Page 157 - DMGT509_RURAL MARKETING

Rural Marketing

Notes decide where to launch the new product—in a single location, a region, the national market,
or the international market. Few companies have the confidence, capital, and capacity to
launch new products into full national or international distribution. They will develop a
planned market rollout over time. In particular, small companies may enter attractive cities
or regions one at a time. Larger companies, however, may quickly introduce new models
into several regions or into the full national market.

Speeding Up New-product Development

Many companies organize their new-product development process into the orderly sequence of
steps starting with idea generation and ending with commercialization. Under this sequential
product development approach, one company department works individually to complete its
stage of the process before passing the new product along to the next department and stage. This
orderly, step-by-step process can help bring control to complex and risky projects. But it also can
be dangerously slow. In fast-changing, highly competitive markets, such slow-but-sure product
development can result in product failures, lost sales and profits, and crumbling market positions.
“Speed to market” and reducing new-product development cycle time have become pressing
concerns to companies in all industries.
In order to get their new products to market more quickly, many companies are adopting a
faster, team-oriented approach called simultaneous (or team-based) product development. Under
this approach, company departments work closely together, overlapping the steps in the product
development process to save time and increase effectiveness. Instead of passing the new product
from department to department, the company assembles a team of people from various
departments that stay with the new product from start to finish. Such teams usually include
people from the marketing, finance, design, manufacturing, and legal departments, and even
supplier and customer companies.
Top management gives the product development team general strategic direction but no clear-
cut product idea or work plan. It challenges the team with stiff and seemingly contradictory
goals—”turn out carefully planned and superior new products, but do it quickly”—and
then gives the team whatever freedom and resources it needs to meet the challenge. In the
sequential process, a bottleneck at one phase can seriously slow the entire project. In the
simultaneous approach, if one functional area hits snags, it works to resolve them while the
team moves on.

Notes HUL launched its operation Bharat in 1997 to create awareness about its rural
brands. The strategy also involved promoting the sales of its “special packs” for rural
areas. HUL provided hampers at discounted prices .Consumers were also made aware of
the benefits of using HUL products and the affordability of the pack sizes on offer.

8.7.2 Product Mix Decisions

“The set of all product lines and items that a particular seller offers for sale”
A company product mix has four important dimensions (i) width (ii) length (iii) depth and
(iv) consistency.

(i) Width Product mix width refers to the no. of different product lines the co. Carries. E.g.
Procter & Gamble consisting of may product lines, paper, food, household, cleaning,
medicinal, cosmetics and personal care products.

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