New product failure: five potential sources discussed

TY - JOUR

T1 - New product failure

T2 - five potential sources discussed

AU - Dijksterhuis, Garmt Bernard

PY - 2016/4/1

Y1 - 2016/4/1

N2 - When new consumer products are developed and later launched, 50 to 75 percent of them are removed from the market far short of meeting their projected financial targets. In short: they fail. We conclude that this failure is due to institutionalized insufficiencies in the use of the sciences that are best geared to understand and predict consumer behaviour, viz. the behavioural sciences. These are not necessarily the same as the marketing science that is performed by marketing departments. A scientific approach to understanding consumer behaviour appears to be lacking in many corporate research surroundings. This often is in great contrast with their high levels of technological science, paralleled by their respective research budgets. In this paper we present five problem areas that may contribute to this mismatch, contributing to needlessly high numbers of product failures. We have termed these factors: (1) 'pillars' (too many different functions addressing different aspects of the consumers and of product development), (2) 'higher management focus' (not geared towards understanding consumer behaviour), (3) 'popular science books' (out-dated research directives resulting from a hierarchical management model), (4) 'quality and Quality' (a definition of 'quality' that leads to invalid quality parameters), and (5) 'psychophobia' (the latent fear of trusting behavioural science results), respectively.

AB - When new consumer products are developed and later launched, 50 to 75 percent of them are removed from the market far short of meeting their projected financial targets. In short: they fail. We conclude that this failure is due to institutionalized insufficiencies in the use of the sciences that are best geared to understand and predict consumer behaviour, viz. the behavioural sciences. These are not necessarily the same as the marketing science that is performed by marketing departments. A scientific approach to understanding consumer behaviour appears to be lacking in many corporate research surroundings. This often is in great contrast with their high levels of technological science, paralleled by their respective research budgets. In this paper we present five problem areas that may contribute to this mismatch, contributing to needlessly high numbers of product failures. We have termed these factors: (1) 'pillars' (too many different functions addressing different aspects of the consumers and of product development), (2) 'higher management focus' (not geared towards understanding consumer behaviour), (3) 'popular science books' (out-dated research directives resulting from a hierarchical management model), (4) 'quality and Quality' (a definition of 'quality' that leads to invalid quality parameters), and (5) 'psychophobia' (the latent fear of trusting behavioural science results), respectively.

KW - Behavioural sciences

KW - FMCG

KW - Industrial research

KW - New product failure

KW - NPD

U2 - 10.1016/j.tifs.2016.01.016

DO - 10.1016/j.tifs.2016.01.016

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:84956853877

SN - 0924-2244

VL - 50

SP - 243

EP - 248

JO - Trends in Food Science & Technology

JF - Trends in Food Science & Technology

ER -