Design Research Reports, Inc.

Market Research and Trends Experts in Design and Home Furnishings!

Product Development

All companies develop new products. When your company is in a competitive industry and when your new product development effort represents your total investment in future revenue, there are things you cannot afford to not be doing correctly in product development. They are:

Product development should be an organized effort. Too many companies rely on what their designers come up with or what their supplier's designers come up with. If the sourcing team from three other companies turned the concept down, what makes you think you'll be successful with it?
Product development should take place in the context of what is right for your company. That is, your product developers should be working within your company’s/brand’s Mission, Brand Equity, and Positioning statements, Brand Attributes and Benefits, Core Values, and Target markets. If you don’t have such guidelines, you should move quickly to develop them and if you don’t know who your target consumer is or what equities your Brand holds, you should conduct research to find out.
Product development should include consumer feedback. 80% of all new products fail. They fail because they are not new or differentiated or worth the price or what consumers want. Failed new products are terrible for your company. They waste open-to-buy at retail, they can annoy consumers who purchased and can’t get more because the products were discontinued, and they can hurt your image if they are on the discount rack.
To avoid all of these problems, you should conduct research with your target consumers to see if they will buy your product, or better yet, to see which of a number of new product designs or concepts they will buy. The more you create and test, the higher the probability that you’ll introduce the strongest product and the better your return on that product, a return which will be measured in lower returns, stronger retail support, and stronger consumer takeaway – in short – a more profitable business. Fail with small dollars in research – win with big dollars in sales!