Product Development

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• published: 07 Nov 2013
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Hello there folks. I'd like to introduce you to Fredrick. I'm going to tell you the story of Fred's journey through the stages of product development. Listen closely now. It all started when Fred was hanging out with some of his coworkers after an important meeting. Everyone was standing around and chatting, when Fred realized he was thirsty. The only places nearby to get himself a drink was a soft drink vending machine up the hall and a coffee maker in the office. Since he was allergic to artificial sugar and didn't like drinking coffee, Fred was out of luck; he'd just have to stay thirsty until he got home. This got Fred thinking: what if there was a way to make a delicious drink from all natural ingredients? Something that tastes good and could be healthy, too. Fred came up with a brilliant idea: to make deliciously fruit flavoured teas from organic, natural sources. The teas would taste great and consumers could feel good about drinking them, as they were made only from tea leaves, fruits, and natural flavours, and had no added sugars or artificial flavours. Fred wrote out a recipe for a blueberry fruit flavoured tea for a few of his coworkers and explained his idea. Unfortunately, things didn't go over as well as he had hoped. "You know, David's Tea and Teavana have made take home flavoured teas very trendy and have snatched up most of the market. There isn't really a demand for this product; people already have it." "And it looks like it's not going to taste great. It's just tea with blueberry seeds in it. I think you need to take this back to the drawing board." Fred thought about it for a good long time. He might have enjoyed the tea, but if the consumer doesn't, and if there isn't a market need yet to be satisfied, they won't buy it. Fred realized he needed something that was innovative, so he decided to take a try at a carbonated soft drink. Sodas contain high amounts of sugar, which many people do not consume because of various helath reasons. It's bad for your teeth, blood, brain, and more! Fred decided to keep his original idea about going "all natural" but turned his product into a carbonated soft drink. This way, consumers could have a guilt free soda that they could enjoy instead of the unhealthy, traditional alternative. Revising his recipe, Fred whipped up a batch of 3 glasses of his fruit-based soda as a prototype. The first success! Fred took his product back to his coworkers to let them try. They liked it! Onto the next stage. Now that he had a decent product, Fred needed to decide who it was that wanted to buy it. He contacted Coca Cola Inc. and purchased some of their marketing research data on the carbonated beverage market. Fred spent hours looking over all of the numbers, figures, and statistics, finally deciding it would be best to market to urban young adults between the ages of 20 and 30. Then, came the hard part: Fred conducted surveys in the City of Toronto. He interviewed young adults, asking them if the product was of interest to them, and if so, where they would like to buy it. In addition, he provided samples for the participants to taste. He found that young females preferred the idea and taste, and would like to see the product sold at fitness centres and colleges. The top flavours they requested were mango, grape, and kiwi. Then came the real hard part: Fred needed to investigate whether or not it would be practical and convenient to mass produce his product, and in the end, turn a profit. Since mangos and kiwis are exotic fruits that need to be imported, the cost of production would be too high. So Fred decided to stick with grape. Fred also wanted to package the beverage in glass bottles to reduce plastic waste. This also proved to be too costly, as glass bottles cost double the plastic ones. This made production too expensive, and so, to cut costs and make production possible, the soda had to be packaged in plastic bottles.