Category: Chapter 8 – Product Strategy and New Product Development

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Flavors & Layers: Lessons from Lay’s

From fat-free chips to flavor contests, market research has both failed and supported the well-known potato chip brand, Lay’s, in their product development process. The Wow! “healthy” chip disaster shows that promising market tests don’t always spell success. Crowdsourcing campaigns, while beneficial for increasing customer engagement and boosting short-term revenue streams, can provide inaccurate insight into long-term consumer preferences. This year, Lay’s has released a new product line, Lay’s Layers, but only in two flavors presumably as a large-scale market test for their brand-new chip design.

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A Perfectly Packaged Pint

Known for their tradition and scientific method to pouring the perfect pint, Guinness has mastered product differentiation and strategy. The successful brand originating from Ireland operates globally, brewed in over 60 countries and available in over 150. With a diverse range of products, packaging, and labelling, Guinness sets an example to marketing managers promoting consumer products internationally. By adjusting their products to suit the trends and preferences of different markets, Guinness has been able to appeal to a variety of consumer tastes for over 260 years.

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Jazzed Up Bubbles

Celebrity endorsements have been around for as long as the concept of celebrity has existed. Consider PepsiCo’s newest brand of sparkling water, Bubly. In 2019, the company contracted with Michael Bublé for a series of advertisements where he plays with the Bubly/Bublé relationship, insisting that the water’s name is pronounced “boo-blay,” like his last name. The Bublé/Bubly partnership applies a number of essential items for a successful celebrity endorsement.

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Quibi Quickly Bites the Dust

Just six months after launch, Quibi is calling it quits. The streaming service, whose name is derived from the phrase “quick bites,” was originally designed to fill smaller gaps of time, like waiting in line for a coffee or during your morning commute on the subway.[i] Just as the service launched, however, the coronavirus changed the everyday landscape of media consumption. This, combined with a number of other factors, led to service’s quick demise.

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The Food Court of Healthcare

COVID-19 has brought a lot of pressure to the healthcare systems around the world, particularly on emergency services. However, this doesn’t mean that everyday ambulatory care ceases to exist. AdventHealth and Orlando Health have been in a tight race to provide top-tier medical services to the Greater Orlando area. One of the major current trends in healthcare is to create pavilions or health parks – one central location for patients to take care of all of their medical needs at once. The different approaches taken by the rival hospital systems in the Central Florida region illustrate two separate marketing tactics.

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Saving Lives: Your Watch is Smarter Than You Think

Wearable tech, such as smartwatches, Fitbits, and Oura rings, were already gaining traction as medical monitors even prior to the pandemic. When the pandemic bloomed across the globe, wearable tech as a medical monitor took on a new urgency. The US Navy wants to use wearable tech to monitor social distancing – and they’re not the only ones either; many companies have already launched systems incorporating wearable tech to aid with social distancing in the workplace.

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Fractional Trading: Investors Demand Their Slice of the Pie

The investment industry is undergoing some major changes, and many firms are attempting to bring investing to a wider (read: younger) audience. The major shift has come in the form of fractional trading, which allows smaller investors to enter the trading floor where they otherwise might have been priced out. These programs come during a time when more Americans are at home, spending a majority of their time online already – so they’re perfectly poised to enter the market.

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The Value of a Value Chain

IKEA’s product line includes about 9,500 products, and each year they introduce about 200 new products to that line. So how do they do it? How do they provide quality home furnishings at an affordable price? The IKEA process has been a source of intrigue for business strategists for years. This is partially due to their transparency with their mission, vision, value chain, and democratic design.

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Coca Cola glass bottle tops

A Coke is a Coke is a Coke

Mexican Coke, sometimes called “Mexi-Coke,” has become somewhat of a phenomenon in the United States. So, what makes Mexican Coke so much different than the fizzy drink bottled here? There are a few potential explanations, but the most popular explanations are the use of sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup and the return to the traditional glass Coke bottle.