To define the customer sector to which we are referring, we will describe a certain division of individuals, on the basis of their lifestyle and family relationships. I believe that this division may coincide with that classical division which, I suppose, we have all seen at some time of "the empty nest", "the full nest ", but it will also attempt to consider attitudes and behavioural patterns of the parents with respect to their children and not simply the existence of the homes and whether they are "full" or "empty". This division will allow us to orientate ourselves and indicate the point of departure from which we will try to explain or understand the world of youth and our feelings towards this collective group. I believe that people have 3 lives and, in the western world, these correspond to the three generations through which a person will normally live: children, parents and grandparents. To put it in a different way: a person comes to assimilate all essential experiences, comes to experience all types of sensations, in an approximately 25/30 year cycle. This cycle has nothing to do with economic cycles, nor with the conservatism/liberalism cycles which alternate in democratic western countries, but with the fact that every 5 to 30 years a new generation becomes part of a person's life. Children cause people to relive anew all experiences. With the children, one learns to speak again, to eat, to dress, to discover all things, all elements, all feelings, all lustrations, etc a process which repeats itself again with the apparition of grandchildren.
The launch of multinational products onto national markets is tantamount, for each of these individual markets, to the introduction of a new product. While the success of any such launch depends on a number of factors, foremost among them is the degree to which the product in question can be integrated into the national culture concerned. An area which is particularly sensitive in this respect is nutrition. Indeed, eating habits and customs, the ways of eating and the cuisine of a country are as many facets of a historical process, something in which the essential values of a culture are reflected. Food, or specific types of food, is something which cannot be dictated to a people or a nation. Our contribution is dedicated to studying these cultural influences on food and nutrition. First of all, we sought to reconstruct the Austrian culinary code. We describe the introduction of modified and low-calorie fats in Austria by Unilever Austria (brand name "Du darfst). The introduction itself was preceded by qualitative, quantitative and semiotic research which analysed the place or ranking of fats within the Austrian culinary code. It was shown that fats stood for some very central values within the Austrian culture and that an area of great sensitive was being broached upon. There were also legislative restrictions concerning low-calorie fats. Initially, consumers had little understanding for the concept of low- calorie fats. Qualitative and quantitative research was carried out in order to determine a precise target group which, due to its social demography, its motivation and its eating habits could be envisaged as a primary target group. All the measures were directed precisely at this target group. At the same time, the climate of public opinion was influenced through cooperation with scientific authorities and the media.
This study provides insight into an area of new product development that has not received much attention: service marketing. Yet service industries, similar to their counterparts in the physical goods industries, are facing increasing pressure to develop new products in order to be profitable. The view is presented that service companies can benefit from applying many of the traditional practices used for developing new products for tangible goods, but at the same time the intangible nature of the service requires the development process to be modified and in particular the need for a more qualitative type of market research. A comprehensive case study approach is used to trace the development process from the initial idea to the final post-launch review stage. The product is a new service developed and launched by National & Provincial Building Society (N&P). "MAX", a card-based transaction account, is seen as the most successful new product ever developed and launched by N&P. It also holds the record for the highest development budget to date for a new product within the company.
The paper illustrates the launch and development of the Heinz 'Weightwatchers' brand from 1985 to 1990 with particular attention paid to the contribution of research to this development, i.e. why research was necessary and how the results impacted on strategic development.
The objectives of this paper are to suggest the need for a definition of major new products in the FMCG industry and to outline the challenges and opportunities for European new product development as we approach the Single Market. The first part deals with original work carried out by the author in co-operation with Nielsen over a period of 30 years. This defines a major FMCG brand and provides the actual number of successful major new brands in Great Britain and in five other countries. It also indicates the relative importance of new major brands as a percentage of all major brands over time. It concludes that major new product development is not only difficult but also necessary. The second part suggests that the three key challenges to new product development are fear of failure, the need for proper (more!) resourcing and an integrated strategy which is lacking in most companies. The three key opportunities for successful new product development are the establishment of an on-going function for new products with its own career path, capitalising on the structural discontinuity created by the Single Market, and the potential for major new-to-the-world innovation within Europe, which is now the worlds largest consumer market. Finally, the author has developed a method of evaluating new product programmes called the Development Atom, based on the McKinsey 7-S model. It is contended that new product success needs continuous top management support and long-term commitment with a need for real leadership.
