Chapter 11- developing and managing products

Developing a new product is a team effort that goes through many stages of development until the product is finalized and ready to be distributed to the potential consumers.

It is a long and hard process but the history and statistics do show that it is highly profitable as long as you do it on a well constructed way:

 One of the recent new products introduced by coca-cola is cola zero, the first stage for introducing a new product is called new product strategy, in this stage the new product strategy was  a dual objective of reaching a different target market and creating  a healthier product  that will serve the companies approach of social responsibility.

In the next step of the process- the idea generations

Coca cola concluded many different ideas the one that pass the screening was the coca cola zero

The new product targets young males (ages 25-35) and has an amazing sugar and caffeine values of zero!! (Hence the name) 

Business analysis – is another stage of screening through determining the profitability after cost. Coca-cola does thorough research of the market, competition and the projected revenue before putting a new product on the market, the company does not publicly display this research but it is understood that by holding many surveys it becomes easy to project the demand for the product.

Development- coca-colas main interest when developing a prototype is the taste of their product without losing its texture and color, and also that the product will relate to the company and still maintain a certain uniqueness, when coca-cola develop a prototype they supply samples to their projected target market in order to understand what to change and improve in the product this is known as the test marketing stage.

Commercialization- after passing all the stages it is then decided to start the production, build inventories and building the infrastructure of sales and distribution. When making a new product coca-cola has it relatively easier in these aspects because the company already has most of the infrastructure, space and ability to produce in any quantity demanded by the market. Coca-cola has an experienced team that trains new employees and inject belief and commitment to their sales teams.