MKTG3114
New Products Marketing
1. Introduction
MKTG3114 New Products Marketing is a 3000-level elective unit in the Marketing major. In this unit, the New Product Development (NPD) process is detailed, and students apply their understanding of this in a product development assignment. By doing this, unit content is reinforced, and realistic, practical examples of how new products are designed, tested and launched are demonstrated.
Prerequisites: MKTG1001 Marketing Principles
2. Difficulty
Difficulty: Medium
This unit is rather content heavy and requires high amounts of critical thinking in the group project. The content is not too difficult and the final exam is fairly straightforward, but the group project is more challenging. This project is intensive and requires students to apply their knowledge and creativity to develop a new product concept. When doing this, students should ensure that they conduct the development process in the appropriate way by fulfilling all NPD process steps.
3. Workload
The workload for this unit is quite heavy as there is a fair amount of content - namely the steps in the NPD process - that needs to be memorised. This is especially true if the semester in which you undertake the unit conducts a closed-book, multiple choice mid-semester exam. This requires students to have a solid understanding of the content and readings, and have unit concepts committed to memory. Most of the time and effort for this unit is put towards group project meetings and work. Overall, there is roughly two and half hours of work required for this unit per week.
4. Textbooks/Readings
Crawford, M. and Di Benedetto (2014), New Products Management (11th Edition), New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.
5. Assessment Breakdown
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Tutorial Participation (10%): Made up of two parts - the first being participation in various tutorial activities and the quality of your contributions to the class (8 marks), and the second being either participation in a research study OR submission of a research paper review as part of the Business Research Component (2 marks).
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Mid-Semester Exam (20%): A multiple-choice exam that covers materials up to and including week 5. All questions will relate to the lecture content and textbook chapters covered across those weeks.
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Group Project Written Report (30%): Groups identify a new product idea for development and marketing, and submit a written report detailing how the 5 phases in the NPD process were deployed in the ideation and commercialisation planning of their new product idea.
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Group Project Presentation (10%): Groups are to pitch their new product idea in a persuasive and informative pre-recorded 10-minute video presentation to the senior management team of their chosen firm.
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Final Exam (30%): A 1.5 hour exam consisting of short-answer questions that are based on the lecture material and textbook content from the entire semester.
Please note that assessments may vary across semesters. This information was sourced from the Unit of Study Outline for Semester 2 of 2020, and may be out of date. For the most up-to-date information, refer to the Unit of Study Outline for the semester and year relevant to your studies.
6. Unit Highlights
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Seeing the NPD process applied in the real world - this unit is definitely useful in the workforce when working on NPD projects.
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Being able to come up with an idea and take it through the NPD process, and using customer data to select what works best.
7. Skills Learnt
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The NPD Process
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NPD strategy and application
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Concept testing techniques
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Field testing techniques
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Teamwork
8. Lecturer Advice
This course is challenging and particularly suitable for those who are interested in generating new product ideas, and for those who have some challenges finding the creativity to do so. This course enables, with a structure, a guided process that allows you to embark on successful new product development.