Creating New Foods. The Product Developer's Guide - Product Strategy Development: Idea Generation and Screening

CREATING NEW FOODS
THE PRODUCT DEVELOPER'S GUIDE

CHAPTER 3
Product Strategy Development:
Idea Generation and Screening

3.5 PRODUCT CHARACTERISTICS AND IDEA GENERATION

3.5.1 Product characteristics or attributes

These are the features that identify the product to the company, the market and the consumer. Each product is a complex of tangible and intangible characteristics which define the product, its use and value. Product characteristics can be viewed as technological, consumer and market:

technological: raw materials, composition, structure, size/shape,

processing method, storage method, product type;

consumer: convenience, sensory properties, use, nutrition,

safety, psychological, social;

market: type of market, marketplace, sales, price, promotion.

Variation of the characteristics and addition of new characteristics can make the product more appealing to the consumer and indeed give a unique product. Comparison with the characteristics of competitive products can define the positions of the different products in the market; this can reveal gaps in the market where there are no products, and also give better direction to 'me-too' products.

A product has a number of characteristics, and they can be ranked in importance not only to the consumer, but also technically and for the market. The important characteristics are combined to give a product profile. Each product has a unique product profile with a number of characteristics, some being more important than others. Some product characteristics can be needed or wanted by the consumer and are often called consumer product benefits. Other characteristics can be disliked by the consumer!

Product types have characteristics with different 'strengths', for example fruit juices could vary from slightly sour to very sour, slightly sweet to very sweet, cheap to expensive, subdued to gaudy packaging, ordinary to prestigious.

Studying product characteristics is widely used in developing product concepts both within the company and more often with consumers. Two important uses of product characteristics for product idea generation are in product morphology and in product positioning.

3.5.2 Product morphology

Product morphology breaks a product area into characteristic types and then into characteristic descriptions. Ingredients are a type of product characteristic and they can be varied: in canned beans, the ingredients could be types of beans, sauce, meats, vegetables. Nutrition could be the focus: in a formulated dairy product, the nutritional characteristics could be fat, protein, sugars, calcium, vitamins. Psychological characteristics are important: in a take-away food they could be fun, comfort, prestige. Ideas can be developed under each heading; in the canned beans, there could be five types of beans, six types of sauces and they could be combined in different ways to give new product ideas, for example kidney beans with bacon in a salsa sauce, soybeans with tofu in black bean sauce.

Through product morphology, an individual or a group can develop ideas for product characteristics and also many product ideas by combining the characteristics in different ways.

3.5.3 Product positioning

In product positioning, competitive products are placed on a number of linear scales, one for each product characteristic. The scales are rated from low (or none) to high for the product characteristic. Two or three scales can also be combined in a multi-dimensional space. New product ideas can be found by moving the company's product on the scales, making its characteristics weaker or stronger. A product characteristic can be magnified or reduced in strength, the product characteristics can be combined in different ways, or a new characteristic can be introduced - all leading to new product profiles and new products.