New product development strategy is a tool that is used by businesses as a means to conceptualize and develop new products. The progression of a new product development strategy is usually aligned with the fulfillment of an identified need in the market, or as a form of business strategy. It utilizes certain factors, such as innovative input, concerted market research and the alignment of the new product, with the general marketing and financial objectives of the company. The types of new product development strategy include the application of economic principles that involves an analysis of the market, consumer preferences, the company’s specialties and the purposeful holding of sessions where members of the marketing and production team can put forth ideas regarding potential products.
One of the attributes of new product development strategy is the fact that it is a part of the concept of product life cycle, which monitors products in the market with the aim of finding out when such products have outlived their usefulness in the market. This knowledge is important because it can form a basis for a new product development strategy. For instance, if a company that produces kitchen equipment has a new blender in the market, it will monitor the progress of the blender, following its launch into the market, until the demand for the blender starts to fall. When it finds out that the blender has reached a state of decline in terms of usefulness to consumers, it will use this as a basis for developing a new blender based on indications as to the reason for the decline in demand.
Another means for imparting new product development strategy is through conducting customer surveys aimed at finding out the current tastes or preferences consumers have regarding a particular product. This information will be collated and used as a springboard for the development of a new product. In this case, the company knows exactly what the majority of the consumers prefer and will target these identified preferences in the formulation of new products. Also, a type of new product development strategy is through the means of holding meetings where the members of a product development team will have some kind of brainstorming sessions where they will come up with different ideas for new products. This type of method can be quite useful due to the input by different individuals, based on their different perspectives.
