Product development is the process by which companies create new products and bring them into the market. This segment encompasses it all: ideation, crafting the product, designing it, looking into its engineering, working on pricing, marketing it and eventually launching it to the desired target audience.

As we are now in the digital era, customer expectations are on the rise and competition is getting fiercer for companies across sectors. Industry players will therefore have to find innovative strategies to satisfy demanding consumers and also work towards establishing unique products in the market. To satisfy customers and match their needs, especially in direct selling, one has to price the product right. While the Internet has given pricing power to both buyers and sellers, the use of one-to-one marketing is now being used to create a customised marketing mix for each consumer.

Here are the top trends in product development and pricing that will help you work on your marketing strategy too:

1. Look at everything with a fresh insight

According to Cortney Rowan from Accenture’s product development studio Altitude, companies often look internally for ideas, it can be hard to think outside the box if the team has been working on the same challenge for a while. Which is why, collaborating with an external consultancy firm can help with innovation and new ways of thinking. Customers are changing, and it takes time to understand the market and customer expectations. Consultancy firms help companies look at the market with fresh eyes, providing a more objective view of what their product needs to offer, she says.

So look for possible collaborations that can enhance your existing product set up. No two products are alike so look at every possibility and idea with a fresh outlook to develop a diverse set of products. 

2. Distributed teams

Over the last year, it is now obvious that the way teams function and exist is changing. Earlier, a team stayed in the same building, working together, establishing a connection and forming a bond, nowadays the paradigm has shifted. In fact, there are new product development models coming about every single day, and the main trend seems to be to follow the talent (midigiworld.com). Given the pandemic setting, it will become more common to see companies distributing the workforce with teams in separate locations and across time zones. This will help create a more balanced workforce with people across regions and will lead to the development of highly advanced products and collaboration tools.

3. Products that evolve and adapt

Until a few years ago, all that mattered was to develop the perfect product. One that had all the features and functioned perfectly. Companies would have their teams spend months, some even years, to develop solutions that could be used by several generations. But now, this trend is fast disappearing. Now, companies and consumers are looking for advancements and updates on existing products. Which is why companies must be ready to adapt every single day, understand the predictive evolution of products, and create products that bear both their current and future functionalities in mind.

It’s no longer enough that a product serves just one function - it needs to evolve, adapt and become increasingly interesting with every upgrade. The failure to create a product that takes product evolution into account is a huge mistake that must be avoided. How? By studying product predictions and learning what users will need from a specific product, how long they will use it for, etc. In fact, a thorough understanding of the product evolution process is essential in order for corporations to keep the product fresh, dynamic, and widely used in the future.

4. A subscription-based and flexible consumption sales model:

From groceries to data, a growing number of products and services are now available on a subscription or flexible consumption basis. The consumer of today is increasingly looking out for such purchase models as they come with a new set of benefits: they are convenient, cost-effective and can be modified at any point in time. In addition, personalised offers and dynamic pricing, sales encourage buyers. They also enable sellers to gain deeper customer insights, generate constant and more reliable revenue streams, and improve the efficiency of production runs. As stated in a piece in The Wall Street Journal (https://deloitte.wsj.com/cmo/2018/03/02/6-disruptive-trends-in-pricing/), pricing these new and nontraditional offerings requires understanding the customer-specific value drivers and defining the right price metrics (for example, per use or per unit of time) so the customer experiences a strong connection between the value of the offering and the price.

So, kickstart your marketing strategy for 2021 by keeping tab of these trends and constantly evolve to remain relevant like understanding and promoting of MiDigiWorld.com, which is new trend setter in Direct Selling Industry.