Chapter 11: Developing and Managing Products
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Review and Assignments for Chapter 11
Review Questions
1. List the advantages of simultaneous product development.
Advantages of simultaneous product development include shortening the development
2. What are the major disadvantages to test marketing, and how might they be avoided?
Test marketing is very expensive, as the product has to go into production, complete with
3. Describe some products whose adoption rates have been affected by complexity,
compatibility, relative advantage, observability, and/or trialability.
Although students’ answers will vary, they should address some of the following points.
Computers were slow to be adopted by consumers because they were complicated to use. It
wasn’t until “user-friendly” personal computers were designed that consumers began
4. What type of adopter behavior do you typically follow? Explain.
Applicaon Quesons
1. How many new products can you identify? Visit the supermarket, and make a list of at
least 15 items with the word “new” on the label. Include on your list anything that
looks like a new product. Next to each item on your list, write the category of the new
product that best describes the item. Share your results with the class.
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Chapter 11: Developing and Managing Products
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In the supermarket, it is likely that most of the products will be either additions to existing
2. New entertainment products aren’t necessarily media products. Form a team of three to
four students, and brainstorm new non-media entertainment products. Try to identify
one item for each of the categories of new products discussed in the chapter.
3. You are a marketing manager for Nike. Your department has come up with the idea of
manufacturing a baseball bat for use in colleges around the nation. Assuming you are
in the business analysis stage, write a brief analysis based on the questions in the
“Business Analysis” section of the chapter.
4. How could information from customer orders at http://www.pizzahut.com / help the
company’s marketers plan product developments?
When customers order, they might suggest new product ideas or ask for an item that does
not currently exist. Pizza Hut could use these ideas, develop product prototypes, test them
5. In small groups, brainstorm ideas for a new wet-weather clothing line. What type of
product would potential customers want and need? Prepare and deliver a brief
presentation to your class.
6. Visit http://pg.com, and look at the brands it offers around the world. What conclusions
can you draw about Procter & Gamble’s global new-product development strategy?
Procter & Gamble has a highly global presence; 35 countries have website links off the PG.com
site. P&G uses a combination of new-product development strategies. One strategy is to
simply take a product currently marketed in the United States (the home country), make
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Chapter 11: Developing and Managing Products
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7. What is Cheerios doing to compete successfully in the maturity stage? Go to its website,
http://www.cheerios.com, to find out.
Applicaon Exercise
A simple statistical analysis will help you better understand the types of new products. As in the
application exercise in Chapter 6, you will be using print advertisements, but you will also be
adding information from other sources (TV ads, trips to the store, and the like).
Activities
1. Compile a list of 100 new products. If you are building a portfolio of ads (see the Application
Exercise in Chapter 6), you can generate part of this list as you collect print advertisements
2. Make a table with six columns labeled as follows: new-to-the-world products, new product
3. Place each of your 100 new products into one of the six categories. Tabulate your results at
Purpose: This exercise is designed to show a distribution curve of new products on the market
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Chapter 11: Developing and Managing Products
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Setting It Up: In the book, the students are assigned to compile a list of 100 new products, a feat
easily accomplished by a trip to the supermarket and the mall. They are to create their own
This exercise was inspired by the following Great Idea in Teaching Marketing.
Karen Stewart
Richard Stockton, College of New Jersey
New Product Development
To help introduce the concept of new product development, I ask students to bring either a new
product to class or an ad for a new product. Students are then asked to share with the class this
new product idea. In addition to describing this new item, students must also indicate whether
the product represents:
(a) a new-to-the-world product (10% of all new products introduced each year)
(b) a new product line (20% of all new products)
From this, it is evident that the textbook authors are correct when they state that most new
products are either additions to existing product lines or improvements or revisions of existing
Ethics Exercise
One source of new-product ideas is competitors. Steven Fischer recently joined Frankie and Alex
Specialty Products as a brand manager. His new boss told him, “We don’t have a budget for
new-product development. We just monitor our competitors’ new-product introductions and offer
knockoffs of any that look like they will be successful.”
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Chapter 11: Developing and Managing Products
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1. Is this practice ethical?
One way that companies can define themselves is by the business strategy they follow. For
example, a company can be an innovator or a quick follower of innovations. Being a quick
follower or offering your own version of a popular product developed by another company
is not necessarily unethical. When a company seeks to improve upon an idea or takes an
Piracy, however, is the direct copy of a company’s product and is unethical. Piracy is most
2. Does the AMA Statement of Ethics address this issue? Go to
http://www.marketingpower.com , and review the statement. Then write a brief
paragraph on what the AMA Statement of Ethics contains that relates to knock-off
products.
The AMA Statement of Ethics does not explicitly discuss piracy and knock-offs. It does,
however, directly prohibit taking the work of others, in whole or in part, for one’s own.
Video Assignment: GaGa’s Inc.
1. Which of the following types of new product best describes the Sherbeer Bars
developed by GaGa’s?
a. Reposi oned product
b. Improvement on an exis ng product
c. Addi on to an exis ng product line
d. New product line
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Chapter 11: Developing and Managing Products
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2. Which of the following steps in the new-product development process would have helped
Jim King realize that the novelty bars and the pints of Sherbeer would not be shelved
together?
a. Business analysis
b. Development
c. Test marke ng
d. Commercializa on
3. Which category of new product does the new Coconut Sherbeer pint fall under?
a. Reposi oned product
b. Improvement on an exis ng product
c. Addi on to an exis ng product line
d. New product line
4. Sherbeer takes some explaining because it isn’t ice cream and it isn’t sherbet. Which of
the following product characteris cs might a9ect how quickly people adopt Sherbeer?
a. Complexity
b. Compatibility
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Chapter 11: Developing and Managing Products
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c. Observability
d. Trialability
5. At which stage should GaGa’s have conducted its extensive focus groups and any research
it needed before pu=ng GaGa’s Sherbeer on the shelves?
a. Idea generation
b. Development
c. Idea screening
d. Business analysis
6. Because GaGa’s Inc. is such a small business, it could be said that their sampling system is
a way of using Rhode Island as a business analysis opportunity.
a. True
b. False
7. Based on what you saw in this video, GaGa’s is aiding the di9usion process by
communica ng directly with poten al adopters, par cularly the early adopters.
a. True
b. False
8. Which of the following stages of the PLC best describes the posi on of Sherbeer?
a. Introductory
b. Growth
c. Maturity
d. Decline
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Chapter 11: Developing and Managing Products
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© 2018 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be scanned, copied or duplicated, or posted to a publicly accessible website, in whole or in part.