MKT520 NPD Practices Report - Assignment Solution

Introduction

New product development is a phenomenon that not all markets understand as they may opt for one product and market it throughout in different ways without there being any improvements or introductions to new products. In today’s time, where innovation plays a vital role for a company’s survival, irrelevant of the fact which industry they belong; consumers and potential customers need newness. That, combined with technology is a game changer (Heirati, 2016).

Heirati, (2016) further describes that big corporate giants and E commerce startups are based on this understanding that they need to keep on and consecutively changing. The change needs to be in favor of the demand in order to differentiate an organization from its competitors. New product development and product innovation is the answer to prosperity, this may not be the case each time and for every company, the timing plays its own part and it needs to get aligned with what the market is doing in that current time.

Hosch and Hall explain in their article that it was founded in 1998 as ‘Google Inc’ initially, the company is considered to be one of the biggest among other multinational corporate giants such as Apple, Facebook and similar others. Being a source of information for over millions of people each day, Google has managed to innovate where required, however there’s still a lacking and areas where they could’ve prospered but didn’t opt to. The assignment will focus on some of the key factors contributing towards new product innovation and critically analyzing new product development practices of Google, following some of its strengths and weaknesses along with recommendations as to how they can successfully implement and opt for suitable innovative strategies. 

New Product Development 

As narrated by Rubera, Chandrasekaran and Ordanini, (2016) new Product Development is a practice that needs to be carefully planned unlike many other test marketing techniques. It stems from an idea, which needs to be well defined, aligned with the Company and more importantly the Brand’s ideology and goals and have room for improvisations if required in the future growth stages. The process itself allows a new innovation’s concept to be tested out briefly in the market, once certain criteria’s have been defined along with recognizing the strengths and weaknesses, the new product can surpass the initiation stage and move towards strategy development. Rubera,  Chandrasekaran and Ordanini, (2016) further describe that the strategy itself will be defined by the success factors which can be identified initially along with a competitor analysis that contributes toward analyzing the business which will lead towards forecasting the profits along with the costs required after the initial screening process has been handled. NPD allows brands to test out new ideas and features that can be further developed. Once the product has been tested out in the market, the product can be executed in the market.