Product Strategy

Product Strategy is the formal process for research, development and for adding new consumer goods or services to the target marketplace. This can be an ongoing part of a company’s structure or can be a process that is undertaken at various intervals during the business lifecycle. In the software application world product strategy is ongoing. As benchmarks are met, project or product goals usually advance to higher levels of functionality and include different layers of added value for the end user.

In other industries, especially those focusing on hard goods and consumables, the approach is more of a funnel, where a large number of ideas and prototypes may be produced and distributed in limited release in targeted markets in order to assess consumer acceptance. Once the most successful are identified from the ones that make it through the funnel to the end will be produced and made widely available and heavily marketed across distribution channels.

In almost all cases project strategy follows these stages:

• Concept
• Design
• Production Requirements
• Testing
• Deployment

In addition customer feedback is solicited at different phases of development and deployment and in many cases facilitates a few back end adjustments, which in the end makes a better product with higher than expected acceptance.