Feedback from manufacturers indicates nine of ten new products introduced by companies fail to meet expectations, costing millions of dollars in wasted research & development, tooling, production, inventory, and marketing. Southwick Associates helps hunting and shooting sports companies minimize these losses and significantly increase the success rate of new products through the use of proven statistics-based market research methods.
“In recent years, consumers have been demanding greater value from the growing range of choices available to them,” reports Tom Allen, Southwick Associates’ Vice President of Research. “The right combination of features and price will make or break a new product. Given the wide range of choices competing for attention, failure is easy if you don’t understand exactly what customers want.”
To help companies identify which products are more likely to succeed, Southwick Associates offers advanced consumer research methods, adapted to fit the unique hunting, shooting sports and sportfishing markets. These solutions identify the combination of features, pricing, branding and packaging that are most desired by targeted consumers. “The savings from not going to market with one unsuccessful product can be more than the cost of researching all of a company’s proposed new products for a year,” Mr. Allen said. “The most profitable approach to developing new products is to understand the feature trade-offs consumers make in the purchasing process before investing in development.”
The processes used by Southwick Associates recognize that, when making a purchasing decision, the consumer is not selecting a single item, but is actually selecting a combination of product features, pricing, packaging, brand, warranties, customer service and other considerations that provide the greatest perceived value possible. Smart companies learn which combinations of these key points would create the greatest demand and therefore succeed in the marketplace. Contact Nancy Bacon at Southwick Associates to learn more about improving your company’s success rates and profitability with new products.
About Southwick Associates: Southwick Associates is a market research and economics firm specializing in the hunting, shooting, sportfishing, and outdoor recreation markets. Celebrating 25 years in 2015, Southwick Associates is renowned for delivering comprehensive insights and statistics assisting business and strategic decisions across the entire outdoor industry; from government agencies, industry associations and non-profit organizations, to affiliated businesses and manufacturers. Aside from custom market research, and economic impact studies, Southwick also provides syndicated participation, media consumption, and equipment purchase tracking studies utilizing their three proprietary sportsmen panels. Visit www.southwickassociates.com for more information.