7.12 SUMMARY

The launch needs clearly set targets or objectives, skilled technical and marketing people, good coordination and time control, fast and correct financial analysis and good problem-solving skills. It needs to have continuously updated knowledge of consumer needs, attitudes and behaviour; the retailer needs, attitudes and behaviour; and competitors' skills and knowledge as well as their reactions to new products.

It is an expensive stage in the product development process and needs good financial control of the costs and the revenues.

There is continuous evaluation, not to cause alarm and quick withdrawal of the product but to improve performance and to lead towards the absorption of the new product into the company's product mix and the general company organisation.

The research includes consumer, market, product, production, quality assurance and distribution research, sales data collection and analysis, as well as research into the environmental reactions to the product, including the physical, social, cultural and legal environments.

The financial analysis is essential because it can form a very strong basis for the decision to either continue or stop the launch.

The type and amount of research depends on the resources available, the budget for research, the risk-taking attitude in the company and company policy. Some companies do little research apart from sales data, but this means working by intuition or guesswork and having no knowledge of why these sales trends are occurring.