Product Packaging and Commercial Uses

Researchers define eight factors that determine why a newly released product succeeds and seven why new products fail.  On the website New Product Works website they provide a list of products they expect “To Be Successes” and a list of “Failures.”  The first six bullets list six products and explain why I believe they will succeed.  The last six bullets list six more products and reasons why they failed.

To Be Successes

• Bibsters - These are disposable bibs for babies.  A point of difference for Bibsters is that when a baby makes a mess of the bib, the parents can just throw away the bib instead of washing it.  This benefit is especially beneficial if the family eating out and does not want to pack a dirty, messy bib all the way home.  The market attractiveness is high since there are more babies in America now, than ever before.
• Gillette Venus for Women - Its main strength is that it fits right in with Gillette’s marketing activities of the Mach3.  The Mach3 was advertised a couple years ago and now is accepted as the best razor around.  Gillette has released the Venus with people expecting it to be the best women’s razor as its comparable to the Mach3.
• Clorox Outdoor – This outdoor cleaner is easy to manufacture since the company already makes so many similar products.  The product will find success because it has a point of difference of being made especially to clean outdoors.  Clorox uses product development to expand a product line and build off of the Clorox brand’s popularity.
• Nestea Concentrate – Nestle spent time discovering some needs of Americans that were not being met and defined the product before they began with development.  The concentrate solves the problems of having tea in one’s fridge that goes bad after a couple days and the difficulty with bringing frozen tea mixes out for events and picnics to mix.
• Cheetos Mystery Colorz – This product appeals to the market of parents whose kids love food that changes colors.  Frito-Lay is riding the wave of the trend.
• Chex Morning Mix – This product also follows a trend, that people are busier than ever.  Consumers don’t have much time for most meals and the least amount of time for breakfast.  This product provides an on-the-go snack parents and kids could eat while riding in the car on the way to school/work.  It won’t leave stains on one’s clothes after a spill either.

Failures

• Body Smarts – These health snacks placed in the candy aisle were poorly placed because they were promoted and distributed as an alternative to candy.  People do not look in the candy bar aisle for healthy food, and the Adams Company failed to realize this.
• Noxzema Skin Fitness – This product was marketed to be healthy for women’s skin and one part of a series of facial products.  Noxzema failed to provide a significant point of difference since their original product was an all-in-one approach to what all these new products did.  Consumers would ask themselves, why buy five items when I can just buy one?
• IncrEdibles Breakaway Foods – This product suffered from poor product quality and an incomplete protocol.  L.L.P. produced this food without making sure the package actually worked.  Also, they were targeting on-the-go people who did not have time to make breakfast, but the product would easily spill on consumers while they drove.
• Special K Plus – Kellogg’s unwisely packaged this product with a milk carton to allude to the high calcium content.  This packaging made the box look smaller than other cereals and was not wide enough to attract people’s attention among the other cereal boxes.
• Surge – There was too little market attractiveness with strong competitors like Mountain Dew and Gatorade already entrenched as the market leaders.  Also, there was no point of difference to separate it from current, well-established citrus drinks.