Steps that are Important for Product Development

Most of the consumers are unaware of how grueling, time consuming and complex is the process of product development. They must know that it is not a facile process, meeting the deadlines and budget constraints is always the main concern of managers. So, they urge their teams to spend money and use resources wisely. Unlike product manufacturing where all the tasks are repetitive, in product development each project is unique and it starts from ideation to final launch of the product in the market. In this article, we will shed light on the stages involved in the process of product development and how it finally reaches the end consumer.

There is always a room for improvement

1. Idea generation

This is the brainstorming stage. Companies have to come up with a lot of ideas before introducing a new product and they ultimately go for the one which is best. They have to carry out research by analyzing the market trends and see what their target market or customers are looking for in a product so that they can provide them a solution for the issue they might be facing while using the current product. 

Internal idea generation: By holding meetings, you can get high quality ideas from the members of your organizations i.e. customer support or sales team etc.

External idea generation: For the sake of new ideas you can refer to sources outside your company such as competitors or users. You can get feedback from the customers who are using the existing product through surveys or interviews and later fill in the gaps while designing the new product. Similarly, analyzing your competitors’ strategies can help you to come up with amazing ideas and deliver value to your customers.

2. Idea Screening

 At this stage, you filter out the ideas which seem worth pursuing or might prove successful. A number of factors are included here, including profitability, technical and market feasibility, utility, the risks linked with the launch of that product etc. Based on all this, you select the best idea and discard the other ones.

3. Concept development and testing

Product concept is the detailed and comprehensive description of your product including the target market for it, the price you will set, promotional techniques that you will use, how it will appeal or be beneficial for customers, what new features it will offer etc. Once this is done, you can test your concept on a cluster of your customers for the sake of validation or to see whether your idea will be successful or not. This will save your resources and time.

4. Market Strategy

In this stage you dig deeper and work upon your marketing mix, value proposition, market share, budget, profit in the long run, and the details of your target audience including demographics. 

5. Business potential

Another important step is to check the effectiveness of the product that you want to launch. You can conduct market surveys or see how successful the competitor has been in selling a homogeneous product. Companies can predict their cost and profits through a sales forecast.

6. Product development

Product development is the stage in which you head towards developing your full-fledged and final product. You have to spend a lot on research and development in order to produce multiple versions of your product for testing. This prototype gives you a clear picture of what the customer really wants in your product.

7. Market Testing

The testing phase can take months. Marketers carry out the initial test before the final launch of their product in a realistic setting i.e. a mall or a supermarket. This gives them an idea of what step they must take next.

8. Commercialization

Based on all the previous factors, you make a pragmatic decision whether or not to officially launch the product in the market.

Keep a note that product development processes and strategies should always be customer focused and there should be no compromise on quality of product.