Section A
Question 1
A company is required to have a new product development policy because according to Nicholas & Perks (2011), new product development is crucial in the process of introducing new products into the market or improving an existing product through modification with an aim of meeting seasonal customers’ requirements in the market. Many organizations engage in different activities with an aim of satisfying the needs and wants of customers. In addition, these activities and strategies also assist business growth, development, success, and survival in the business against rival competitors in the market. New product development is one of the major activities that businesses engage in with an aim of satisfying customer needs and beat competition in the market.
New product development is required for every company because it is considered a driving force for most organizations and as a result a vital process in the organic growth of an organization (Owens, 2001). Through New Product Development, organizations are able to keep pace with the changing consumer needs, increased competition, technological advancements, while also engaging in risk diversification, all of which contribute to increase in company and brand reputation thus resulting to the success and survival of the business. Bearing in mind that NPD is of great importance in the organizations, it is therefore imperative for businesses to adopt new product development policy within the organization. Adopting new product development policy is important for business organizations due to the fact that lack of it results into new product development failures in the organization. According to Owens (2001), business organizations that approach the process of NPD in a structured and strategic manner have more chances of success compared to those with ad-hoc approaches. By adoption and following a well-developed and plan set of policies, milestones, and procedures business organization are able to avoid some of the most common challenges and pitfalls which results in the failure of New Product Development. Some of the challenges and pitfalls avoided that could lead to NPD failures include, overestimation of the market size, misinterpretation of customer requirements, poor product design, poor marketing and advertising, and mismatch of target customer requirements. Bearing this in mind, it is therefore imperative for business organizations to adopt new product development policy if indeed they wish to avoid the various pitfalls and challenges that result to NPD failures.
Question 2
Marketing plays a critical role in ensuring the sales of new products in the market (Ernst et al., 2010). Within the business organization, the marketing department is charged with the responsibility of introducing new products to the consumers in the market, thus, creating strategic messages to increase appeal and sales. In regard to this, the marketing department role therefore is to measure the consumer’s response and feedback about an organizational product. Through its marketing teams, the marketing department is able to achieve this role by advertising these new products to the market, to see what product performs and what product does not perform. Therefore marketers will be able to note the trends in demand of a product in their specified market. In return, this plays an imperative role in the development of new product, since the marketing department team are able to work well with the product developers towards creating products that are primarily based on customer’s demand. It is therefore the role of the marketing department to enable this connection, and to find an effective and efficient strategy to communicate the response that comes from the customers to the team involved in product development (Griffin & Hauser, 1992). This input is what influences how the team involved in product development, designs and approaches its new products line. Essentially the product development teams are able to approach and design new products based on the feedback of real market and on analysis of competitors.
Image 1: Product Development Process
As shown in image 1 above, there are six major stages in NPD, which include planning, concept development, system-level design, detail design, testing and refinement, and production ramp-up. However, out of these stages, the marketing department is involves in the research stage on NPD. Here, the marketing department conducts research based on product validation, thus ensuring that the product developers create products that customers will actually pay for (Ernst et al., 2010). By doing this, the marketing department assists product developers avoid wastage of money, effort, and time on a product idea that will not survive in the market. Therefore, the marketing department conducts research on customers and the market whereby they find opportunities and target markets that provide information of how these products or services are perceived.
Question 3
One of the biggest challenges facing numerous organizations for new products marketing research has been on the issues of how to effectively, efficiently, and realistically stimulate and describe a new service or product to a client through image or text description, or through prototyping or expensive test market. However, over the few years, the use of corporate technology expertise has revolutionized this challenge of NPD marketing research via the application augmented reality, visual and 3D printing (Montes, 2016). In NPD, the most exciting use of the 3D printing technology is in inexpensive and rapid prototyping. In many scenarios, customer reactions to descriptions or concepts are not always as reliable as it is when using a prototype. However, the creation and transportation of prototypes is also considered a challenging and prohibitively expensive technique. In regard to this, instead of developing huge prototypes to be transported to the research site or to the market for customer viewing, 3D printers will be used to produce stimuli instead. These 3D printed prototypes will cost fewer expenses while also eliminating shipping. In addition, the use of 3D printing technology will provide customers with a clear and simple description of the product required making the customers insight more readily available even for other projects. In addition, the use of the 3D printing technologies also enables swift iteration of design and research of a product (Montes, 2016). For instance, If Dyson Company marketers identify in early testing that a feature or attribute of their vacuum cleaners product needs to be changed, they will simply send a 3D printing file to the respective research site where a new product prototype will be sent and research will continue without a problem hence leading to the development of a range of successful products in an organization.
Section B
Question 1a
Product innovation is imperative for business prosperity (Cooper, 2019. Thus, companies and industries re-strategize and restructure their operations in order to cope with the changing times, fierce and new competition, and the rapidly developing technologies. In order to achieve this, these companies focus on the drives to new product success. Product superiority is one drive towards the success of new product. This is achieved by delivering products with unique benefits and value to the users. This drive brigs a product advantage in ensuring its success.
Commitment to customers and a strong market orientation is another drive towards the success of a new product, here, companies ensure that they have a customer focused and market driven goal in their new product development (Ciappei & Simoni, 2005) This is imperative and critical in the success and of new products. Therefore, there is need for firms to understand customers’ wants and needs thoroughly, nature of the market and competition situation in order for these new products to succeed.
