Surprising Ways the Hot New Thing can affect Your Product Strategy by Elie Ofek and Luc Wathieu.
A Reflection by Student Name
The primary aim of the article is creating awareness among managers about development of strategies to address trends. The authors identify three innovation strategies for innovation; augment, combine and counteract. The article aims at providing managers with the insight to create “new value proposition in their core markets, and to provide some high level advice on how to make market research and product development organizations more adept at analyzing and exploiting trends.” (Ofek and Wathieu, 2010). It basically discusses the importance of aligning the business products and services with the prevailing trends. It also outlines the various factors that a business organization s should consider when devising strategies for coping with trends to ensure that it remain competitive.
The authors of the article are recognized scholars. Elie Ofek is a Business Administration Professor at Harvard School of Business. While, Luc Wathieu is the Ferrero Chair in International Marketing at the European School of management and Technology in Berlin. The primary audience is the business community especially the executive officers and marketing managers. These group is targeted because executive officers are charged with the responsibility of aligning business strategy with relevant to the customers’ values, attitudes and perceptions which are dynamic. Marketing managers are targeted because they require critical insight for identifying less obvious ways in which trends affects the behaviors, aspirations and the aspirations of customers for them to achieve the marketing objective.
The authors have used evidence from highly performing companies to demonstrate the process of addressing trends. Coach is used as an example of a business that has effectively utilized the augment strategy to address trends. This company infused the aspects of youthfulness and pop culture in their existing offering by producing colorful handbags with the brand name written with graffiti which were competitively priced. The company increased sales during economic downturn without reducing the overall prices. The Nike’s successful combination of it existing offering with aspect of digital trend enable the company to transcend its product category. It created a new value proposition by combining it sports products with digital trends thus connecting with the increasingly digitalized consumers. The iToys serves as example of counteract strategy. It developed ME2video game with enhanced physical activity thus counteracting the negative effects associated with extended playing of video game without exercising among children.
The article concludes with a caution for managers to ensure that the process of addressing trends is done judiciously. The first step is identifying the trend by assessing the ripple effect of the trend, impact on target population behavior and perceptions, size of target population affected, and its endurance. The second step is conducting two separate market researches with the intent of identifying the less obvious effects of the trend on the target customers behavior and perception towards the company products. It is followed by comparison of results the two market researches to identifying significant aspects of the trend, related to a company’s product category. Last, the isolation of the best strategy among; augment, combine and counteract, to implement in order to reaffirm the core values while at the same time mitigating the undesirable changes arising from the trend. The articles urge that failure to address trends puts a business at the risk losing competitiveness.
This article provides critical insight on developing innovative strategy that addresses powerful trends to enable a business to remain competitive. It outlines the basic steps for addressing the implications of prevalent trends to customers’ aspirations, behaviors and perceptions. It effectively communicates to managers, innovative strategies for addressing trends. It effectively articulates the importance of addressing trends using vivid examples of company that have succeeded by effectively implementing innovative strategies. The content offers invaluable advice to managers in the process of making strategic decisions. It also informs marketers the importance of paying attention to not so obvious details during market research in order to unmask valuable intelligence concerning the influence of trends on customers’ behavior.
Ofek, E., and Wathieu, L. (2010). Surprising ways the hot new thing can affect your product strategy. Harvard Business Review, July August, 125-131
