14. Different stages in a new product launch

A product launch is a process of releasing a new product into the consumer marketplace.

Stages in launching a new product:

1) Market research. It identifies market needs & wants, some product features, distribution channels, motivation to buy; Provides critical information & direction. You see, this stage is very important in the process of introduction a product.

2) Developing a product. For example, developing a new drug in labs. Coordinate all the processes in a right way. Set a time frame for the rollout and stick to it.

3) A company that develops a new product applies to the authorities for the license. Remember, extended lead times for new products can be deadly.

4) Test-marker the new product. If it is successful you should have enough personnel and manufacturing capacity.

5) Define the sellers; choose the right distribution channels, retailers/agents.

6) Train your employees, distributors; even provide face-to-face training, if the product is complex. Is smth is wrong, re-think your production strategy and manage to do smth.

7) Finally, don’t forget about a good promotional program. It involves ads, trade shows, promotional/technical literature, Web-sites, PR. Without the right support materials, the new product will simply sit in the warehouse.

These are the main stages u face in launching a new product. Remember that research, timing, and planning can all help increase the probability of success.

15.Innovations at Procter and Gamble

During the past 2 years, P&G has raised its new-product hit rate (the percentage of new entries that deliver a return above the cost of a capital) from 70% to 90%. That is terrific in an industry where half of new products fail within 12 month.

Organic growth – meaning growth from core business, excluding gains from acquisitions – is at the root of P&G’s transformation. According to A. G. Lafley, the CEO of P&G, organic growth strengthens a company’s ability to innovate.

Lafley has a model for innovating in a big company:

• One-on-one consumer research. Jim Strengel, Procter’s Chief Marketing Officer, has urged the marketers to spend lots of time with consumers in their homes, watching the ways they wear their clothes, clean their floors and asking them about habits and frustrations.

• Get employees to exchange ideas. Procter and Gamble has 7500 R&D people located in nine countries. In order to collect this vast area, the company encourages the employees to post problems on an internal website.

• Give designers more power. ‘Inventors are evenly distributed in the population, and we are as likely to find invention in a garage as in our labs,’ Lafley says.

• Stop testing too much. By cutting down on test-marketing (but not on science), P&G has reduced product launch time from laboratory to roll-out from three years to eighteen months company-wide.

• Know what to do. Lafley believes that P&G needs to market not just a product itself but the consumer’s experience of the product – how it looks, smells and feels.

• Reach outside for ideas. In attempt to encourage growth, some companies offer fat bonuses for innovation or hire stars from outside. Lafley has not done either of those things. He does motivate the rank and file by giving out modest rewards, such as giving 50 stock options, for creative ideas and by celebrating innovators on P&G’s internal website.

One of the parts of P&G’s success is its method of designing and creation new products. It researches innovations on the open market in the Internet. P&G and some other companies created few innovative nets which they use for different aims. For example, InnovationNet is a Web-portal where employees who make research and development activities exchange their ideas with each other. Another one is Innocentive where some problems are published and it is sated a price for their solution. The similar Net NineSigma aimed on research of people with whom they can conclude a contract for creation a problem’s solution. The last one is YourEncore. It involves fired scientists and engineers who conclude short-term contracts with companies.

The owner of Procter and Gamble claims that this whole new way of making business is future of many companies but they do not understand it yet.