Techsonic Industries Inc. Humminbird New Products
1a. Risks and limitations of listening to customers during the NPD process:
Using existing organizational systems often means completely missing the boat on the real customer and his real needs. This is the customer who values the products as a breakthrough. Products are frequently under-appreciated by firms when the new product is based on an existing platform. This leads to a wait and see attitude and the product is not given adequate support and often under-priced.
The positioning strategy should be driven by the market, rather than by the ambitions of the product champions. The source of the problem is failure to understand how consumers' value product attributes. In all, over-appreciating a breakthrough or new technology that cannot be appreciated by consumers. This accounts for a high percentage of product failures.
Listening to customers can mask long-run opportunities since customers rarely imagine these technologies.
When customers are asked to make new product recommendations they tend to run into at least two kinds of blocks. The first is functional fixedness, the human tendency to fixate on the way products or services are normally used, making people unable to imagine alternative functions. People may not be able to conceive of a solution because they have apparently contradictory needs. The voice of the customer is very important, but discerning the difference between what customers are able to say and what they want demands that companies learn to go well beyond listening.
Disruptive technologies suggest that some ideas should be developed despite current lack of fit with the market.
1b. Techsonic was not particularly vulnerable to all these risks and limitations. They always started with focus groups to find out what their next move would be. In many cases these focus groups were the steps to success. The findings from these studies were complete opposite from what Techsonic had always assumed their customers wanted in a product.
Using existing organizational systems often means completely missing the boat on the real customer and his real needs. This is the customer who values the products as a breakthrough. Products are frequently under-appreciated by firms when the new product is based on an existing platform. This leads to a wait and see attitude and the product is not given adequate support and often under-priced.
The positioning strategy should be driven by the market, rather than by the ambitions of the product champions. The source of the problem is failure to understand how consumers' value product attributes. In all, over-appreciating a breakthrough or new technology that cannot be appreciated by consumers. This accounts for a high percentage of product failures.
Listening to customers can mask long-run opportunities since customers rarely imagine these technologies.
When customers are asked to make new product recommendations they tend to run into at least two kinds of blocks. The first is functional fixedness, the human tendency to fixate on the way products or services are normally used, making people unable to imagine alternative functions. People may not be able to conceive of a solution because they have apparently contradictory needs. The voice of the customer is very important, but discerning the difference between what customers are able to say and what they want demands that companies learn to go well beyond listening.
Disruptive technologies suggest that some ideas should be developed despite current lack of fit with the market.
1b. Techsonic was not particularly vulnerable to all these risks and limitations. They always started with focus groups to find out what their next move would be. In many cases these focus groups were the steps to success. The findings from these studies were complete opposite from what Techsonic had always assumed their customers wanted in a product.