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Product failure

10 May, 2016 - 10:46

In general, a product fails when it does not meet the objectives that were established by the sponsoring organization. Failure rates vary by industry. For instance, failure rates for new packaged goods range from 75 per cent to 90 per cent (catalinamarketing.com). When considering “innovative” new products, Gourville (2005) estimates that approximately half of all such products fail. It often costs more to launch an innovation nationally than to develop the good or service in the first place.

In the following section, we describe Wal-Mart’s failure as it tried to enter the German market. Our purpose is to use this one example to illustrate key reasons that new products fail and subsequently must be deleted. See Table 13.4 for a listing of major reasons that cause products to be deleted. Table 13.4 includes a description of 13 reasons that products fail. Note that the Wal-Mart experience in Germany provides concrete examples for 10 of these key reasons. In the table, the reasons for product deletion are divided into 5 groups: (a) Market Structure (MS); (b) Business Model (BM); (c) Culture (C); (d) Politics/regulation (P): and (e) Product failure (PF). These same categories are highlighted in the sections which follow.