stage, the company is concerned with the type of our product, the changes that have occurred in the field of home security system ever since the last invention and the improvements that should be made on the current model to attract more customers (Trott, 2011). The second theory denotes and explains step-by-step processes of new product development that the company will use to make the actual product. This concept visually represents the activities using a number of models that capture the exact activities that the company will use to fulfil the actual innovation, development and marketing of Guarant Secure. Although the previous versions of the same model cover numerous other numbers of stages of product development, dynamics have proved that this eight-stage model is the standard one covering the exact stages that have been followed by related companies for over thirty years (Trott, 2011). This is because the model views the concept of new product development from a financial perspective where money that come in in terms of cash interpolates the cash that leaves the company. This model states that after the first stages, the following stages that follows are business analysis, then the actual product development followed by test marketing then commercialization and finally product monitoring and evaluation (Crawford et al., 2014). For SafeHom, all these processes will take different amounts of time since the product has a completely different form and the company has a totally different financial plan. However, these two theories have limitations that include their failures to maintain consistency over a long period of time and introduction of advanced technology. Product Innovation Process. Product innovation is a long and challenging process characterized by numerous uncertainties, complexities and taking risks, but for a company that has the correct skills, it is an organizational procedure that only requires perfect planning and financial stability. This is arguably the most important stage in product development as it requires the most effective form of structure, system planning and efficient methodologies (Crawford et al., 2014). These methodologies include a practical process of innovation and a close follow-up of all the stages of the product innovation process where one requires plausible creativity and focus on the final goal of development. The first stage in the process deals with the idea that the company has come up with. This is the stage SafeHom generated a mental idea of the product because the innovation of a product must always start with the search of the idea that has the best innovative potential and would lead to achieving of the goal. Therefore, to generate the most relevant product idea, it will perform an internal and external analysis based on the current trends in marketing as well as thinking of an idea that will yield little or no competition (Dougherty & Hardy, 1996). There are numerous ways of generating a product innovation idea. One of them is carrying out a targeted search on the field that the idea lies including attending workshops and participating in idea contests. The second method is random and means that one gets a random product idea and intuitively broadens the idea in to an innovative idea. For my case, however, the company carried out a thorough research on the field that the product will operate and came up with the idea of making a home security system since this is a new high-tech product where we will face less competition and the financial profits are guaranteed. The second stage in product innovation will be idea screening. After generating the ideas of the product that the company wants to wants to produce, the company will select a team of trusted personalities so that they help create a criterion that we should use to point out the best idea that requires undivided attention and full seriousness. After doing so, the team will perform a prescreen process on the idea by evaluating ideas of top three companies or firms that are competitors in the same business filed (Dougherty, 1990). Therefore, Guarant Secure Home Security will look in to the ideas of Nest Secure, Adobe Security and Ring Alarm Hardware and evaluate their new innovations, their marketing strategies and the satisfaction of their customer’s requirements. In case the companies have made remarkable mistakes in their operation, it will, create and closely examine a number of ways of improving the idea by finding solutions to their situations. In short, the first two stages dealing with the innovation idea will be about assessing the idea on the basis of the usefulness and the ability of the full potential of the idea to elevate SafeHom Company. The third stage that will follow in product innovation process will be concept testing which includes gathering as much information as possible on the idea by carrying out an extensive analysis and additional processing of the information. In this stage deals, the company will mainly determine the requirements of the customers and the marketing elements of the information as well as the market potential of the gathered information on the business idea (Fristch & Meschede, 2001). This is to say that SafeHom will examine how different the product idea is from the rest and how possible it is that it will face a particular degree of competition from other companies. Also, the firm will take a closer look at the risks and complexities it will have to pay in relation to the idea as well as the government conditions on the idea such as laws, permits, patents and standards that it will have to fulfill to be allowed to create the ultimate product. Additionally, it is in this stage that the company will employ systematic and professional methods of obtaining feedback from a number of people that it will familiarize with the idea. Therefore, we will gather information about the idea by giving particular questionnaires to the lead users of the product, interviewing potential customers and confronting focus groups in order to collect their reviews. The company will also perform numerous observations while tabulating all the information in order to obtain the best insight and views of other people on the idea. The fourth stage is business analysis. This is a simple stage in the innovation process of the Guarant Secure where which involves creation of a certain system of metric that will enable to monitor the progress and success or failure of the business idea. In this stage, the team will come up with ways of monitoring the idea, such as identifying the amount of time that it will take before the idea proceeds to the next stage, the performance of already released products as well as customers’ feedbacks and solutions that will have to make to the idea after reviewing the feedbacks. The fifth stage that will follow in product innovation is the marketability tests stage (Trott, 2011). Marketing a product is very important. A basis for product marketing can be achieved by creating ...