Social networks for the development of products/services
Introduction
Product/service companies are finding it increasingly difficult to create a robust pipeline of new offerings for a variety of reasons including:
• The useful life of the product/service is being reduced
• Time-to-market reduction restrictions
• Higher cost of developing new products/services
• Stronger competition, especially in a globalized environment
In this scenario, social networks could provide a strong strategic lever to offer new successful offers.
Social media has become an integral part of GenX and GenY. People take advantage of this platform to endorse opinions or experiences about various products/services or life events such as politics, culture, economy, lifestyle, habits, etc. proactively. This generates an enormous amount of data that, if harnessed, can provide companies with actionable insights to realign their offerings with respect to market demands.
Opinions and real-life experiences of social media users could be leveraged in every product/service development and improvement process, such as idea generation, concept evaluation, business case, product development, market tests, etc.
Social Media Trends
• (1) According to a Gartner study, the consumer market is increasingly turning to social media for news and information and disconnecting from mainstream news sources. Increasingly, consumers are turning to social media to get their daily dose of news and information from the rest of the world, as well as share their views and post their comments.
• (2) Forrester expects Enterprise Social Software (ESS) products to grow at a CAGR of 61% over the next five years, with the market exceeding $6.4 billion by 2016.
• (3) IDC states that with the emergence of integrated access to social networks, more organizations will begin to explore social platforms for collaboration in 2013.
• (4) According to an eMarketer report, almost one in four people worldwide will be using social media by 2013. The number of social media users worldwide will increase from 1.47 billion in 2012 to 1.73 billion this year, an 18% increase. By 2017, the global social media audience will reach 2.55 billion.
Product/service development challenges
globalization
Globalization has created opportunities and challenges for global companies. Although globalization has allowed organizations to expand their businesses into various markets to generate additional revenue, companies often lack intelligence about the new market. Businesses should keep track of competing offers and customer needs before investing in new offerings. For the success of new offerings in a foreign market, it is very important to understand the culture, customer needs, and the shortcomings of the products already present. Also due to globalization, companies are forced to introduce new products/services in rapid succession because if they don’t, the competition will eat up their market share.
unmet customer needs
Unmet customer needs are key inputs in the first step of the new product development process, that is, idea generation. Since product success in a target market depends on how well the new product meets customer expectations, assessing customer needs realistically becomes critical. Understanding how features in new offerings would be desirable, how the customer will use them, and how they would provide a better customer experience helps companies develop new offerings to meet market needs, thus ensuring success in the marketplace.
Entry time
Before starting product development, companies need to assess when is the right time to introduce the product/service to a specific target market. For success and product adoption in a designated target market, companies must understand the new product development programs of competitors who are developing products/services to meet the same market needs. This helps companies better understand the barriers to entry, thus reducing the risk of product failure.
market potential
Traditionally, companies conduct market research to understand the market potential of certain products/services in the target market. Many times companies subcontract this activity to companies that are experts in market research. The result of such a survey is based on an audience sample selected from the customer data pool. The authenticity of the inputs provided by the population sample cannot be validated as companies have no control over the behavior of survey participants and the findings can be misleading.
Strategies to take advantage of social networks for the development of products / services
Consumers who buy and use the products/services of companies decide their success or failure. But in most cases, customer involvement in the product/service development process is negligible or limited. Since the success of the products/services depends mainly on their acceptance by the customer, it is very logical to involve them in each development process when creating offers for them.
Social media has made it easy to access loyal customers/prospects and it is imperative that businesses take advantage of this platform while developing offers. The following are some strategies that can help businesses develop offers using social media.
Build a community of loyal customers/potential customers
Building a strong community of social media users from the target demographics could help organizations continuously generate market intelligence. This could help the organization build the base of loyal customers and prospects to brainstorm and test market… To build trust and a sense of ownership among group members and encourage them to proactively participate in the development process of products, companies must provide continuous feedback and recognition for the contribution made by each member of the community.
Idea generation and screening
Users of social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest, etc. take deep advantage of these platforms to discuss their experiences with the products or services of the companies they use or consume. Businesses can use this data to perform sentiment analysis to learn positive, negative, or neutral sentiments about products/services to get an idea of how current market offerings are performing. Consumers also discuss the pleasure features they expect in offerings on social media such as discussion forums, blogs, etc. They contribute in terms of product reviews with good and bad things about the market offerings. Such customer discussions and feedback can be further analyzed using natural language processing to extract the desired features that the customer wants to see in the offering.
The survey and survey tools of social media platforms can be used effectively for conducting market research. Companies can develop a specific questionnaire aimed at understanding customer desires and gaining insight into desirable features, expected purpose, expectations, and affordability directly.
Business case
The new offering development program must be supported by a strong business case. Social media user profile information could be a good source to understand details about prospective or loyal customers, such as region, age, gender, profession, etc. Natural language processing can help dig deeper to get information about users, such as what is their lifestyle, what is their buying behavior and usage pattern, personal traits, such as whether they are a leader/influencer, etc. This information could be used as a basis for understanding the size of the target market opportunities.
market tests
Companies can select community members who have contributed significantly during the idea generation process to test the product. They can send the product to members for testing and ask them to fill out an online feedback form with predefined testing parameters.
Marketing
Businesses can run targeted promotional campaigns on social media platforms to build awareness of their products/services. Community members could also act as brand ambassadors for companies to promote the company’s offerings in other communities of which they are a part, sharing their expertise and the company’s promotional campaigns.
our take
Social analytics tools, such as the sentiment analysis platform, can perform semantic analysis of social media content to identify the necessary sentiment related to the domain and problem statement. This platform can be customized to generate vertical-specific market intelligence on target customers and competitors.
Adding program management capabilities to manage surveys, surveys, product/service testing, team collaboration could make it easier for the product development team to function in a more agile and organized way.
Additionally, a unified platform with community management features could facilitate an organization’s ability to build and manage communities. Thus, loyal and potential customers can be governed from a central point independent of the social media platform where content is posted or market research is conducted, such as polls and surveys.
