Four Products Case
Question 1. Which of the four products are you most optimistic about in terms of likely success? Why?
Answer: I really like two ideas presented in the case: Stave Jigsaw Puzzle and Polytrack. Both are dealing with big money and luxury; while one is aimed to please, impress and entertain real “big wallets” owners, the other seems to be a real innovative breakthrough in equestrian sport.
Stave Puzzle attracts me with a perfect match of the target market – rich fine people who “relish the opportunity to spend great quantities of money and time on aggravation” – and the product technology and features – tiny hand-made mahogany pieces, full of creatively shaped, gorgeous and expensive looking. It differs from an average
The producers are working on it as it is written in the case, but I have looked through some food forums and realized that there is still no crunchy PB Slices (and I can hardly imagine it).
There are more concerns I’ve come up with when analyzing the product. It looks rather unnatural, different from regular PB in cans. So does it taste the same if it looks different? Peanut butter is quite symbolic food, in my opinion, and it is especially important to keep the taste and flavor the same. Moreover, it is individually wrapped in plastic, thus it is a huge package wasting and causes many environmental concerns.
But there are advantages of PB Slices too. It is indeed very convenient for airplane passengers, school canteens, camping tourists and really superlazy people who are ready to give up some features of peanut butter for 20 seconds of their time. It will never get dry in the can and you will never be challenged to take it out from there; it does not require any dishes and the price is comparable to the average peanut butter. So taking these facts into account, I would say the product might have some success in case of right targeting and right supply chain performance. If the producers trade with school cafeterias, air catering companies and wending machines owners, for instance, it might be a good alternative to a peanut butter when you really cannot get a normal one. But I do not think that selling it in the supermarkets for home use