Upfront homework is another drive towards the success of new products. The various steps used in the development of a product and actual design, that is, market studies, screening, building if business case and assessment of technical feasibility are primary factors that ensures the success of a new product (Cooper, 2019). Apart from upfront homework, multi stage and gate game plan is another drive for the success of a new product. Here, the companies’ re-engineer their product process of innovation, by first launching small products to the market and observe the good and bad concerns about it. Later, the company redesigns the process of innovation based on earlier findings in order to come up with best products.
Another drive towards success of a new product is focus. There is need for these new products to have shaper decision points and evaluation. Majority of firms suffer from lacking resources for their new product project and in most cases they find themselves not having enough money, time or the people to perform well. However, a better focus as a drive ensures these limited resources are well devoted to the project.
Question 1b
Innovation is one of the major drivers of success in Dyson Company. In the world today, innovation is considered as one of the most influential forces of change, especially in the technology industry (Montes, 2016). In one way or another, innovation has largely contributed to the shift in development in the business world. In many organizations, such as Dyson, innovation is known to provide firms with a competitive advantage in case of development of market challenges. As a success driver, innovation has enabled Dyson to become more successful in its industry, which in return has contributed to towards its profitability making Dyson Company more and more stable both in the short and long run. By engaging innovation, Dyson has been able to increase its difference and diversification of goods (Yun, 2017). For instance, over the years, Dyson has been able to engage in the production of different types of home appliances such as heaters, hand dryers, and lights, all thanks to innovation.
Though innovation, Dyson Company has been able to be a positive influence in terms employee retention, quality, and productivity of products. In regard to employees, Dyson Company has been able to retain and employee a huge number of individuals who have also been huge driver of success in Dyson especially due to the fact that they engage in the day to day activities at Dyson which contribute to the overall growth and development on the Company leading to its success in the market. According to Yun (2017) with innovation, Dyson has been able to obtain demarcation to provide the consumers with the satisfaction of the highest level.
Question 2
In the world today, the planet is generally being considered as unsustainable especially due to the current linear economy. As a result of this, the need to push towards a circular economy which results in as sustainable planet has become one of the major aim of every individual and organizations. According to Harper et al. (2019), a circular economy involves a strategic approach towards the development of an economy that is of benefit to the society, business, and the environment. Major organizations today such as Tesla are leading the fore front in their involvement towards a circular economy. For instance, in their effort of guiding towards a circular economy, Tesla’s approach of recycling is one of the major ways of ensuring a sustainable production leading to a sustainable planet. In effort to ensure a circular economy, Tesla in involved in the recycling of its old spent cells, battery packs, and modules. Although Tesla is not striving towards a sustainable planet on its own, it has chosen to work closely with Umicore for the European operations, an environmental conscious recycler to recycle battery leftover products into construction materials (Huang et al., 2018). In so doing, this partnership is able to recycle back battery waste products profitably, while ensuring that the material flows in a circularly loop. In addition, this approach to economic development also results to society and environmental safety.
Up to date, Tesla’s main mission has been to engage in various projects that accelerate the world’s transformation into the use of sustainable energy. In regard to this, Tesla has ventured itself into producing electric vehicles that contribute towards a future of sustainable energy. The electric cars are better in sustaining the environment compared with the gas powered vehicles (Bonsu, 2020). In so doing, this approach has enables Tesla to continue focusing on its business economic development goals while at the same time ensuring the protection of the society and the environment from pollution as a result of excessive carbon emission. With these roles, it is therefore important to note that, Tesla indeed is greatly contributing to the current and future involvement in the circular economy.
Question 2b
Population worldwide is growing thus resulting to negative effects to the environment. In order to ensure there is enough prosperity, water and food, companies should switch from linear economy to circular economy (Calvo-Porral & Lévy-Mangin, 2020). The aim of this circular economy is ensuring safe and healthy living and to also cause less damage to the environment. In circular economy the key focus is recycling of materials to use them once again. Examples of these products include, waste glass, waste papers, electrical devices, plastics and metals, among others exhibit the level of circularity products.
Waste glass can be used again in making new glass. Broken pieces of glass are crushed, and then sorted, cleaned and later prepared for mixing with raw materials such as sand and soda ash (Cámara-Creixell & Scheel-Mayenberger, 2019). These glass pieces and raw materials are later melted in the furnace and finally moulded to making new bottles of different sizes and colours. Waste papers are also reused by mixing of old and used papers with chemicals and water, so as to break them down. They are later heated to form slurry or what is called pulp. The pulp is then cleaned to remove any form of contamination. It is then re-inked, refined, colour stripped and bleached. After this process the cleaned pulp is ready for use.
Electrical devices can be recycled too. For instance, mobile phones, kitchen appliance, televisions and computers can all be reused. Waste electronics are collected and taken to reprocessing plant whereby they get shredded into very small pieces. Once they are shredded, those with very strong magnets produce ferrous metals like steel (Cámara-Creixell & Scheel-Mayenberger, 2019). Waste plastic can be recycled in two main ways. One is mechanical recycling where these plastics are chopped and washed then they are grounded to powder and later melted. Two, is chemical recycling where these plastics are chemically broken down to monomers.
All waste metals finally end at a yard of scrap metals, where these metals get separated with type. The metals are later crushed and then compacted. Later they are melted in the furnace to produce metal sheets. These metals sheets are finally used to produce new products of metal (Calvo-Porral & Lévy-Mangin, 2020). The ability of circularity in these products helps in ensuring safe and healthy living, also they reduce the massive costs involved in production of new products and lastly they cause less damage to the environment because once used, they can be recycled or reused.
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