Week 9 - March 7, 2012

Chapter 10 was about Products. As my Professor mentioned in class one of the 4 p's or the marketing mix. According to the text there are 6 different types of new products: New-to-the-world products, new product lines,  additions to existing product, improvements or revisions of existing products, repositioned products, and lower-priced products. There are also 7 steps in the New-Product Development Process.

They are:

1. New-Product Strategy
2. Idea Generation
3. Idea Screening
4. Business Analysis
5. Devlopment
6. Test Marketing
7. Commercialization

I'm having a hard time remembering what I found interesting while reading the chapter. I think it was the fact that competitors will sabotage your test marketing by changing their prices, advertising, or promotion. "The purpose is to hide or distort the normal conditions that the testing firm might expect in the market." There are also a couple alternatives to test marketing, which is "the limited introduction of a product and a marketing program to determine the reactions of potential customers in a market situation." I guess it seems shocking to me and unfair. But it makes sense, you want your product to succeed not the competitors. It's like a Facebook game that I play, Realm of Empires. You want your clan to succeed so you spy on the other clans and cause dissent or distract other players with multiple attacks on their villages, dodging etc.

Overall this was an interesting chapter. I enjoyed reading it. Though I do get a bit confused in spots. For example: The five categories of adopters are a bit confusing. (An adopter is "a consumer who was happy enough with his or her trial experience with a product to use it again".) The categories are innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards.  It makes sense that products have a life cycle, but it is not easy seeing where one ends and one begins. Practice will probably help with this. Then when you combine the adopters with the life cycle it's easy to get confused, but I think the lecture and the PowerPoint helped things make a bit clearer. It was definitely different having the professor broadcasting from a different site than he normally does. Overall an interesting chapter, that I enjoyed.