Marketing Profs

Most New Products Fail

In 1982 Booz, Allen and Hamilton published findings from an exhausting study 700 corporations on the subject of new products (New Products Management for the 1980s). Simply put, they found that most new products fail.

More recent facts suggest a range of 33% to 90% for new product failures, depending on industry. Consider as well that approximately 22,000 products are introduced each year into supermarkets, mass mechandisers, and health food stores. If new products tend to fail, the question is why? Here are the many of the basic reasons researchers have found for such failures.

• No competitive point of difference
• Unexpected reactions from competitors
• Poor positioning
• Product didn't deliver promised benefits
• Too little marketing support
• Bad estimates of market potential (or other marketing research mistakes)
• Improper channels selected
• Rapid change in the market or economy after launch

On this web site you can learn how to avoid many if not all of these problems. Whether or not the companies you ultimately work for will avoid them depends on whether they have learned the same lessons. In my experience, companies learn by revelation or pain. They are hard lessons to be sure, but necessary to avoid spending resources on products that just fail in the market.