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

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Contents

About the book

About the authors

Preface

development project

2. The organisation of

development project

3. Product strategy

development: idea

screening

4. Product strategy

development: product

concepts and design

specifications

5. Product design and

process development

commercialisation

7. Product launch and

evaluation

8. Summary: bringing

it together

8.10 Textbooks in

product development

Index of Examples &

Problems

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CHAPTER 3
Product Strategy Development:
Idea Generation and Screening

3.7 PRODUCT IDEAS SCREENING PROCEDURES

Screening is usually done in stages. Simple methods may be used in the early stages with more detailed screening undertaken as the number of products is reduced and more technical, marketing and financial information becomes available. As screening proceeds, the number of product ideas decrease, the amount of information increases, the number of screening factors increase and the accuracy improves.

A possible screening sequence could be:

(25 ideas)
Pass/fail screening using aim and constraints

(10 ideas)
Checklist screening using market suitability and technical possibility

(2 ideas)

Economic evaluation using predicted market size, prices and production costs
(1 idea)

First the ideas are studied to see if they are compatible with the aim, constraints and any other crucial factors in a sequential, pass/fail screening in which the product idea is considered against each crucial factor in sequence, and a simple pass/fail decision is made. If they fail, they are dropped from further consideration. The remaining ideas are scored against each other on the important factors in a checklist screening, the scores added to give a total score and the lowest scoring ideas are dropped. The scales used can be 0 - 5 or 0 - 10 depending on the accuracy of the knowledge used.

Probability screening is also used; instead of giving a single score on a factor for the product idea, the probabilities of achieving the different scores on the scale are predicted.

At this point, detailed information on prices, production and distribution costs, market potentials and investment costs are collected and an economic evaluation made to select the product which has the predicted highest sales revenue, profit, rate of return on investment or some other financial criterion. This economic evaluation is repeated at different stages of the project, together with a check on all the factors used in earlier screenings. Minor factors are included on a checklist at the end of the product idea screening to see that they are being met in the final product concept. The packaging and the promotion can be screened on these factors as well as the products.

The advantages of a systematic screening approach are that it provides:

uniform method of product idea evaluation;

point of reference throughout the project;

systematic approach;

focus on business strategy and top management decisions.

Consumer screening of product ideas is shown in Example 3.1

Example 3.1
Screening of bakery products in Malaysia

A bakery company was investigating the Malaysian market for Western style baked products.

From pass/fail screening, seven product ideas remained which fell into four categories - cakes, buns, pies, pizza. There are two main ethnic groups in Malaysia, Malay and Chinese, so it was decided to find out which product categories and which individual products were preferred by each ethnic group. The consumers ranked the product categories from 1, the most preferred, to 4, the least preferred, and they also selected the product in each product category which they preferred. Seven Malay women and thirteen Chinese women were in the panel.

		*Rank mean score*
		*Malay*	*Chinese*	*Total*
Cakes		2.1	3.0	5.1
Buns		2.6	3.2	5.8
Pies		2.9	1.3	4.2
Pizza		2.4	2.5	4.9

		*Number preferring product*
		*Malay*	*Chinese*	*Total*
Cakes	Carrot cake	2	4	6
	Spice cake	5	9	14
Buns	Hot cross bun	2	3	5
	Cheese bun	5	10	15
Pies	Macaroni and meat	4	6	10
	Vegetable, mushroom	3	5	8
	Vegetarian	-	2	2

There was a clear-cut preference by the Chinese for pies, but not for the Malays. There were no strong preferences by the Malays between the different varieties of baked goods and only one more woman preferred macaroni and meat pies over the other pies. The preference of the Chinese for macaroni and meat pie plus the high scores for this product in the technical screening were the reasons why the macaroni and meat pie went forward for further evaluation.

Lai, Pai Wan (1987) Development of a bakery snack for export from New Zealand to Malaysia, Ph.D. thesis, Massey University, New Zealand.

PEOPLE INVOLVED IN IDEA SCREENING

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Creating New Foods. The Product Developer's Guide. Copyright © Chartered Inst. of Environmental Health.
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