3.3 Product commercialisation

Stage 3: product commercialisation, is full scale-up of both production and marketing.

These two developments need to be integrated throughout product commercialisation. Also design continues for the product, the production and the marketing, leading into the operational production and marketing. There is a need for integration, between the design and the operations. Product commer- cialisation ends with full integration of the product, production and marketplace.

So the important factor in commercialisation is integration. Other factors to consider are the costs and the time. The costs really start to increase at this stage - maybe a plant has to be designed, built and commissioned; or fast-food outlets designed and built, or new distribution facilities built, all having a high capital cost. The risk of high financial losses increases as shown in Fig. 3.9.

Fig. 3.9 Increasing costs in the product development process.

There are four important stages in product commercialisation:

    1. Setting up the commercialisation.
    2. Design of marketing, production and distribution.
    3. Testing of marketing, production and distribution.
    4. Final integration of marketing, production and finance.