Key Determinants for a New Product Success

Key determinants of new product success

Introduction:

New Product development (NPD) is the process of designing, creating and marketing new product to satisfy customers. This research will focus on the marketing process of new product and what determine if a new product will succeed. Additionally, it will define the methods for guiding all the processes involved in getting a new product to market.  New product development (NPD) is typically a critical part of any manufacturing process. Most organizations realize that all products have a limited lifespan. Accordingly, new products need to be developed to replace them and keep the company in business. The purpose of this research is to examine and define the key determinants of a new product success; also to find out the reason behind some products are more successful than other products.

 Just as the product life cycle has various stages, new product development is also broken down into a number of specific steps (figure1).

Figure 1: steps for new product development (NPD).

In what follows, each stage of the NPD process before the Commercialization step is explained in detail.

Idea Generation

After setting a well-defined NPD, the idea generation stage takes place, while searching for product ideas is made to meet company objectives. The idea generation concerns the birth, development, and maturation of an innovative idea. A study done by Booz, Allen and Hamilton (1982), showed that an organization has to generate at least seven ideas to generate one successful. An average of 100 ideas must be generated in order to yield 15.2 successes (Griffin 1997).

The importance of this stage is to create a number of different ideas from which the firm can select the most feasible and promising one(s). A greater likelihood of achieving success depends in part on the number of ideas generated. Consequently, more possible ideas that could be generated will get the company closely to its goal (Bhuiyan, 2011). 

Screening and Business Analysis

In the screening stage, initial analysis is done based on the new product strategy (NPS), resources and competition, while in the business analysis stage, ideas are evaluated using quantitative performance criteria. After gathering enough new product ideas through various sources from the idea generation stage, which ideas to pursue will be selected based on the business value they bring. Making a good selection is critical to the future health and success of the business (Bhuiyan, 2011).