New Product Development and Evaluation

The ultimate success of a new product introduction can hinge on implementing a rigorous development process.  This starts with an objective evaluation of the ideas under consideration and continues through the commercialization of the selected products.

Evaluation

The first step is to determine which products merit further attention.  Ideally this is done at the concept stage.  To ensure accurate assessment, it is important to be thorough and disciplined in examining both feasibility and consumer appeal:

• Develop concepts that accurately and concisely communicate the selling idea

• Enroll R&D, legal and regulatory to ensure future alignment

• Test to gain feedback, to refine claims and language and to quantify potential

• Weed out ideas without sufficient potential prior to wasting resources

Refinement and Commercialization

For the ideas that make the grade, product-concept fit must be checked during the formulation process.  This goes beyond just product performance to include factors such as:

Each of the components of the brand must support each other and must be evaluated in the context of consumer appeal.  There must be a clear sense of what unique benefits the brand will offer and how they mesh with the appropriate consumer insights.          

Launch

The last step is launch preparation.  This is the chance for one final check to ensure that the product and marketing executions are faithful to what was tested.  Too often, the hard work of the development and testing stages is undermined by the excitement and rush to get to market.

KSM Can Help You

Kantor Strategic Marketing has taken numerous products from the early idea stage through to launch and, importantly, also identified and halted projects that did not merit the investment necessary to bring them to market.  Phil Kantor can help you develop new product concepts that truly capture the essence of the idea and thus ensure that testing fairly represents their potential.  From these test results he can help you select the most appropriate candidates for further consideration and establish a development and testing plan.  For projects already underway, he can help you with a disciplined process to research and hone the elements critical to a brand's success.

Examples of successful projects include:

• Conceived and positioned an upper-GI product that brought new benefits to an existing brand and to the category in the midst of intense competitive new product activity, resulting in significant incremental volume to the business.

• Developed pricing and sizing strategy for a new Rx-to-OTC switch that recognized both consumer usage dynamics and trade movement considerations, leading to new skus being among the fastest turning OTC items.

• Utilized consumer insights to improve concept appeal for an obesity product by 15%.

• Conducted concept and product/concept tests to screen, select and refine ideas and products for development and launch across several categories.