CHAPTER ONE

1.0INTRODUCTION

Development a new product is not easy. Not only are customers needs and wants changing but competition continually makes current products obsolete. New products are the lifeblood of any business. They energize the company’s marketing, sales and distribution activities and provide new opportunities in the face of declining markets for existing products.

New products are simply those that are basically different from the goods, services and bundles of benefits already in the market place.

New products are categorize under any of the following:

(i)         Products that derived through new innovative ideas.

(ii)        Products that replaced the already existing products and significantly unique.

(iii)      Initiative products that not new to the market.

Olalekan (2002) says, “Market test, in-use tests and other commercial experiments in limited geographical areas are conducted in order to ascertain the feasibility of the full marketing program. In this stage, design and production factors may have to be adjusted as a result of test findings”.

According to Knut (1983), test marketing involves the selection of and the selling of a product in an area which is representative of the marketing area that will be used upon launching the product in full scale. He goes further and says, the purpose of using test market is to reduce the risk by obtaining better knowledge of how consumers will receive the product and to test which sales set –up is best suited.

Adrian (2000), test market aims to replicate everything that is  likely to exist in the real market but a smaller scale.

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