Marketing Innovation

1: Marketing Innovation This assignment flows from the contribution of innovations to the growth on macroeconomic level (Schumpeter, 1934), industry level (Disruptive Innovation: Christensen, 2003), and the firm level, where Peter Ducker’s assertion, noted in Chapter 1 of Managing Marketing in the 21st Century, that the business enterprise has two – and only two – basic functions, marketing and innovation. We tend to think of innovation only in terms of product or process technology, but firms increasingly look at innovation in services as a vital component of their competitive advantage in addressing markets. For this homework exercise you should analyze and write up five contemporary customer-focused innovations you have observed and investigated. You should: o Identify the general Level at which the innovation occurred i.e. Product class, Product Category, or Product Form o Describe the way things were done before the innovation, how was the “generic need” satisfied. o Describe the innovation and its impact on product: class, category, form o Specify why, indeed, it is an innovation; continuous, dynamically continuous, discontinuous, disruptive. o Describe how the innovator developed the innovation; o Explain why the innovation is an advance on what was done previously; incremental cost-benefit analysis o Analyze the branding strategy of the innovation and assess its success. o Analyze and evaluate the distribution strategy for the innovation.