Product Case

Learning Team B has identified a need for an improved travel pillow. While this product does exist, it provides for only this single need, and is often not comfortable, travel friendly, or reusable. We have team members that have travelled extensively around the world and the need for a pillow and blanket is often desired on a train, plane, bus, or long car trip.

We are proposing a travel pillow that houses a blanket inside of the pillow. The product would be in the shape of a “U” to wrap around the head and support the neck. The pillow will contain memory foam, or small micro beads that hold their shape and conform to the user while remaining cool. The blanket would fit and be concealed inside a zipper enclosure on the back of the pillow, made of a micro fiber-anti lint fabric. Inside the zipper enclosure would be a Velcro strap that could be attached to the pillow and wrap around a seat to hold it in place and prevent the need to have to move it around when you get up to use the overhead bin etc.

We have selected Swiss based, global home goods retailer, IKEA to market and sell the product and will focus launches in its stores as well as focus on countries that have large mass transit systems, initially Japan as our home country. Japan is often rated as one of the world’s best mass transit systems and noted for being clean and comfortable and standing apart from other transit systems, offering a good environment to launch the product and test the marketplace (Textor 2010).

Japan embraces new technology and the latest innovation and would likely enjoy being the first marketplace for this item. Recent innovations include shopping bags with hard shell bottoms that double as an earthquake helmet, so our market approach can be broad, and embraced (William, 2012).

The need for comfort while traveling, even for short distance is desired and often difficult to achieve. This product could be sold and marketed to countries, transit systems,