11–12 Chapter 11 ♦ Developing and Managing Products
2.3 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 packaging, advertising,
2.4 How could information from customer orders at www.pizzahut.com help the company‘s marketers plan new-
product developments?
When customers order, they might suggest new product ideas or ask for an item that does not currently exist.
3.1 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.
4.1 Visit www.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. P&G uses a combination of new product development
5.1 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 these points: Computers were slow to be
adopted by consumers because they were complicated to use. It wasn’t until “user-friendly” personal computers
5.2 What type of adopter behavior do you typically follow? Explain.
5.3 Review Exhibit 11.4. Analyze each product on the graph according to the characteristics that influence the
rate of adoption. For example, what can you conclude from the data about the relative advantage of DVD
Audio? Write one to two pages explaining your analysis.
Chapter 11 ♦ Developing and Managing Products 11–13
Students’ answers should discuss product characteristics and the rate of adoption. For example, one can conclude
from the graph that the tremendous success of cell phones can be attributed to the following factors:
6.1 What is Cheerios doing to compete successfully in the maturity stage? Go to its Web site
Supplemental Exercise: Group Work
Review and Applications
Review and Application Questions 1.2, 2.2, and 3.1 lend themselves well to group work. For these activities, divide
the class into small groups of 4-5 people. Each group member should read the question and then use the textbook, or
any work completed previously, to perform the exercise. Then each group should discuss or present its work to the
class.
11–14 Chapter 11 ♦ Developing and Managing Products
APPLICATION EXERCISE
Purpose: This exercised is designed to show a distribution curve of new products on the market and to confirm that most
new products are modifications of existing products.
Setting It Up: In the book, the students are assigned to compile a list of 100 new products, a feat easily accomplished by
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)
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/revisions of existing products. We then talk about the reasons for this
Chapter 11 ♦ Developing and Managing Products 11–15
ETHICS EXERCISE
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
2. Does the AMA Statement of Ethics address this issue? Go to 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
MARKETING PLAN EXERCISE
Complete the exercises on page 410 to continue building your strategic marketing plan for Part 3-Product Decisions.
You should also refer to Appendix 1 for additional marketing plan checklist items (Marketing Mix-Product).
CASE STUDY
Harmonix: Embrace your inner Rock Star
1. Use the five product characteristics to analyze the rate of adoption for music based games.
Complexity: Many of Harmonix’s earlier games and products were overly complex, which is part of the
reason it took them so long to create a successful music-based game.
11–16 Chapter 11 ♦ Developing and Managing Products
2. Under which of the six new product categories would Guitar Hero be classified?
Student answers will vary, but Guitar Hero could be classified as an addition to an existing product line,
3. What were some of the signs that the music-based videogames had reached maturity.
LESSON PLAN FOR VIDEO
Company Clips: Kodak – Reinventing Photography
Designing usable and intriguing products is an integral part of Kodak’s marketing process. Paul Porter, director of
corporate design and usability, focuses on creating interesting, functional, and intuitive equipment. (Recall the striking
ad on page 323 for the dual-lens camera.) To make sure the company is on the right track with product development,
Kodak marketers interview customers and visit them in their own homes, observing how families use digital
photography. The understanding gained from these interactions helps the company create a wide range of products
targeted at different market segments.
1. EasyShare 1 didn’t sell very well, but Paul Porter claimed this wasn’t the purpose of that particular product.
What was the purpose of the product?
2. What kind of new product was EasyShare 1?
3. Discuss the product development process at Kodak.
Kodak’s product development process begins with research. Kodak’s product development teams, made up of
corporate design and usability design, research the social trends and consumer/technology/business needs via
4. Place Kodak’s digital cameras in the product life cycle.
Kodak’s digital cameras have moved into the growth cycle as defined in the textbook. This is the second stage of
Chapter 11 ♦ Developing and Managing Products 11–17
Supplemental Exercise: Video
Company Clips
Pre-Class Prep for You:
• Preview the Company Clips video segment for Chapter 11. This exercise reviews concepts for LO1, LO2, LO5, and
LO6
• Review your lesson plan.
• Make sure you have all of the equipment needed to show the video to the class, including the DVD and a way to
project the video.
