New Product Development Essay

New Product Development is the process of designing, creating and bringing a new product to market.

It is important that when businesses develop new innovations, they have the following eight stages included in the product development. By setting out the steps involved, and sticking to them, the product development will become a more focused and flexible approach that can be adapted for different types of products and/or services. This also applies to the public sector.

 Idea Generating – This process will normally start with the product concept. A SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) will help a business to find a direction that is in line with their business strategies. It’s important for a business to do

It’s different because it introduces the prototype product following the proposed marketing plan. This stage is required to confirm the concept and should be used to refine all parts of the product and marketing message. It’s also a useful stage to start getting ‘hype’ built up for the product and to get people interested.

 Commercialisation – Once the final concept has been developed and tested, there should be final decisions as to when the product launch should be. Marketing plans and costs for the product need to be finalised. This should be discussed with the sales and distribution teams, so that the product is ready for launch. It may be worth considering updating any marketing advertisements to keep the product in the customers’ minds and to maintain ‘hype’ built up from the previous stage.

The eight stages of product development are designed to save time and resources. New product development ideas and prototypes are tested to ensure that the new product will meet customers’ needs and wants. The commercialisation stage is carefully planned to maximise product success, a poor start will affect product sales and could even affect the reputation and image of the new product. Finally in order to learn from any mistakes made, a review of the market performance is needed to access the success of the