Showing posts with label Product strategy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Product strategy. Show all posts

Saturday 26 May 2012

Business Product Strategy: A case on Magneto

Product attributes

This would involve the features or characteristic of the product. Before Magneto goes into production they need to understand the ability for the product to fulfill the needs of the customer
Quality – the major tool in positioning your product. It encompasses two key elements: 1) quality level - how it is made or perceived, and 2) quality consistency - how it performs over its life.
Features – the physical or intrinsic characteristics of your product that contribute to the benefits it offers.
Design – a combination of how the product looks and how it performs.
• Branding
A brand is a name, term, sign, symbol or design, or a combination of these elements that identifies the maker or seller of a product or service. Branding is an important part of a product and contributes to its personality and perceived value. The power of a brand cannot be underestimated – many people buy on the strength of brand alone with no regard for price or performance.
• Packaging
Packaging incorporates the wrapper or container for your product. It serves to protect the product, ensuring it reaches the buyer in good condition and also conveys the personality of your brand and important safety and statutory information.
• Labeling
Labeling incorporates all the written information about your product and usually takes the form of an adhesive sticker, a tie-on tag or a printed piece of packaging.

The characteristics of the target market

The characteristic of the target market or the product’s potential customers is an essential part of the product strategy. This is because the company needs to understand the potential customers’ needs and their characters for the purpose of developing a product that this group can connect with. Magneto will need to consider their geographical locations which may encompass region, climatic conditions and so on, demographics which may include their age, gender among other variables, psychographics which includes the general personality and lifestyle, behaviors which includes their level of knowledge and attitude.

Market share objectives

Magneto will need to place focus on their market forecast for this product and their market share intentions. This will depend on whether they need to achieve market share dominance or they will just pursue profits or both. Market share objective will involve determining the size of the market and estimating how much of that market Magneto will require to meet their corporate and product goals.

Competition

Magneto will need to understand the competitive environment within the product category and class. In case Magneto is the pioneer for the said product they will need patents to protect their product from competition if this is not possible then they should gather information about other companies that are more likely to produce a similar product. This will enable them develop their product with strong features to withstand the threat. Competitor analysis makes up for an important part of product strategy because it seeks to offer insights on how well to beat the competition through taking advantage of their weaknesses and the opportunities that generally exist in the market.

Desired product positioning

This will involve the development of a unique selling preposition about the product. The product by Magneto can be positioned on the basis of an attitude or benefit, use or application, price or level of quality. The positioning should play to the company’s product strength and away from weakness.

Profit objectives


Depending on the product Magneto is making they may not be able to set their own prices but in most cases companies can set prices for their products. In that case then Magneto should pay close attention to the pricing of their product to ensure they offer value to the customer but also make profits. The price set versus the cost of production would directly impact profit objectives. Pursuit of cost leadership which affects the price will also have a direct impact on the profit targets from the product developed by Magneto.