This chapter is about innovation and digital technologies. From a company’s viewpoint, developing and marketing new products is a way of staying ahead of competition, of regenerating the company’s competitive position, and of revitalising the firm’s product portfolio. From a consumer’s viewpoint, new products often offer new digital solutions to problems, and can be instrumental in helping to create a better lifestyle.
1. Considering the product life cycle, which of the following is TRUE?
- Introduction comes before growth, but after maturity.
- Maturity comes before decline, but after growth.
- Growth comes before maturity, but after decline.
Answer: B
The correct order is introduction, growth, maturity, decline.
2. Which of the following is NOT TRUE?
- The maturity phase can be of almost any length.
- The growth phase is profitable.
- The decline phase can be reversed.
Answer: B
The growth phase is often unprofitable due to the support needed for the product.
3. When a product becomes part of everyday life it is said to be ______.
- culturally anchored.
- built in.
- socially essential.
Answer: A
The others are invented terms.
4. Which of the following is NOT one of Rogers’ criteria for new product acceptance?
- relative advantage
- compatibility
- profitability
Answer: C
Profitability is an issue for the firm to address.
5. What does AIDA stand for?
- attention, interest, desire, affection
- attention, intelligence, distance, action
- attention, interest, desire, action
Answer: C
The others are invented.
6. What proportion of the population did Rogers classify as innovators?
Answer: A
Innovators are about 2.5% of the population, according to Rogers.
7. Continuous innovation is defined as ______.
- developing a new product that relates only distantly to previous products
- a new product that follows closely on from a previous product
- the development of a new product that differs radically from its predecessors
Answer: B
The product will have a clear relationship to the previous product.
8. One possible route around the ‘acceptance problem’ is ______.
- mass compatibility
- mass cosmopolitanism
- mass customisation
Answer: C
Customers are able to design the product themselves from a range of possible options.
9. The identification of real-world geographic location of an Internet-connected device (e.g. mobile phone) is more commonly known as ______.
- geopositioning
- geolocation
- geomapping
10. People who like technology for its own sake are called ______.
- technophiles
- technophobes
- technocrats
Answer: A
The ending phile denotes lover of.
Web exercise
Visit //www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGO67sWUFVE and watch this one-minute video from ‘A Quality Minute’.
Why would anyone want to start a failed products museum? More to the point, why would anyone imagine that these products would ever have sold?
Then go to //www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dEHB9OBNlc and watch David Pogue in a TedX talk about why failures teach us success!
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10 Questions 20 Marks 12 Mins
Product Life Cycle:
- The term product life cycle refers to the length of time a product is introduced to consumers into the market until it's removed from the shelves.
- The life cycle of a product is broken into four stages—introduction, growth, maturity, and decline.
- This concept is used by management and by marketing professionals as a factor in deciding when it is appropriate to increase advertising, reduce prices, expand to new markets, or redesign packaging.
- The process of strategizing ways to continuously support and maintain a product is called product life cycle management.
- Introduction Stage:
- The introduction stage shows low sales numbers as the product is being introduced in the market.
- Profit is zero or negative in this stage because of the heavy expenses of product introduction.
- Sales Promotion Strategy: Use heavy sales promotion to entice trial.
- Growth Stage:
- With proper marketing, a product can go into the growth stage.
- During the growth stage, sales rise rapidly as consumers begin to accept the product.
- The production runs become longer, and economies of scale are achieved, reducing per-unit cost, and also helping profits to increase rapidly.
- Sales Promotion Strategy: Reduce to take advantage of heavy consumer demand.
- Maturity Stage:
- During the maturity stage of the product life cycle, the sharp growth in sales begins to slow, and profits at the beginning of this stage decline.
- The most notable characteristic of this stage is the peaking of the product’s sales and profit curves.
- At the beginning of the maturity stage, sales continue to grow but at a much slower rate.
- Towards the end of this stage, sales and profits will start to fall fairly rapidly.
- This stage is characterized by severe competition as many brands enter the market.
- To combat competition, marketing costs increase substantially results in a reduction in profits.
- Sales Promotion Strategy: Increase to encourage brand switching.
For any product, it’s PLC will go to the decline stage, where the product’s sales and profits fall very quickly, and most competitors leave the market. Sales Promotion Strategy: Reduce to a minimal level.
Thus, option 2 is the correct answer.
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