CHAPTER ONE

BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY

INTRODUCTION

New production development is the complete process of bringing a new product to the market. A product is a set of benefits offered for exchange and can be tangible (that is thing physically seen or touched) or intangible (like a service, experience, or belief). There are two parallel paths involved in the product development process, one involves an idea generation, product design and detail engineering, and the other involves market research and marketing analysis.
Companies typically see new product development as the stage in generating and commercializing new product within the overall strategic process of product life cycle management.
New products play several roles for the organization. They help maintain growth and thereby pro the interest of investors, employees, and suppliers in the organization. New products helps keep the firm competitive in a changing market (Patrick 2007). Also new products speed the marketing risk. The investment community values new products because new products affect the top line and therefore enhance the value of the firm and shareholder value (Patrick,2007).
The academic and the business periodical literature are replete with detailed listings and explanation of why new products fail and what factors are related to success. Very often innovations and leadership concepts are closely linked to the successful launch of new product. This act is equally associated with certain benefits like growth in revenue, growth and the general performance of business organizations.
Organizations invest many human material, and monetary resources in new product development. In addition, much research by both the academic and industrial sectors, has been conducted regarding the factors leading to new product are often very frightening.
In the light of the above discussions, the project is concerned with the examination of challenges of new product planning development in business organizations with special reference to Champion Breweries.

1.2 STATEMENT OF PROBLEM
Modern marketing concept demands that producers should not produce and sell whatever goods and /or services they feel they can produce and sell without considering consumer’s satisfaction as the nucleus of all production activities. Accordingly in the face of intense competition in modern business environment, it is only standard products that meet the expectations of the larger society that enjoys greater patronage, necessary for the growth and survival for any business organization. This therefore calls for a systematized approach to product planning and development. The use of quantitative method such as marketing research enables a business concern to find out what consumers wants are, and blend the information so gathered with the marketing mix (product, price, promotion and place) in order to meet desired objectives. However since consumers wants/expectations is dynamic not static, it is left for business organizations to devise means of monitoring consumers reactions towards its production and develop new products as the need arises in order to with the over-changing need of the people. Thus product planning and development and development possess a big challenge to business units as new set of material,machines, manpower, and capital etc. might be required.
On this premise therefore, this project seeks to unveil the challenges of new product planning and development in business organization.
It further seeks to examine how these challenges affect the attainment of corporate objectives of business organization.

1.3 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

The mains objectives of the study were as follows:
To evaluate the challenges confronting new product planning and development in business organization.
To examine the needs of new product planning and development on the performance of business organization.
To identify the causes of failure of new product planning and development on the performance of business organization.
To examine the measures to be adopted to ease the challenges of new product planning and development.

1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

The following questions were formulated to guide this research work:
What are the challenges confronting new products planning and development in a business organization?
What are the needs for new product planning and development contributes to the performance to business organizations?
What are the causes of failure of new product planning in business organization?
What are the measure to be adopted to ease in planning and development of new products?

1.5 STATEMENT OF HYPOTHESES

HO represent null hypothesis while HAalternative hypothesis
1)
HO: Social, technical, legal and distribution challenges have no negative effect on new product planning and development especially in business organization.
HA: Social, technical, legal and distribution challenges have negative effects on new product planning and development especially in business organization.
2)
HO: Environmental challenges and organizational inability to draw accurate forecast have no negative effect on new product planning and development.
HA: Environmental challenges and organizational inability to draw accurate forecast have negative effect on new product planning and development.
3.
HO: New product planning and development in business organization is independent of market forecast and evaluation of feasibility studies.
HA: New product planning and development in business organization is dependent of market forecast and evaluation of feasibility studies.
4.
HO: Unforeseen events, lack of communication and time span have no negative effects on new product planning in business organization.
HA: Unforeseen events, lack of communication and time span have negative effects on new product planning in business organization
5
HO: Product and market research are not some of the measures to be adopted to ease the challenges of new product development.
HA: Product and market research are some of the measures to be adopted to ease the challenges of new product development.