NEW PRODUCT PLANNING AND POSITIONING STRATEGIES IN NIGERIAN BREWERY INDUSTRY A CASE STUDY OF GUINESS NIGERIA PLC

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

• BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

Given the rapid changes in consumer tastes, technology and competition, companies must develop a steady stream of new products to satisfy this wants and needs of the consumer, however, this product are vulnerable to change to consumer needs, new technology, short life cycle, increase domestic and foreign competition and new technologies seems to be the most threatening.

New products are essential to the success of any company that fails to develop new products is exposed to great risk. this risk may come in form of competition, change in consumer taste and technology.

To succeed every company must develop new products, new products are developed to replace out-dated ones. these new products falls into three categories which are: products that are truly innovative, products that may be considered replacement for existing products, but which are significantly different from existing product and product that are new to a particular company.

However, this new products continue to fail at a very disturbing rate example is “satzenbrau”. This failure might be due to overestimated market size, ill design products, incorrect positioning products, product not advertise effectively, failure to gain distribution cost and competitions counter attack and so on. All these failure rates have rekindle the anxiousness of companies to improve their odds of new products one way is to identify successful product and find out what they have in common. Another is to study new product failures to see what to be learnt and yet another is to embark on continuous replacement of existing product. (brands).

Various studies suggest that new product success depends on developing a unique superior products; one with higher quality new feature and higher value, another is a well defined product concept prior to development in which the company carefully assess the market product if they must stay in bussiness but the odd weight heavily against their success thus the solution lies in setting up a systematic product planning and development strategy and this is what the researcher tends to highlight using of Guinness Nigeria Plc as a case study.

1.2             STATEMENT OF PROBLEM

Due to acute competition in the breweries in industry, brewery firms have renewed their interest in marketing by focusing on the production of what it can sell rather than what it can make. The problem to be address in this research is to examine high rate of product failure in the market that is bedeviling manufacturing organization.

      1.3                    OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The specific objectives are:

1. To determine the role of an effective product planning and development strategy in an organization
2. To highlight the problems which management is likely to encounter in carrying out product planning and development
3. To highlight and examine the product planning and development strategies in Guiness Nigeria Plc
4. To ascertain the involvement of employees in product planning and development
5. To find the reason behind product failure
6. To generate data that will serve as a basis for making future and effective planning and development on new products

1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The following research questions are derived from the objectives.

1. Are there derivations from plans when developing a new product in the company?
2. Do the present development in implementation of product planning adequate?
3. Can product efficiency be enhanced through effective planning and development?
4. Are consumers choice and market research carried out to determine potential market demand?
5. Is there significant relationship between commercialization and product failure?
6. To what extent has the company’s research and development effort contributed to the effieciency?
7. Are workers involved in the planning and development process in the brewery?

1.5       RESEARCH HYPOTHESES

Hypotheses I

H₀ : There is no significant relationship between employers poor performance and product failure.

H₁ : There is significant relationship between employers poor performance and product failure.

Hypotheses II

H₀: There is no significant relationship between commercialization and product failure.

H₁: There is significant relationship between commercialization and product failure.

1.6         SIGNIFICANT OF THE STUDY

The result emanating from this research work will be useful to the following: investors, Guinness Nigeria Plc, the research and the student of Business Administration Department.

1. the investments will recognize the importance of product planning and development     strategy, if they are  contemplating  on going into production sector.
2. the research work is designed to aid those organization that still need enlightenment on what to be designed in trying to engage in production of good s and compelled to produce quality goods for sell.

Since product planning and development strategy is the major function of manufacturing organization it is relevant therefore to undertake such study since they constitute the main objective which is the production of quality good, the survival of the business rest on efficient implementation of product planning and development.

3. finally, the study will serve as a source of information for researchers and students of business administration who will like to conduct research in similar area of study.

1.7      THE SCOPE OF STUDY

This research work is directed to the study of product planning and development strategies in a brewery industry. This topic will be trailed down to Guinness Nigeria Plc, Benin Ikpoba Hill, Benin City.

1.8       LIMITATION OF THE STUDY

Factors that militate against the research work involves:

1. Time Constraint: this study is expected to be completed within a reasonable time and this creates a problem of its own.
2. Financial Constraint: This topic is a very wide survey, the researcher would have love to increase the scope of the study but inadequate finance limits the scope of Guinness Plc Benin Branch.
3. Health: The researcher undergo a lot of stress in other to source information relevant to the study and it affect the health of the researcher.
4. Distance: The researcher is faced with distance problem, because the study of interest is not within the area of the researcher.

1.9       DEFINITIONS OF TERMS:

Products: It is anything that can be offered to a market for attention, acquisition, usage or consumption that might satisfy a want or need includes physical objects services, persons, organization and ideas.

New Product: A good service or product that is perceived by some customers as new.

Product Planning; This embraces all activities that enables a company to determine what products it will market.

Product Concept: The idea that consumers will favour products that offers the most quality, performance and feature.

Product Ideas: An idea for a possible product that the company can see itself offering to the market

Product Image: The way consumers   perceive an actual or potential products

Product Line: A group of products that are closely related, because they function in similar manner, and are sold to the same customer group  are marketed through the same types of outlets of falls within the given price range.

Product Development: A strategy for company   growth by offering modified  or new products to current market segment,  Developing the production in order to ensure that the product idea can be formed into workable product.

New Product Development: The development of original products, improvement, produces modifications and new brand through the firm’s own research and development effort.

Strategy: A comprehensive description of an organization master plan for achieving objectives and purpose.

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