Why do some new products succeed, bringing millions of dollars to innovating companies, while others fail, often with great losses? The answer is not simple, and certainly we cannot say that "good" products succeed while "bad" products fail. Many products that function well and seen to meet consumer needs have fallen by the wayside.
Sometimes, virtually identical products exist in the market at the same time with one emerging as profitable while the other fails. Mc Neal Laboratories Tylenol has become successful as an aspirin substitute, yet Bristol-Meyers entered the lest market at about the same time with Neotrend, also a substitute for aspirin, which quickly failed.
The nature of the product is a factor in its success of failure, but the important point is the consumer's perception of the products need-satisfying capability. Any new product conception should be aimed at meeting a customer need, and the introductory promotion should seek to communicate that need-satisfying quality and motivate the customer to try the product. Often, attitude change is involved, and, in the extreme, changes in life-style may be sought.
Here the company walks a tightrope, a new product is more likely to be successful if it represents a truly novel way of solving a customer problem but this very newness, if carried too far, may ask the customer to team new behavior patterns. The customer will make the change if the perceived benefit is sufficient but inertia is strong and customers will often not go to the effort that is required. During the late sixties and early seventies Bristol-Meyers met with new product failures that exemplify both of these problems. In 1967 and 1968 the company entered the market with a $5 million advertising campaign for Fact toothpaste, and an $11 million campaign to prorate Resolve, Both products failed quickly, not because they didn’t work or because there was no consumer need but apparently because consumers just could see no reason to shift from an already satisfactory product to a different one that promised no new benefit.
1.The first sentence of the first paragraph is a question to which the answer is（） .
2.What are Tylenol and Neotrend?
3.The success or failure of a product seems to be determined by a number of factors, one of which the author emphasizes is the customer's perception of the product's （）.
4.What does the author mean when he says "the company walks a tightrope" (Sentence 1, paragraph 3)?
5.Bristol-Meyers failed in promoting Fact toothpaste and Resolve because（） .
