Product-Market Analysis
The Product-Market Analysis (PMA) component of Planned Innovation® focuses on generating higher sales and profits through a strategic blend of new and existing products. It enables firms to quickly and efficiently discover “winners,” eliminate “losers,” and allocate scarce resources to those product-market opportunities that deliver the highest return on investment.
The unique methods of product-market definition and market segmentation achieved through PMA lead to a richer and more detailed understanding of unmet customer needs and help identify attractive product-market opportunities that match a firm’s business strengths.
This detailed understanding of customer needs, combined with an in-depth analysis of key trends and competitive strategy, greatly enhances a firm’s ability to select its target markets and specify the optimal “marketing mix” for each target market. Each of the “4P’s”of the marketing mix—Product, Price, Promotion and Place—can be tailored to the specific needs of a particular target market, resulting in marketing strategies that will provide the firm with a sustainable competitive advantage in key product-markets.
Such strategies often make use of well-defined product innovations developed using the other components of the Planned Innovation process
PMA does not end with strategy but also entails identifying all the time-related details necessary to implement each product-market strategy. This results in a set of detailed product-market plans that can then be prioritized on the basis of expected sales and profits, resource requirements, and the firm’s goals and objectives. Management can then systematically weed out marginally profitable or unprofitable existing products and reallocate resources to more profitable new and existing products.
PMA skills are best acquired by having PII consultants “coach” one or more management teams while they evaluate projects critical to the firm. Often a team will analyze three to five product-markets per coaching session, starting with two intensive one-week sessions followed by review and refinement of product-market plans.
In larger organizations, teams from separate strategic business units may participate in the PMA process together, achieving greater understanding of each other’s businesses while facilitating improved product-market planning across an entire division.
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