Pre-Class Prep for Students:
Video Review Exercise Activity
• Warm-up
o Begin by asking students: “What is a product and why are products important?”
o While students respond, write the following on the board: “New products are important to sustain growth,
increase revenues and profits, and replace obsolete items.”
• In-Class Preview
o Review the six categories of new products: new-to-the-world; new product lines; additions to existing
• Follow-up
o Divide students into groups of 3-5, and have them propose a new product or service for Kodak. Have them
discuss and write a brief report on:
▪ The product category in which the new product/service belongs
• Ask students to preview Exhibit 11.2, Checklist for Selecting Test Markets from the textbook and think about what
U.S. cities fit the descriptors.
11–18 Chapter 11 ♦ Developing and Managing Products
Supplemental Exercise: Class Activity
Generating and Screening New Product Ideas
In the Class Activity in Chapter 1, students were asked to consider the range of marketing activities that a small
manufacturer of tennis racquets would undertake. Now the class should assume that the tennis racket manufacturer has
been very successful in manufacturing and marketing a single line of inexpensive tennis racquets, aimed at beginners and
casual players.
The company wishes to expand its operations, either with new products or in new customer markets.
1. What are some possible new products for this company?
GREAT IDEAS FOR TEACHING CHAPTER 11
James S. Cleveland, Sage College of Albany
DISCUSSION BOARD TOPICS TO ENCOURAGE PARTICIPATION
Discussion board questions provided to students to encourage them to engage in thinking and writing about the content
of the Principles of Marketing course usually take the form of a provocative statement to which students are asked to
respond. An example of this would be: All PR is good PR.
I have developed, therefore, a series of discussion board questions to use with experienced, adult students. These
questions are designed to encourage them to use their experiences as employees and consumers as doorways to better
understand the course material, and to make their own responses more interesting to themselves and to the other students
in the class who will read and comment on them.
Each question has three parts:
1. First, there is a sentence or two from the students’ textbook introducing the topic. By using the text author‘s
own words, students are enabled to locate relevant material in the text more easily, the text content is
reinforced, and confusion resulting from use of variant terms or expressions is minimized.
Series A
1. An innovation is a product perceived as new by a potential adopter. Diffusion is the process by which the
adoption of an innovation spreads. There are five categories of adopters: innovators, early adopters, early
majority, late majority, and laggards. You will fall into a different category of adopter depending on the type of
Series B
1. The product life cycle is a concept that provides a way to trace the stages of a product’s acceptance, from its
introduction to its decline. This concept does not apply to a single brand but to entire product categories.
11–20 Chapter 11 ♦ Developing and Managing Products
Deborah Reed Scarfino, William Jewell College
A PROJECT TO FAIL
I have used the project, “Create a Product, Good, Service That Will Fail,” to instill or recharge creativity in
my students.
We spend the first half of the semester understanding the concepts, working on case studies and analyzing material
to make recommendations to improve the existing situation or resolve problems that pose challenges. There are no real
textbook answers to some of these cases, and that alone creates personal frustration to some students. Thinking beyond
the textbook is a foreign challenge to many of my students who have successfully completed courses where
memorization made all the difference. The world of marketing is multifaceted and offers unending challenges that
Barbara Ross Wooldridge, The University of Texas at Tyler
PACKING THE POWERFUL P! THE IMPACT PACKAGING HAS ON HOW WE “SEE”
PRODUCTS A TASTE TEST EXPERIMENT
Most students in an introduction marketing course can easily visualize the role packaging plays in protecting and
Exercise Overview
Three products are used in this taste test: KitKat Candy Bars, Sweet Escapes, and Keebler Fudge Sticks. The items
should be cut up into bit size pieces. Each product is placed in separate bags labeled A, B, and C. Students are divided
into groups of 3 to 5 depending on class size. The groups are given taste test sheets to fill out as a team. These sheets
include the following items: which product did you prefer and why did you prefer it, who is the target market for the
Chapter 11 ♦ Developing and Managing Products 11–21
The Results
What the students discover is that the three products are all basically chocolate covered wafers are viewed very
differently and sell for very different prices based on packaging. KitKat is packaged individually as a candy bar, while
Benefits to the Student
The taste test allows students to immediately begin to understand the relevance of packaging in determining how one
Conclusion
This exercise depending on class size takes some time to create the tasting samples, but does not require a lot of