Introduction
I have learned a lot about the process of New Product Development. The process sets out a series of stages that new products typically go through, beginning with ideation and concept generation, and ending with the product's introduction to the market. With this course, I have learned that, culture also influence the designing of the product and also the way the product is operating and communicating with their customers. Marketers always adjust their efforts in order to sync with the market they are entering. Role of culture in modern society is increasing day by day as economies become interlinked (Gopalakrishnan, Libby, Samuels & Swenson, 2015). Difficult job of any marketer is to analyse the influence of culture on their products operations. In real market, many factors work together which made a complex job to isolate any factor to assess its effect.
Self-Reflection
I have learned from the New Product Development of Coles, Nandos and Apple Inc. There are subtle differences between the NPD process of these organizations. Coles is a retail organization, Nandos is a quick service restaurant and Apple Inc. is a telephone manufacturing company. One of the key differences between the NPD processes of these companies is the length of different stages of NPD (Wowak, Craighead, Ketchen & Hult, 2016).
The presentation of NPD on these three companies suggest that Apple Inc. would probably have the largest NPD cycle because its products are of high value. Therefore, Apple Inc. would spend a lot of time in the first phase of the NPD that is idea generation. Nandos and Coles would also be considerate about the idea generation phase. Among these three organizations, the minimum time on idea generation phase would be spend by Nados as it is a quick service restaurant and its products have limited shelf life.
Another aspect of differentiation in the NPD process of these companies is the product development lifecycle. The NPD lifecycle of Apple Inc. is longest and the lifecycle of Nandos is shortest. I have learned that the NPD process is based on the idea generation steps and organizations can get the idea from internal and external sources. Apple Inc. spends a lot of time on concept development and testing. I would like to say that one of the key perspective of NPD is the importance of test marketing phase. The presentation was a great source of learning for me as other students point out the same. In fact, at the beginning of this course, I never thought that the stage of test marketing could be that important (Tinoco & Ambrose, 2017). However, during the course of presentation, I realize the importance of test marketing. With the phase of test marketing, organizations can actually get a better understanding of the market and this would help the organizations to make the necessary changes in the prototype. For example, Apple Inc. can make the changes in its phone after the feedback collected from the test marketing phase (Gopalakrishnan, Libby, Samuels & Swenson, 2015).
With the presentations, I also learned that organizations should always be flexible with their approach of new product development. I learned that organizations and product managers should communicate proactively with different internal and external stakeholders. The opinion of different stakeholders would help organizations to make the required changes in the product. For example, Nandos can also include its customers to collect the feedback. The key differences between the NPD process of Nandos and Apple Inc. is that Apple woud not include customers in its product development process and Nandos would include customers because Nados can collect the feedback easily from customers (Marion, Eddleston, Friar & Deeds, 2015).
Conclusion
I would like to say that the presentation provided a lot of learning to me. Before presentation I never thought of 360-degree view of the new product development process. With the presentation, I was able to learn a lot about the contemporary issues in NPD. I am sure that the learning about the NPD process would remain with me for a long time. I am sure that the learning would also help me to have a better profession in place. I have also learned that organizations should be flexible with their approach of NPD as it would help to avoid the risks and challenges associated with various phases pf new product development process (Marion, Eddleston, Friar & Deeds, 2015).
References:
Gopalakrishnan, M., Libby, T., Samuels, J. A., & Swenson, D. (2015). The effect of cost goal specificity and new product development process on cost reduction performance. Accounting, Organizations and Society, 42, 1-11.
Marion, T. J., Eddleston, K. A., Friar, J. H., & Deeds, D. (2015). The evolution of interorganizational relationships in emerging ventures: An ethnographic study within the new product development process. Journal of business Venturing, 30(1), 167-184.
Tinoco, J. K., & Ambrose, S. C. (2017). Collaborative Customers and Partners: The Ups and Downs of Their Influence on Firm Technology Competence for New Product Development. Journal of Marketing Development and Competitiveness, 11(4), 66-78.
Wowak, K. D., Craighead, C. W., Ketchen, D. J., & Hult, G. T. M. (2016). Toward a “theoretical toolbox” for the supplier?enabled fuzzy front end of the new product development process. Journal of Supply Chain Management, 52(1), 66-81.
