New Product Development

Executive Summary

Trinker Wets Company is a registered small medium enterprise manufacturing wet ear cotton ear buds. It the first ever company in the cotton bud industry to offer such a unique range of cotton buds. This paper looks at opportunities to the market as well as to the business in starting up a new venture of providing wet cotton ear buds in the cotton bud industry. It also assesses its opportunities of success by analyzing competitor companies and through the use of financial statement to make variations of when Trinker Wets is likely to be profitable. The financial statements of Trinker Wets show a reasonable profit margin with breakeven after year 1. The wet ear buds will be packaged in sachets that are laminated with films from the inside to preserve the moisture content of the ear buds. The sachets will also be designed in a way that they will be convenient to carry around for example in hand bags. Trinker Wets Company will also go through intensive marketing campaigns that include a wide array of promoting strategies such at television ads and product sampling. Trinker Wets Company foresees penetration into profitability in its business operations in the future and shows greater potentials of growth.

INTRODUCTION

New product development has been defined by Meybodi (2003); Nadeem et. al (2011) as "a process in which first the needs and wants of customers are determined and according to those needs and wants the new products are tailored". This means that in order to development a new product extensive market evaluation should be taken into consideration and more research on the product and customers attitudes toward the new product must be given appropriate attention, therefore a new product can be defined as a good business idea that has appeared to be new to potential customers (Kotler & Armstrong 2005). In today's business world new product can be achieved through modification or improvements from the existing ones, this is because we are living in the period where globalization is at its highest point therefore there is numerous change in systems and technology which makes product modification and improvement more simple. Mark Twain acknowledges that "the secret of making progress is to get started. The secret to starting is to divide your complex, overwhelming tasks into small, manageable tasks, and then start the first, hence this quote supports Crawford and Di Benedetto (2008) New Product Process of launching a new product which are; Opportunity Identification and Selection, Concept Generation, Concept/Project Evaluation, Development and Launch. For our product to be successful we are working on a motto which says "we are stronger when we stand together as a team and work together by giving support and encouragement to each other".

OPPORTUNITY IDENTIFICATION AND SELECTION PROJECT PROPOSAL

The identification of opportunities has been recognised as one of the most important abilities of successful entrepreneurs and consequently has become an important element in the various scholarly studies (Ardichvili, Cardozo and Ray, 2003).This clearly highlights the vital significance of identifying opportunities for new products. For our group this process of spotting and discovering new market needs occurred via the process of brainstorming. A notion often defined as a process for developing creative solutions to problems (Osborn, 1963).At first stage our group met and discussed the assignment key points and then dispersed when each individual was assigned to go and think of a product will meet a need and fill in a gap in a market. We later on gathered again where each individual member of our group shared the idea they propose for the assignment. All ideas were welcomed at first no criticism of other members ideas was done. So we came up a selection of products we are willing to develop and the ones that will not cause any constraints as we proceed with our product development.

A list of various products which were brought up include the un-plaiting hair machine, Outdoor clothes dryer rack, wet cotton ear buds, multi compartments headlights and in-built blackberry battery. The un-plaiting hair machine was a machine which will enable Africans to undo their hair extensions and braids with ease while saving time. The outdoor clothes dryer rack on the other hand was aluminium steel handmade outdoor clothes dryer with multiple rack layers for a more efficient way of drying clothes. Moreover wet cotton ear buds are for the removal of ear wax efficiently and with ease without exposing customers to risk of injury as they are furthermore medicated. , Multi compartments headlights will serve as a medium for enabling drivers to detect objects at a far distance and alert the driver to take cautionary measures so as to avoid collisions. Lastly the in-built blackberry battery will be designed to sustain the longevity of the phone battery while saving costs at the same time.

After this we settled and selected three products which had the potential to be developed based on their feasibility features, the gap in the market and whether it will be possible to produce the product. These products include wet cotton ear buds, multi compartments headlights and in-built blackberry battery; afterwards we took these products and consulted our teacher Dr Cheah for an overview and insightful advices so as to see if we were in the right track. We took his realm of input into consideration and assigned each group member a product to focus on and further more research any relevant information that will contribute to the success of our new product development.

PRELIMINARY CONCEPT SELECTION AND SCHEDULE

SCORING TABLE

Evaluation Criteria

In-built Black-Berry battery

Wet Cotton ear-buds

Adaptive illumination Headlights

Marketability

Competitors

7

6

4

Market size

5

10

8

Placing

6

10

4

Need