The Role of Marketing Research in the Planning and Development of a New Product
Chapter One
Objectives of the Study
The research aim is to examine the role of marketing research in the planning and development of a new product in an organization with special emphasis on Nigeria Bottling Plc. The research also aims at identifying likely problems and making recommendations.
The specific objectives of the study are:
- To examine the role of marketing research in the planning and development of a new product and the application of marketing mix management.
- To find out if marketing research is useful for identifying new market opportunities in planning and development of a new product before introduction into the market.
- The extent to which marketing research is used to attend to corporate objectives.
- To examine people in terms of their roles as buyer, seller, and consumer.
CHAPTER TWO
LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction
This chapter is about the review of various authors‟ ideas and it is also concerned with the concept and definitions of marketing research, the types of marketing research, roles of marketing research, use of marketing research, concept of product development, needs for product development and stages of the product development among others.
Theoretical Framework
New Product Development (NPD) is often costly as it involves substantial expenses. Therefore, it is essential to manage NPD effectively and efficiently. In terms of managing NPD performance,( Anderson 2008) stated that a company‟s overall new product performance depends on the five elements: the NPD process; the organisation of the NPD programme; the NPD strategy; culture and climate for innovation; and senior management commitment to NPD.
However, application to actual practice has been somewhat less common. (Poolton and Barclay 1998) even suggest that much research on NP success factors is too generic, and has not actually been applied to specific contexts very well.
They say that success factors and their importance depend heavily on industry and firm characteristics. They also suggest that much research focuses too heavily on variable by variable analysis.
NPD studies are markedly broad. Over the past decades, a number of researchers such as (Cooper, 1979; Cooper and Klein Schmidt, 1987, 1993; Maidique and Zirger, 1984) investigated many aspects of innovation. What emerged from such work was that one of the key themes in innovation research was to identify the factors that are associated with NPD success. In facing vigorous competition globally, many manufacturing and engineering companies have adopted various techniques or advanced methods in order to be innovative and competitive. Although NPD brought many new opportunities to companies, however, the potential risks underpin the NPD process causes a number of cases of failure due the inadequate management process in NPD. Empirical studies thus point to high failure rates of new products, especially in consumer markets (Brockhoff, 1999; Crawford, 1987; Urban and Hauser, 1993). It is therefore development of an effective and efficient management approach in NPD process is highly expected to companies, particularly those small and vulnerable businesses.
Further, because NPD research has not translated very strongly into managerial practice, “managers are still relying on gut-feel with respect to „best practice‟ in development …” (Poolton and Barclay 1998,). Thus, it is important to look more carefully at success factors within the specific context, and more at the basic concepts, rather than at many specific variables.
Most larger and more mature firm where new product development is derived out of corporate strategy is undertaken as part of new product development. Additionally, it was argued that NPD should be considered across a number of process related dimensions rather than in terms of process-specific activities. That is, the elements of corporate strategy relating to new product development, NPD process features and the adoption of new product success factors are dimensions of NPD that more accurately describe the NPD process in most company. In turn, the resulting NPD activity undertaken by companies has direct implications for new product success and as a result directly impacts on overall firm success. Additionally, as business incubators can play a positive role in the formation of new firms (Sherman & Chappel 1998), it further argues that this positive role may extend to the NPD activities of some firms. Thus, the relationships between corporate strategy and new product development and the effect of these relationships on new product success, as well as the impact of business incubators on NPD activity, was addressed.
Based upon a review of the literature within the three background theories of new product development, corporate strategy and business incubation
In particular, it is the better understanding of the inter-relationships between corporate strategy and new product development as it relates to companies that provide the most important of these potential contributions.
CHAPTER THREE
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Introduction
The chapter explains the researcher design, population of study, sampling and sampling size, techniques method of data analysis, research instrument used and justification of method.
Research Design
In general research design is the specification of procedure for collection and analyzing the data necessary to solve the problem at hand such that, the difference between the cost of obtaining various level of accuracy and the expected value of the information associated with each level of accuracy is maximized.
For the purpose of this study, the survey research design method is used; it includes this studying sample chosen from the population to discover the relatives‟ incidence, distribution etc., through designed questionnaires, personal interview and observation. The survey research design for this study will focus on self design and collection of data from the respondents.
Population of the Study
Though marketing research is important to all categories of product, the population of the study here is only that of the productions company. This is designed to enable the researcher know exactly what consumers feels about the company product, price, quality and want satisfying the desire of the people.
CHAPTER FOUR
PRESENTATION AND ANALYSIS OF DATA
Introduction
This chapter is concerned with the analysis of the data collected during the course of the investigation of the study.
No matter the quantity and quality of the data collected for a particular study, no much meaningful results can be obtained unless proper and adequate analysis and processing were carried out. In this section, the analysis tools mentioned in chapter three are adequately applied in order to obtain the necessary information required to achieve the set objectives of the study.
CHAPTER FIVE
SUMMARY, CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Introduction
This chapter is made up of summary, conclusion and recommendation. In the summary is entails what each of the previous chapters contain, while the conclusion is the outcome of the overall research work and the recommendation is what the researcher finds out on the impact of marketing research on new product development.
