英国dissertation：产品开发与消费者需求
为了鼓励员工多走一走，家乐氏给每个员工提供了一个计步器。这些举措有助于家乐氏公司的员工理解公司的经营目标，以及他们在为企业所创造的价值。这也能清楚地反馈给员工为实现公司的目标，该做些什么事情。
To encourage its employees to do more walking, Kellogg supplied each of its staff with a pedometer. Such activities have helped Kellogg's employees to understand the business objectives and why the business has created them. It also shows clearly what it has done to achieve them.
许多公司都是以产品为导向。这就意味着，他们需要先开发出的产品，然后再去市场寻找销售的机会。家乐氏公司一开始就以市场为导向。这意味着它的整个生产环节集中于满足消费者的需求。
Many organisations are described as product orientated. This means they develop a product and then look for a market to sell to. Kellogg's is market orientated. This means that the whole organisation focuses on the needs of its consumers.
因此，它可以充分了解和及时的去迎合消费者的需求，开发出新的产品。
It is therefore essential that it identifies and anticipates changing consumer needs before the development of new products
Market research adds value to businesses like Kellogg's by identifying consumers' needs. It helps Kellogg's to plan ahead, for example, looking at what products or extensions it should develop and for whom. It focuses the business on the needs of its consumers. An organisation that does this can improve its competitive advantage.
In an established market, such as breakfast cereals, there is little room to increase the overall sales in the market. Kellogg's is therefore always looking for ways to strengthen its own portfolio. Designing new products is a good way of doing this. However, this can take a long time and may involve considerable costs.
In addition to the resources required during development, suppliers must produce an advertising campaign to raise awareness of the product among consumers and encourage retailers to stock the product. Launching a new product can be a risky business.
Qualitative research may be obtained through focus groups, where a moderator captures feedback from a group of six or seven consumers to the ideas shown to them. Those ideas may take the format of drawings or having new food prototypes to taste.
Quantitative research may use questionnaires administered to large numbers of respondents. This allows statistical analysis, such as the calculation of a mean score or percentages. It aims to give a representative picture of what consumers think of a new product idea or a new (real) food.
It may involve the use of scales, so numbers get associated with a particular meaning for example, on a evaluation scale of 1 to 7, where 1 means 'very poor' and 7 means 'excellent'. Crucially those numbers need to be interpreted to enable the business to understand the consumer”s overall response.#p#分页标题#e#
In addition, Kellogg's used secondary research which is existing research that has already been collected by other organisations. Sources of secondary data include books, journals, the internet and government statistics. Market research agencies collect a range of data which they process and use to provide organisations like Kellogg's with research.
The benefits of secondary research are that it is quicker and often less expensive than primary, although it may not always be completely related to the needs of a specific project.
Initial research aimed to identify a set of new food ideas that would be suitable for developing a new Crunchy Nut product. Secondary research from [market research publications] Mintel and Datamonitor was used to find out about innovation trends in the cereal market. It was also used to find out about new products, flavours and foods from around the world. Food developers at Kellogg”s used this information to come up with a number of new food ideas.
Focus groups were used to provide qualitative research. These were used to show consumers the new food ideas in the form of a number of different (real) food prototypes, including a mini crispy lattice product and a nutty triangle. The focus groups captured the attitudes and feelings of consumers towards the new foods.#p#分页标题#e#
This primary research helped Kellogg's to find out how new product suggestions could be developed and still fit in with the Crunchy Nut brand. It helped Kellogg”s to establish what consumers were looking for in terms of potential new flavours and textures.
The results allowed Kellogg's to discard some ideas. Other ideas were appealing for consumers but needed refining and further development. At the end of this stage, Kellogg's had a number of new food ideas that all seemed to appeal to consumers.
This stage aimed to select the best idea arising from the stage 1 research. Kellogg's put the ideas from the focus group on boards. The boards had pictures showing product ideas and a description of what the new product would be like. These boards were then shown to a large group of representative consumers in a quantitative survey. They were asked to rate those ideas against a number of scales, so Kellogg's could identify which product ideas consumers liked best or disliked.
Once the best idea had been selected from stage 2, Kellogg's needed to make this idea become a real product. The Crunchy Nut Bites food prototype recipe was refined using the feedback from another qualitative and quantitative survey.
The qualitative research helped Kellogg's food technologists to explore the taste and texture of the new food idea in more detail. Kellogg's needed to understand the 'eating experience' of the consumer before a decision could be made about how to develop the recipe in more detail.
Following this stage, four product recipes were developed and these prototypes were then tested with representative groups of consumers in a quantitative survey to see which product consumers preferred. This enabled Kellogg's to select the best one.
Also, at this stage, the pack design for the new Crunchy Nut Bites was developed. http://ukthesis.org/ygsslwdx/ Several designs were developed aimed at giving the new product the same look and feel as the rest of the Crunchy Nut family. The packaging designs were tested with consumers, which enabled Kellogg”s to select the final packaging design for Crunchy Nut Bites.
