|
|
 |
 |
| Sunday, 8 February 2004 |
 |
|
 |
Business |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
|
How does product development fit into Marketing by Hemal Dias : The most challenging experience as a marketer is to spend time in the presence of the product development head. Many face recurring organisational problems when confronted by the product development team. I do not believe that many manufacturing companies in Sri Lanka are aware that, product development and marketing must go hand in hand, if not great product can fail miserably in any market place, either locally or internationally. Probably the most challenging experience for a marketer is to spend time in the presence of the product development team who advises the new product developments etc. This is not to claim that product development or R&D Mangers are not nice people, or that marketers have a problem with the R&D. Rather, it reflects the recurring organisational experiences many marketing managers have when confronted by the product development, research and design, and manufacturing groups. Marketers are, as we all know, obsessed with seeing everything from the perspective of the consumer. Product development people are typically (but not always) obsessed with seeing everything from no perspective of anykind. They eschew subjectivity and instead adopt the cold, rational objectivity of performance. It is not about what the customer thinks. It is not even about what they want. It is how the product performs. This is a healthy pursuit. After all, that is what the product people are paid for, right? The trouble begins when production people begin to dominate other aspects of the company structure. They spread their belief in objectivity and product performance around an organisation. Soon many organisations have reversed the traditional healthy mantra of market-oriented organisations: find out what people want, sell it to them and to mutate a great movie tagline: "If we build it, they will buy." We will make it so nice, so good and so great that they will have to buy it. Big money is invested in adding features. Even more expense goes into improving performance. Unfortunately, no one (i.e. the marketing managers) was around to warn the production people that objectivity is, unfortunately, a myth. There is only subjectivity in the market. So we add new features to an existing product but never check with consumers whether these features are necessary, valuable, or advisable given the increase in price needed to justify their addition. So we improve performance by 30% but never check to see if, glimpsed from the subjectivity of the market, such improvements are valid, or even noticed. A good example is a friend of mine who spent six months as part of a consultancy team halving waiting times in a national bank. It succeeded -at great cost - only to discover that consumers were quite comfortable with the original four-minute wait, provided it did not extend beyond 10 minutes or dip below 60 seconds, they were unlikely to even notice the difference and alter their behaviour accordingly. The classic indication that a company has been over-run by objective, product-driven people is the product range. How many brand names exist that sound like R2-D2's cousin from Endor? When asked about its Q234-R or FJ-65, a company will usually shrug and claim: "That's what we have always called it." Production people become so entwined with their products that they often cannot accept the customers' vision: "Why don't they understand how important torque is?" This often leads to marketing that attempts to educate the consumer as to what is important and how to decide on a purchase, rather than appealing to their enduring issues. It is the satisfaction of those needs in the mind of the "consumer" that make a company strong. This satisfaction is partly driven by the performance of the product or service. But who defines performance? Is it the head of R&D looking to develop a new product? Or is it the consumer looking for satisfaction? Follow the money. The goal is not to discourage product obsession. Many great marketing successes came directly from such an obsession. The goal is to unite this obsession with the prevailing needs and perceptions of the market. A good marketing manager forms a dialectic between their product mangers and their focus group participants. And they keep that dialect turning. What can the product people do? What does the market think? Once again, we encounter marketing in its most common form: the simple concept that becomes incredibly hard to apply. Marketing managers must forge ongoing, intra-organisational connections between the alpha and the omega, the solution and the need, the producer and the consumer. and then keep the wheel turning. Easier said than done. Welcome to the world of real marketing. He is currently working as a General Manager - International Marketing (attached to a BOI approved leading manufacturing company based in UK) |
|
News | Business | Features
| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
