What is Product Development?
Product development is an extensive field in the organization, concept invention, designing, creating, and marketing of new or existing products or services for the benefit of target consumers. It can also be referred to as New Product Development since it basically aims to develop methodical ways in the process of making a certain product known to the market.
The development of new products or the rectification of already existing products or services to maintain its competence in the market is not as easy as it sounds. The process of product development demands that the creation or re-creation of a certain product would capture the attention and interest of the consumers, as well as the other competitors in the industry. Hence, product developers should know how to execute product development seamlessly.
There are specific steps that developers can follow in order to make the process of creating and manufacturing new products successful. The first step is to make use of a SWOT analysis to generate a clear picture of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (hence the acronym SWOT) in producing a certain product. Next is to screen the idea — whether one should move forward with the product innovation or one should not. Screening the idea may involve setting a list of criteria on the ideas that should be pursued or dropped. The third step is examining if the concept or idea actually works. This means that even though developers have already screened the concept and gave it a go, efficient product developers still need to understand their market. Testing the concept includes measuring the possibility that consumers may actually need or want the product or service that they are developing.
After examining the concept, developers should now focus on business analytics by involving both input and output metrics to examine the assessment and usefulness of the launched products. This step includes knowing the product sales percentage and figures that can provide useful feedback. The next step is to gather private test groups and panels and to launch beta versions of the product to provide the developers with useful information on what still needs to be improved and modified in the product or service — before it is formally launched to the public.
The following step is commercializing the actual product. At this point, the product or service has already been launched in the commercial market and consumers are buying the product or service. Product developers do not stop just because the product has already gone mainstream. It is important that there is continuous commercialization of the product by constantly monitoring the growth of the product or service and to maintain remarkable advertisements to keep the consumers’ curiosity and interest intact.
Finally, developers then present a launch review about the product or service. New products or services are usually first presented with an introductory price so in this last step, developers will now measure the cost of products sold to ensure that the profits of the product or service is higher than the actual internal costs. If expectations are met, the final price of the product or service will eventually be decreased.
As a final note, it is important to remember that product development is not always perfect because design and product plans do not always work, designs get trashed or dropped, and even though developers have already launched the product, losses could still happen. Nevertheless, success and efficiency in product development can be attained as long as one has a group of developers working as a team with the same goals.