Product Development for Targeting New Markets

A leading industrial equipment manufacturer

RSG’s client had identified expanding its presence in international markets such as China, Russia and Brazil as a top strategic priority. Our client, however, lacked the insight into market needs and purchase drivers necessary to avoid the mistake others had made by bringing over-priced products that were primarily designed for North America into these markets. RSG worked closely with the client through a series of engagements to assess market opportunities, prioritize product capabilities, and understand the trade-offs that customers in these markets are willing to make (and, perhaps most importantly, are not willing to make) between product performance and economic considerations.

This work across different markets and multiple product lines was essential in enabling our client to make critical decisions such as:

• Determining the overall development strategies for several product lines.
• Prioritizing the emphasis on particular product capabilities to best account for differences in needs across markets.
• Identifying the need to make changes to previous plans which would have resulted in bringing products to market that were not well aligned with critical customer purchase drivers.
• Delaying entry into a particular product market in which the strong position of an established competitor would have made success highly unlikely.
• Developing the strategy for a “value product” in one particular line to better compete with much lower priced, lower spec’d domestic brands.