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MANAGING PROJECTS

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Projects represent nonroutine business activities that often have long-term strategic ramifications for a firm. In this chapter, we examined how projects differ from routine business activities and discussed the major phases of projects. We noted how environmental changes have resulted in increased attention being paid to projects and project management over the past decade. In the second half of the chapter, we introduced some basic tools that businesses can use when planning for and controlling projects. Both Gantt charts and network diagrams give managers a visual picture of how a project is going. Network diagrams have the added advantage of showing the precedence between activities, as well as the critical path(s). We wrapped up the chapter by showing how these concepts are embedded in inexpensive yet powerful software packages such as Microsoft Project. If you want to learn more about project management, we encourage you to take a look at the Web site for the Proj...
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Introducing New Market Offerings

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Once a company has segmented the market, chosen its target customer groups and identified their needs, and determined its desired market positioning, it is ready to develop and launch appropriate new products and services. Marketing should participate with other departments in every stage of new-product development.
Successful new-product development requires the company to establish an effective organization for managing the development process. Companies can choose to use product managers, new-product managers, newproduct committees, new-product departments, or new-product venture teams. Increasingly, companies are adopting cross-functional teams, connecting to individuals and organizations outside the company, and developing multiple product concepts.
Eight stages take place in the new-product development process: idea generation, screening, concept development and testing, marketing strategy development, business analysis, product development, market testing, and commercialization. At each stage, the company must determine whether the idea should be dropped or moved to the next stage.
The consumer-adoption process is the process by which customers learn about new products, try them, and adopt or reject them. Today many marketers are targeting heavy users and early adopters of new products, because both groups can be reached by specific media and tend to be opinion leaders. The consumer-adoption process is influenced by many factors beyond the marketer’s control, including consumers’ and organizations’ willingness to try new products, personal influences, and the characteristics of the new product or innovation.

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