Essay Sample on Coca Cola: New Product Development

Idea Generation

Generating ideas for invention or innovation. Generate all possible ideas for commercialization. Few employees volunteer for this.

Idea Screening

Sorting Generated ideas; selecting only feasible solutions. Generate the best possible idea for commercialization Biasness towards lower rank generators.

Concept Development

Prototype development. To see if the idea can work when turned to a product. A mistake can here can lead to scraping off a good idea.

Market Strategy

Promotion of products and targeting market. To determine how good your primary and secondary target market is. A financial liability has to be undergone through promotion.

Feasibility

Analysis Sales and profit estimation. Determine nature of business. Determine if we can make a profit with the product. Financial forecasts may be inaccurate because of changing market trends.

Product Design

Turning prototype to actual product. Finalize product. Designing a product as to the consumers wishes and its functionality. Consumers may have preference for very different designs.

Market Testing

Branding, price estimation and packaging of few sample products. Assesses if consumers like the product and whether the demand is available. The few chosen do no always represent the market condition.

Product Launching

Launching of a product to target market strategically. Kick-start the product life-cycle by mass production. Rejection by consumers is still a reality.

In most cases, the development of a new product is crucial for a company in those new products that have been successfully launched often brings prosperity to an organization through profits; as we can see in the case of Coca-Cola. However, even with a pioneering company in innovation like Coca-Cola, the development and successful release of a new product is always challenging ( Kanagal Nagasimha Balakrishna, 2015). Development of a product may be realized typically in two ways, either by creating a new product or by altering an existing one to increase profits; and Coca-Cola adopts both. The process of coming up with a new product is majorly kick-started by a market gap; although we will look at other factors. This deficiency in the market is what the new product will come to quench. Primarily, also a new product helps to keep up with the competition and hence not fall behind regarding market shares. The process also focuses on meeting consumer needs which usually change frequently with advances in technology. For a company to come up with a new product, it must have set aside funds for research and development; this research helps determine how best to modify, improve and to tackle issues on price. Hence, an excellent new product development (NPD) process is critical as it affects a company's profit margin and market shares when it goes sideways.

Many companies rush to produce products when they notice a market gap or when their competitors have themselves introduced new products and research has shown that 95% of new products launched in the USA fail and 90% in Europe. Hence Coca-Cola has had to be more careful in designing and launching its product. For the NPD to be successful, Coca-Cola has not only solely focussed on R&D but to also consider education, research, networking, and external environment (the effect). Coca-Cola has had to devote not just research resources but also enough workforces such as a cross-functional team from various company departments with experience in NPD. For research development, Coca-Cola deploys some employees to the new product development and involves not only the top management but also the scientists, learning institutions, and research groups in research development. Coca-Cola has tried many ways to reduce R&D but still maintain the activities involved in the research process. This costs cut are done through efficiency and still maintaining the quality of innovation. The R&D process is in itself cooperated in the innovation process. The innovation chain starts with R&D, patent protection, then service offering, and finally financial assessments. Patents usually have ideas of different employees that can automate serve as a referee for technological and other helpful knowledge for innovation, and Coca-Cola has a ton of them from various successful professionals that they offer to their managers and research teams. Patents are therefore or can act as an indicator of a firm's innovative quality. Change, on the other hand, complements the commercialization process, which NPD depends on it for success. Though commercialization comes towards the end of the NPD process, it is the crucial last part for a successful market incorporation of the launched product. The commercialization phase success initiates the launch of the product to the market; this stage looks at strategic plans and marketing. Since product development is usually all about survival tactics, Coca-Cola at this stage tends to focus on their competitor and how to better them. Coca-Cola takes designing their products very seriously and as a part of the innovation process, hence, the reason they hire entrepreneurial oriented designers such as David Butler (Muratovski Gjoko, 2015). The best way Coca-Cola uses to attract consumers to buy their product lies in the services offered; and they do this by having the right equipment, aftersales services, and a proper environment. To mass produce their products, they make sure marketing is done accurately to determine what particular market segment to target. Efficient and innovative marketing for commercialization involves a factor such as demographic analysis. This analysis will reveal the diversification, ethnic, per capita income and the general attitude of a population towards a particular product. Other critical factors that market analysis may involve would include technology, the economy, ecology and political environment.

In conclusion, with the current high failure rate of developing new products, Coca-Cola has proven that adopting a scientific process all the way from creating products to marketing them for better success. The process, just as it was not the same a decade ago will probably change in future; this change is generally as a result of technological advances, marketing, and demographic changes. Coca-Cola, however, has shown the key to a successful NPD is to keep modifying and modernizing the process; this company has taken up to a partnership with for commercialization and successful launching (Jonathan Shieber, 2017). Companies should learn to integrate innovation and marketing to the NPD and consider it as a single wholesome process. These methods though they stand independently, in this modern times a modern company ought to find all of them in NPD. Companies should also keep track of product lifecycle management to monitor when to dispose of a new product for a new one or to modify the existing one. Through observing a product's cycle, Coca-Cola has always developed new products-Coca-Cola zero, Coca-Cola zero sugar-at the best possible time for the optimal market gap to fill.

References

Jonathan Shieber, 2017. Coca-Cola has built a commercialization Bridge to startups worldwide. Retrieved from, https://techcrunch.com/2017/06/28/coca-cola-has-built-a-commercialization-bridge-to-startups-worldwide/ , tech crunch.

Kanagal Nagasimha Balakrishna, 2015. Innovation and product innovation in market strategy, Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India. Retrieved from https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=255100081087115095122119115009001023016039060039010087100115097070068090029103067022019117103061008030027112121016097096089075043075078051054004005098028104091100055023077071087010090028098016115094010112005005100080080010066100085125125079120082006&EXT=pdf

Muratovski Gjoko, 2015. Paradigm Shift: Report on the New Role of Design in Business and Society. Retrieved from, http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872615300265 , science direct.