Short Product Lifestyles and the Product Development Process

With the shortening of the product development lifestyle, many of the ideas discussed on page 102 of the text have been combined or drastically shortened. In order to keep up with the fast moving pace of consumerism, I don't think companies can afford to take many years or even months to bring a new product to market. Trends come and go so quickly. Businesses have to be flexible and rely on their business and product acumen to deduce the fickle preferences of consumers. Companies like Apple have made an art of knowing more about consumers and what they want/need more than the customers themselves. These deep insights allow Apple to be flexible and condense or eliminate many of the steps in the product development cycle.

As David Bell of Chrysler mentions in the video for this week, consumers can easily tell companies what they don't like, but they aren't as good at communicating exactly what they want. This is also mimicked by the story about spaghetti sauce. No focus group attendant ever said "what I want is a chunky sauce." Attentive and savvy marketers can distill customer statements into a product that really resonates. But, as soon as a company makes a breakthrough, other competitors are likely to follow and offer a similar product or services. This forces the original to continue to innovate.

While I agree that technology firms and products exhibit this accelerated product lifecycle, I think that it is exhibited by other trend driven industries like clothing and apparel. Also, companies that are successful in industries with high product turnover must purposely kill their own products. Otherwise, these firms won't be able to continue to resonate with consumers.

I think the emergence and prevalence of social media has accelerated product lifecycles even more. People that are early adopters and often trendsetters are likely to be involved with social media. This means that products rise and fall even more quickly than they have in the past.

In order to be attuned to the customer, companies have to be highly involved or at least aware of social media. Also, they need to continually conduct research in order to stay abreast of trends and offerings of other competitors. I don't think product lifecycles will be increasing anytime soon, if anything they will probably continue to decrease. Companies have to stay vigilant, flexible and creative to stay on top of their markets, especially in the technology space.