Top 5 reasons why products fail

As consumers, we interact with products every day. Every time we walk into a shopping mall, or a departmental store, we are paralyzed by the choices laid out enticingly before us – skimmed milk? Whole milk? Low fat milk? Double toned milk? Almond milk? Soy milk… You get the drift. And every few months, most of these ‘new products’ or ‘product extensions’ disappear off the shelves, never to be seen again. Sucked into a vast sea of obscurity – the Bermuda Triangle of failed has-beens.

The media and entertainment industry is no different – with changing consumption habits, and a high burn rate, most companies are constantly reinventing themselves by introducing new storylines and new creatives and finding evergreen-ing strategies to give their existing products a fresh lease of life. Notice the ‘naagin’ extension in every TV serial these days? That’s one version of reinvention!

 But the current rate of product failure is unlike any other the world has seen so far. Why this inordinately high rate of failure? Hasn’t the ability to understand customers and need gaps gone up over the years?

So here’s my take on 5 reasons why most products fail. Think of it as a beginner’s guide on, “How not to screw up your product strategy”.

The axe isn’t sharp enough

Most product strategies rely more on assumptions than any kind of actual need-gap analysis or empirical data on the market. I had one budding entrepreneur walk up to me the other day and say “I don’t need a business plan. I rely on intuition” A healthy dose of assumption, and generous dollops of belief in clairvoyance – do NOT a successful product make. As the saying goes, “If you have six hours to chop down a tree, spend the first four sharpening the axe.” A sound, detailed product strategy based on market research, proof of concept testing, validating and revalidating the customer need, (Does it actually exist?) is the basic foundation, required for launching any successful product. Remember Windows Vista? It was such a massive failure that it actually became a case study. Microsoft earmarked $500 million in 2007 for marketing a product that actually worked slower than the previous version. Go figure.

The customer couldn’t care less

A great idea is nothing, if the need for it is not urgent and important. Many products that fail aren’t necessarily bad, they are irrelevant; they appeal either to a very small segment or they just aren’t required by enough users for them to ever gather a critical mass.

I once invested a whole lot of time in creating a TV serial based on contemporary issues and in showcasing a modern woman who faces many challenges including a difficult job and a younger husband. The serial won several awards and was appreciated by critics who wanted to see progressive shows on TV, but didn’t do anything for the channels’ ratings. The viewers didn’t resonate with the idea and preferred kitchen politics over boardroom dramas. In hindsight this seems to be an obvious deduction since most prime time consumption was by housewives who wanted to see things that were part of their milieu and not esoteric stuff such as the challenges working women face!

Your product is not value accretive

For people to stand up and take notice, you need to offer them a product that will add value to their lives. It should address an existing problem, or then cater to a differentiated and unique need. A product that doesn’t do so, finds it very difficult to compete with existing players in the market. Just think of the many restaurants that opened in your vicinity over the last 3 years. How many of them are still running? In fact, 90% of new restaurants fail within the first year for this very reason – they don’t address any issue, and they don’t cater to any kind of a unique need. Some of the first questions we were taught to ask in the golden days of marketing was “What specific need in your consumers’ life does this product fulfill? And why should she believe your product can fulfill this need? Why are other brands in this space not satisfying the need?”

When we launch yet another fusion restaurant in the same row as 5 other fusion versions so that the road starts getting rechristened as fusion-khao gully, do we bother to even ask these questions?

You didn’t give it the push it deserved

We live in a world of plenty – and we’re usually always spoilt by choice. Any new product requires adequate marketing budgets to build awareness, and to a grab a share of that elusive mindspace that most of us don’t have. Untimely budget cuts, or cart abandonment (in digital parlance) can often clip the wings of what would’ve otherwise been a great product. And sometimes even older products need a revival and push to stay relevant. Charles Handy said that brands must recognize when they are reaching the peak in their life stage and reinvent themselves before hitting the peak. Else it becomes too late to reinvent when you are already on the downward (and more slippery) slope.

Bajaj moved out of the scooter market in 2009 to focus on motorcycles – after all, the global motorcycle market was growing faster than scooters and Bajaj wanted a piece of that pie. In 2017, the Honda Activa pipped the Hero Splendor to emerge as the largest selling two wheeler in the country (and the world) validating the growing popularity of scooters in India. Now, Bajaj is planning a comeback and looking to relaunch scooters in the market. Which part of the slope are they on right now?

Implementation makes the difference

This one is my favourite and in my opinion the make or break ingredient in most situations!

The peril of our times is that many managers get the strategy right but the implementation misses out on delivering a great product experience. Strategy is often seen as sexy and everyone loves creating or brainstorming. But very few people want to spend time getting their hands dirty in the fairly boring job of implementation which is a bit like getting the plumbing right! And increasingly in the service economy, experiences matters. And creating a 24X7 high quality experience is only about operational excellence. In an increasingly social world, bad news travels fast. A suboptimal product experience is a guaranteed recipe for disaster. Remember Tiny Owl? Once the rising star in the foodtech space, it shut shop within two years due to operational troubles in spite of raising $27 million in funding. A bad PR episode due to mass layoffs, with one of the founders being detained by laid off employees, was a final nail in the coffin for a cliff drop in sales.

Lessons like these are often worth reinforcing, since in the ecstasy of easy money that is available for funding startups these days and the fever which every youngster has in his blood of becoming the next Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, success mostly lies in getting the basics and the fundamentals right!