Page 155 - DMGT509_RURAL MARKETING

Rural Marketing

Notes  Create a multidisciplinary idea management committee consisting of people from
R&D, engineering, purchasing, operations, finance, and sales and marketing to meet
regularly and evaluate proposed new-product and service ideas.
 Set up a toll-free number for anyone who wants to send a new idea to the idea
manager.

 Encourage all company stakeholders—employees, suppliers, distributors, dealers—
to send their ideas to the idea manager.
 Set up formal recognition programs to reward those who contribute the best new
ideas.
The idea manager approach yields two favorable outcomes. First, it helps create an
innovation oriented company culture. It shows that top management supports, encourages,
and rewards innovation. Second, it will yield a larger number of ideas among which will
be found some especially good ones. As the system matures, ideas will flow more freely.
No longer will good ideas wither for the lack of a sounding board or a senior product
advocate.
(b) Idea Screening: The purpose of idea generation is to create a large number of ideas. The
purpose of the succeeding stages is to reduce that number. The first idea-reducing stage is
idea screening, which helps spot good ideas and drop poor ones as soon as possible.
Product development costs rise greatly in later stages, so the company wants to go ahead
only with the product ideas that will turn into profitable products. As one marketing
executive suggests, “Three executives sitting in a room can get 40 good ideas ricocheting
off the wall in minutes. The challenge is getting a steady stream of good ideas out of the
labs and creativity campfires, through marketing and manufacturing, and all the way to
consumers.”
Many companies require their executives to write up new-product ideas on a standard
form that can be reviewed by a new-product committee. The write-up describes the product,
the target market, and the competition. It makes some rough estimates of market size,
product price, development time and costs, manufacturing costs, and rate of return. The
committee then evaluates the idea against a set of general criteria such as these: Is the
product truly useful to consumers and society? Is it good for our particular company?
Does it mesh well with the company’s objectives and strategies? Do we have the people,
skills, and resources to make it succeed? Does it deliver more value to customers than do
competing products? Is it easy to advertise and distribute? Many companies have
well-designed systems for rating and screening new-product ideas.
(c) Concept Development and Testing: An attractive idea must be developed into a product
concept. It is important to distinguish between a product idea, a product concept, and a
product image. A product idea is an idea for a possible product that the company can see
itself offering to the market. A product concept is a detailed version of the idea stated in
meaningful consumer terms. A product image is the way consumers perceive an actual or
potential product. Concept testing calls for testing new-product concepts with groups of
target consumers. The concepts may be presented to consumers symbolically or physically
For some concept tests, a word or picture description might be sufficient. However, a
more concrete and physical presentation of the concept will increase the reliability of the
concept test. Today, some marketers are finding innovative ways to make product concepts
more real to consumer subjects. For example, some are using virtual reality to test product
concepts. Virtual reality programs use computers and sensory devices (such as gloves or
goggles) to simulate reality.

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