An Integrated Framework for Goods and Service Design listed below:
Steps 1 and 2—Strategic Mission, Analysis, and Competitive Priorities
Strategic directions and competitive priorities should be consistent with and support the firm’s mission and vision. These steps require a significant amount of research and innovation involving marketing, engineering, operations, and sales functions, and should involve customers, suppliers, and employees throughout the value chain. The data and information that result from this effort provide the key input for designing the final customer benefit package.
Step 3—Customer Benefit Package Design and Configuration
Clearly, firms have a large variety of possible choices in configuring a customer benefit package (CBP). For example, when buying a new vehicle an automobile dealer might include such options as leasing, free oil changes and/or maintenance, a performance driving school, free auto washes, service pickup and delivery, loaner cars, and so on.
Essentially, CBP design and configuration choices revolve around a solid understanding of customer needs and target markets, and the value that customers place on such attributes as the following:
Time—Many grocery stores now offer self-service checkout to reduce customer waiting time, and manufacturers such as Dell use the Internet to acquire customer information for more responsive product design.
Place—UPS has “UPS Stores” strategically located for customer convenience that also provide packaging services; many companies offer daycare centers on-site to provide convenience to their employees.1
Information—Bank of America provides an Internet search capability for the best home equity loan; and a business dedicated to providing guitar music books and videos (www.ChordMelody.com) offers a telephone hot line to speak with a professional guitarist for questions on selecting the proper instructional and performance material.
Entertainment—Some Dick’s Sporting Goods Stores provide a rock-climbing wall for children while other family members shop; a pianist serenades shoppers at Nordstrom’s department stores; and some minivans have built-in DVD players. (See the box on “Biztainment” in Chapter 1.)
Exchange—Retail stores such as Best Buy allow customers to travel to the store and buy the goods, purchase goods on their Web sites and have them delivered, or purchase goods on their Web sites and have them ready to be picked up at the store.
Form—For manufactured goods, form is associated with the physical characteristics of the good, and addresses the important customer need of aesthetics. An interior designer might use different methods, such as sketches, photographs, physical samples, or even computer-simulated renderings, to show how a kitchen might be transformed.
Step 4—Detailed Goods, Services, and Process Design
If a proposal survives the concept stage—and many do not—each good or service in the CBP, as well as the process that creates it, must be designed in more detail. This is where the designs of goods and services differ, as suggested by the alternate paths in Exhibit 6.1. The first three steps in Exhibit 6.1 are more strategic and conceptual in nature, whereas step 4 focuses on detailed design and implementation.
Step 5—Market Introduction/Deployment
In this step, the final bundle of goods and services—the customer benefit package—is advertised, marketed, and offered to customers. For manufactured goods, this includes making the item in the factory and shipping it to warehouses or wholesale and retail stores; for services, it might include hiring and training employees or staying open an extra hour in the evening. For many services, it means building sites such as branch banks or hotels or retail stores.
Step 6—Marketplace Evaluation
The marketplace is a graveyard of missed opportunities: poorly designed goods and services and failed execution resulting from ineffective operations. The final step in designing and delivering a customer benefit package is to constantly evaluate how well the goods and services are selling and what customers’ reactions to them are.
Using Information provided above please answer statement below:
1. Analyze how each of their goods and service design concepts are integrated with Electrolux and General Electric.
Please provide your references.