Study note on academic ideas about product management

Study note on academic ideas about product management

Academic ideas are bolded

David C. Roach. “The impact of product management on SME performance” Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development Vol. 18 No. 4, 2011

pp. 695-714.

“Product management as an organizational concept has been around for over a century in various forms (Katsanis and Pitta, 1995). This boundary spanning capability has a long history of management practice stemming back to the late nineteenth century, with the organizational structure eventually formalized by Proctor and Gamble in the early 1930s (Katsanis and Pitta, 1995; Sands, 1979; Dominguez, 1971). This system, which treated the product as the focal point of the management structure, became the standard in most large consumer product organizations and many industrial companies in the 1960s (Sands, 1979; Buell, 1975)”;

“One of the classic boundary spanning activities is the nurturing of shared cross-functional understanding of customer needs. It requires a culture that breaks down the barriers between such functional areas as sales, marketing, engineering and R&D to solve customer problems. This can be particularly important for SMEs, since the ability to deliver superior products and services is the foundation of many small firm niche strategies (Pelham, 1997)”;

Axel Johne (1986) Substance versus trappings in new product management, Journal of Marketing Management, 1:3, 291-301, DOI: 10.1080/0267257X.1986.9963991.

“NPD [new product development] spans a wide set of management tasks which range from business development (radical product innovation) to product improvement (incremental product innovation)”;

“Like most complex activities the development of new products is not an instantaneous act but a series of activities which occur over time. The actual activities involved have been variously conceptualised as is shown in Table 4. We would suggest that underlying the span of activities shown in Table 4 are three main phases of activity: (1) product planning, (2) product initiation, and (3) product implementation. Planning embraces how the firm determines product markets in which to compete and how alternative new product propositions are evaluated. Initiation embraces idea generation and their development and testing in concept. Implementation embraces product development proper, including test marketing and commercialisation”;

Brian D. Stevenson. “PRODUCT MANAGEMENT IN CORPORATE BANKING” International Journal of Bank Marketing, 1 January 1989, MCB University Press.

“In its purest form, product managers are concerned with the elements of the marketing mix. As such, they should be responsible and accountable for the performance of their products in the following areas:

• pricing and profitability;

• promotion and advertising:

• delivery and distribution;

• training, and

• product design”;

“Product Management Process : The ingredients of the process are shown in Figure 1, the key elements of which comprise a number of

aspects, namely: Competitor Monitoring ... Technology Monitoring... Legal/Regulatory/Tax Change Monitoring... Market Research...

Pricing Policy.... Operational Support (Production)...  ”

John A. Quelch, Paul W. Farris, James Olver. “THE PRODUCT MANAGEMENT AUDIT: DESIGN AND SURVEY FINDINGS” THE JOURNAL OF CONSUMER MARKETING. Vol. 4 No. 3 Summer 1987: 45-58.

“Why are product managers under more time pressure? Why is the job more complex than ever before?

• With annual population growth running at only 0.8 percent, many consumer goods companies are trying to increase sales by capturing market share through new products targeted at narrow market segments rather than at the mass market. Reflecting greater demographic heterogeneity, the consumer marketplace that the product manager has to deal with is becoming more fragmented and complex as a result.

• At the same time, more concentrated and sophisticated channels of distribution are now equipped with product movement information from retail check-out scanners and are in a stronger bargaining position with manufacturers than ever before”;