Summary
The research is an assessment of the Impact of Marketing Research on New Product Development which is divided into five chapters.
Chapter one introduced the study, it states how marketing has been an important tool for determining the success rate of a new product generating more revenue for the entire success of the organization. It also consists of the statement of the problems, significance of study, limitation of the study, scope of the study, limitation of the study and definition of terms. The objective of the study was to examine the contribution and the importance of marketing research on new product development, and examine circumstances under which marketing research is more likely to be used in the stage of new products development and the impact of marketing research on the profitability.
The chapter two explains why the researcher has decided to go into the area of study. The literature consists of the area of product control, sales, targeting and sales forecasting, it states that although, marketing performance in the market, not much emphasized in most companies. Attempt has been made to look at some theories, research in marketing and the types of research that exist in the field of marketing such as product research, consumer marketing analysis, sales promotion, primary research, distribution research etc.
Chapter three explain the research design of study, techniques and sample size, methods of data collection, method of data analysis and research instruments used. In all, the chapters explain how the research came about, how the data was collected and how the data was analyze to help solve the problem at hand.
Chapter four dealt with the analysis of the relevant data collected for the research, the chapter also dealt with interpretation of the data.
Chapter five is just the summary of all that is contained in the first four chapters.
It contains the summary, conclusion, recommendation and bibliography.
Conclusion
Despite the huge amount of money spent for the promotion activities in most companies, the products are not well recognised. This means that the planning and development stage of the company are the most important areas to consider before any other thing.
Organizations succeed more with uniqueness rather than uniformity. Uniqueness entails doing things completely different from the usual way adopted by competitors and other organizations. To have uniqueness in methods, procedures, processes and systems, organizations need to have the right caliber of people to bring about these changes to stimulate them and to live with them for the purpose of gaining a competitive edge and advantage over the competitors. To achieve these, organization must spend a lot on marketing research to achieve uniqueness and product delivery.
If sufficient research is undertaken, then the chances of failure are reduced. Indeed, the danger that many companies wish to avoid is the development of products without any consideration of the market.
Marketing research would lead to higher NPD success, and that the integration of marketing research would be the most important of the factors contributing to success in NPD organization. Companies which use marketing research intensively and understand consumer response in great depth are more likely to have higher success rates. The more extensive use of marketing research appears to be related to more experience in doing NPD and a larger role for new products in the companies. Use of marketing research also allows companies to set quantitative goals for new products, and more carefully evaluate performance after launch.
Also most organizations can be regarded as pace setters or market leaders in their various markets, if only they take time in doing marketing research on New Product Development.
Recommendations
In order to undertake a systematic product planning and development, in marketing research, the researcher is making the following recommendations.
- Most company should invest in promotional activities to enable the product sell in the market and to increase the profitability of the company.
- Also companies should adopt the scientific method of product planning and development within the context of marketing research.
- Another recommendation that can be put forward is that, more money should be invested in promotional activities to enable the product sell in the market
- That they should also conduct gap analysis of the existing products by interviewing a representative of consumers to find out their views about the company‟s existing products before thinking of producing another one.
- They should also take note of the types of research approach used at the stage which includes monadic approach which is concern with comparing the concept with or against existing market after of the competitors. The Holistic approach of data about the marketing mix variable such as price, promotion package and distribution. Although the companies conduct testing, it may suggestion that the company studies very well the procedure of product testing which varies from company to company and product to product. It is also expensive since it involves raw materials, machinery, and accuracy of new skill production.
Like product testing, marketing test also involve some procedure of which I will suggest companies to adopt to ensure successful marketing test, and take note of the information required during the marketing test.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- AKPAN, A.B. (2003): Introduction to Marketing: Zaria, Isola Ola and Sons.
- AKRANI .G. (2012) Stages Process Steps of New Product Development. http://www.kalyan_city.blogspot.com
- BINGWEN, Y. (2010) Managing New Product Development Processes: An Innovative Approach for SME. November. http://www.dk.cput.ac.za/td_cput/293
- MOORMAN .C. AND MINNER A.S. (1997) The Impact of Org Memory on New Product Performance and Creativity. Journal of Marketing Research FEBUAURY. Vol xxxiv p 91-106 http://www.jstor.org
- CAFFYN, S. (1997) “Extending Continuous Improvement to the New Product.
- COMER, J.M., AND ZIRGER, B.J. (1997) “Building a Supplier-Customer Relationship Using Joint New Product Development”, Industrial Marketing Management 26(2): 203211.
- COOPER, R.G. (1994) “New Products: The Factors that Drive Success”, International Marketing Review 11(1): 60-76.
- COOPER, R.G., AND KLEINSCHMIDT, E.J. (2000) “New Product Performance: What Distinguishes the Star Products”, Australian Journal of Management 25(1): 1745.
- DONG .X. (2008).Improving Efficiency in Product and Process Development: A case study on a consumer product creation process. http://www.dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle
