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Factors That Influence New Product Development.
Posted By: ajaisam* on 3/3/2005 7:27 AM (CST) 125 Points
I want to know if this is a researchable topic,or is too broad to do a dissertation on.I would prefer doing it on FMCG as i was working in a technical role in an FMCG company.Any way that i can use my past contacts with my previous employer to help me out in this matter?
Would it be better to do it on some other sector than FMCG,maybe electronics industry as this is my first degree subject and it can be a blend of the two?
Please also let me know if there is some better reserach that i can do centered around this same area.
Thanks a lot.
Ajai

Posted by: Markitek Accepted Answer
3/3/2005 7:42 AM (CST)
I think in general it is a very good topic but let's focus it a little better.

There are a bunch of different product categories that fall under that acronym--here's a list from www.fmcgbrands.com which is as good a place as any to help us frame the issue:

Agriculture, Alcohol, Automotive, Children, Computers, Confectionery, Drink, Electronic, Engineering, Fashion, Financial, Food, Furniture, Health, Internet, Medical, Pet, Sport, Telecommunications, Tobacco

The factors that influence product development of a Neopet will be different in many ways (identical in some of course) than those that influence product development of a chew bone for a yorkshire adult terrier or a pickup truck for a Yorkshire adult person.

Perhaps an analysis of those factors might yield an interesting thesis: that some industries although quite disparate have strong similarities in those factors that one might not see without first analyszing and classifying the factors. It would be, for instance, fascinating to discover that health product development and hard liquor product development have most factors in common (don't know if it's the case but it's an interesting notion to me anyway).

But however you angle into the topic, my suggestion remains: focus on a specific FMCG industry rather than FMCG as a thing in and of itself.
 
Posted by: koen.h.pauwels Accepted Answer
3/3/2005 3:48 PM (CST)
I agree with Markitek that more focus is needed:'factors that influence new product development' have been studied by managers and academics for over 3 decades. For an academic dissertation, it is important to generalizable findings, so instead of limited your study to 1 industry, it would indeed be a good idea to analyze similarities over very different product categories. In this age of M&A and consolidation, many large cooperations need to decide how much to standardize their NPD over business units, so your research may help them
 
Posted by: blanalytics Accepted Answer
3/3/2005 6:49 PM (CST)
1. Measured potential of the new product (via marketing research)
2. Product, distribution and marketing costs
3. What competition has done with new products and similar concepts
4. The degree of uniqueness of the product concept
5. Packaging
6. How the new product of brand fits into the total company brand portfolio
 
Posted by: pirbhu* Member Response
5/2/2005 5:27 AM (CST)
New product development is an organisational effort, where various departments like marketing, R&D and manufacturing are involved. In the first stage, marketing does research to come out with consumer need gaps. Thereby they provide a contextual one pager to R&D. then R&D comes up with product options and claims that could be made in market. Marketing deptt gives a go ahead for one of the options. then R&D and manufacturing take it forward for production.

Keeping the above flow in mind, we can say that following factors affect new product development:

1. quality of consumer need gap identification
2. R&D capabilities
3. clear identification of various gates for the project to pass through
4. adherence to time lines
5. parallel processing among the stakeholders

hope above helps as the thought starter. if you need more info, plz revert.

Regards,

Prabhakar
 
Posted by: querciwa Member Response
5/3/2005 4:10 AM (CST)
According to a study published from the PDMA (Product Development & Management Association), the factors that heavily impact the success of a new product development are:
- devoting sufficient resources (i.e. manpower, equipments, money, etc.) to NPD (new product development), possibly in autonomous organizational units
- having good skills at NPD
- having a well defined NPD strategy
- being able to market NPD succesfully

I attach the link to the study here

http://www.pdma.org/visions/apr04/lack_of_npd.html

Also, the books written by prof. Robert G. Cooper (you can find them in Amazon.com), highlight the success factors of contemporary NPD. TYou can refer, for example, to his "Product Leadership".

As you see, the matter is widely researchable and many papers and books and studies have been published on it.

Good luck for your research

Valter
 
Posted by: Sanjeev Kumar Vyas Member Response
5/6/2005 12:30 AM (CST)
The topic you are choosing is too broad. I would suggest that you focus it to one type of product in a perticular industry.

For example you take DVD players then you could compare the Factors that influence the product development of DVD players in different companies.
 
Posted by: Shelley, MProfs Moderator Response
5/8/2005 2:02 AM (CST)
Everyone, thanks for participating. I am closing this question since it's gathered a considerable amount of dust.
 


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