Product development and management

 

Once the market research has enabled the evolvement of specifications of a product or service, the next step in the marketing management process is the making of the product. Getting the right raw materials, dies, fabrication, prototype making and other processes are some of the details to be worked out with the production planning and manufacturing units.

The success of a product would depend on raw materials, technological know-how and good inventory management. Experts say that with rapid advances in technology and availability of raw materials, product life-cycle is getting shorter and shorter.

Each product goes through a cycle popularly known as Product Life Cycle (PLC) which is made up of the following stages-development of product, introduction to market, growth through increased promotion and sales, maturity when sales reaches a peak, followed by saturation in the market and subsequent decline.

Product Life Cycle (PLC) will differ across products and categories, sometimes it may last only a few weeks or months while in some other cases, some years. PLC can be extended through advertising to gain new market share, price discounts to lure customers, using product enhancements to add value and target new areas. Even new packaging and colour changes can improve perception levels.

Before promotional activities are planned on a large scale, it makes perfect business sense to test market the product in select cities or regions so as to guage the market response and if any changes in product are required, modification and design changes can be carried out before it reaches the retail shelves and in the hands of customers.