Product Development Strategy

Product development is risky. Many new products fail within their first year in the market. Sometimes the failure is due to poor execution of the launch strategy, and often it is due to launching products that do not deliver a valued benefit to consumers or are poorly designed. To increase return on innovation investment, we work with our clients at each stage from ideation to testing to uncover the concepts with the strongest chances of success and how to improve their market uptake.

Product development often requires understanding what features to offer and for some features, what level to provide.  Offering everything to everyone is rarely an option or profitable.  To determine the best configuration of product features to offer, we conduct in-market analysis to understand how different features are valued, followed by customised research to decide which features are most valued and which features consumers are willing to trade-off. This stage of product development can yield future innovations.

Setting the right price for a new or existing product needs to reflect a client’s objectives. Is the objective rapped penetration, lower penetration with higher-margin, or to help position an offer among a business repertoire of offers? While pricing research may exist for a defined offer, it may also require understanding what features consumers are willing to pay for, or trade-off for a lower price. Using a breadth of techniques, we tailor our approach to help clients find the price for achieving their objectives.

Post-launch research is critical in providing insights for developing follow-up marketing and sales support; providing insights for future product launches; and insights that will lead to product innovations which will build long-term sales and profitability. If a launch fails to achieve its objectives, post-launch research provides the insights that will help to revive the product or learn how not to repeat the same mistakes.