A number of different sales forecasting systems have been developed for predicting the sales volume potential of new products, particularly in the FMCG area. While most of these systems have a reliable track record for more conventional new products, they do not tend to be as good for innovative, image based products. This paper identifies some of the reasons why image based products are more difficult to deal with than most others. In particular it gives an example of a recent research project conducted by the authors in which a sales forecasting model was developed to this end. The model includes an application of catastrophe theory, a mathematical technique which helps explain discontinuities in behaviour.
It has been five years now since the foreign banks had tried "to break" the traditional relationship between customers and Spanish banks with a product banking approach. They launched new products with innovative features like the house mortgage loan, and the "citicuenta" of Citibank or the "Cuenta Azul" of Barclays. As in the case of the house mortgage loan of Citibank, it took only 15 days to grant the loan meanwhile in the other banks it took longer (2 months or more). Barclays and Citibank were also the first to pay interest on the balance of the current account. Innovations like these facilitated a change in the financial scene and affected the traditional relationship with the Spanish banks. So the competition was centered on price and product features advantages.
This paper describes the evolution of industrial and consumer new product opportunities through the utilization of graphic probe stimuli which helped respondents recall and articulate unmet needs. The findings are based on an actual case history, a project conducted in the United States from September, 1989 through April, 1990. The major difficulty confronting the researcher was how to evaluate the market potential for a new technology that had had no previous exposure, and for which potential end-users had no perceptions of applications or benefits - in fact, no understanding of the new technology, or of its potential for fulfilling their needs. By using projective techniques, researchers were able to move beyond respondents' opinions of concepts presented, and discuss their attitudes about unmet needs. Findings presented below support the major argument that industrial new product opportunities can be identified by the projective research techniques utilized. The project generated 49 acceptable new product applications (not previously considered by the sponsor), all evolved through the process, and all with varying degrees of market potential. Methodology included creation of "concept boards", graphic stimuli used to probe respondents' attitudes about their unmet needs. After conducting in-depth interviews, the concept boards were modified, deleted, or new ones added, which better represented new needs as they were discovered. Therefore, special attention was devoted to the issue of probing beyond respondents' immediate reactions (opinions) to the boards, rather, having them express their attitudes about professional problems they were experiencing, that a new, or "similar", technology might solve.
A multitude of predictive systems have been developed for FMCG products, many with a fairly reliable track record. The same cannot be said for durables. In this paper, the authors discuss a range of factors that differentiate both the research process and the predictive systems in the two areas and suggest that in many cases the FMCG models cannot simply be adapted for durables. The paper concludes with some suggestions for successful durable modelling.
Even though new product development is one of the most written about topics in market research, very little of the published literature is concerned with the travel and leisure industries. If successful n.p.d. is the lifeblood of the world of fast moving consumer goods, is there any reason why this should not be equally TRUE in leisure, which is the fastest growing industry in the world? Very little use is made of "classic" research techniques in n.p.d. for travel, tourism and leisure, reflecting the "differentness" of these industries: the heavy orientation towards selling instead of marketing in much of travel, the imponderable effects of external events and the intangibility of many leisure-time products militate against "normal" research methodologies and call for innovative approaches. Key areas where market researchers can make a real contribution include desk research, re-analysis of existing research data, Qualitative approaches, stated preference techniques, observational studies among competitors' clients and catchment area studies. But Perhaps the major challenge to the researcher is to offer techniques which can effectively rival the ability of many companies in the leisure industries to test market; new products in the "real world". The paper provides brief examples of case histories where traditional research methods have been used with varying success, whore innovative techniques have proved highly successful and where the absence of any research at all has not prevented effective new product launches.