A PROJECT REPORT ON PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT ENTERPRISE OF SPICE DIGITAL LTD.

A summer training project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of degree of Masters of Business Administration (MBA)
SUBMITTED BY: Nishant Deswal GUIDED BY: Dr. R.K. SHARMA

MBA 3rd SEMESTER

BHARATI VIDYAPEETH DEEMED UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT & RESEARCH, NEW DELHI
An ISO 9001:2008 Certified Institute

NAAC Accredited Grade A University

STUDENT UNDERTAKING

I Nishant Deswal have completed the Project titled PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT ENTERPRISE OF SPICE DIGITAL LTD. under the guidance of Dr. R.K. Sharma in the partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of Degree of Masters of Business Administration of Bharati Vidyapeeth University, Pune. This is an original piece of work & I have neither copied nor submitted it earlier elsewhere.

CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that the project titled PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT ENTERPRISE OF SPICE DIGITAL LTD. submitted to Bharati Vidyapeeth University, Pune in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of the Degree of Masters of Business Administration is an original work carried out by Mr. Nishant Deswal. The matter embodied in this project is a genuine work done by Mr. Nishant Deswal to the best of my knowledge and belief and has been submitted neither to this University nor to any University for the fulfillment of the requirement of the course of study.

Dr. RK. Sharma (Internal Guide)

CERTIFICATE
This is to certify that the project titled PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT ENTERPRISE OF SPICE DIGITAL LTD. is an academic work done by Nishant Deswal submitted in the partial fulfillment of the requirement for the award of the Degree of Masters of Business Administration from Bharati Vidyapeeth University, Pune. It has been completed under the Guidance of Dr. RK. Sharma and Ms. Monica Mohleji. We are thankful to SPICE DIGITAL LTD. for having allowed our student to undergo project work training. The authenticity of the project work will be examined by the viva examiner which includes data verification, checking duplicity of information etc. And it may be rejected due to non-fulfillment of quality standards set by the Institute.

Dr. NITIN NAYAK (Director)

TABLE OF CONTENTS Particular Acknowledgement Preface Introduction Research Methodology Conceptual Discussion Data Analysis Findings & Suggestions Conclusion Bibliography Questionnaire 1 18 24 43 60 64 66 67 Page No.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The

completion

of

project

report

on PRODUCT

DEVELOPMENT

ENTERPRISE OF SPICE DIGITAL LTD. has given me immense pleasure and knowledge. Obligations were heavy during my project work and it is a great pleasure to acknowledge deep sense of gratitude to my guide Dr. RK. Sharma ,for his valuable guidance, advice, positive criticism, suggestion and constant encouragement throughout the project. I want to express my sincere thanks and gratitude to Ms. Monica Mohleji Product Manager, PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT ENTERPRISE OF SPICE DIGITAL LTD., who has been of immense support and guidance in enabling me to do this paper. Her deep understanding and valuable insights have been of great help in the successful completion of this report. I would also like to thank sincerely to my cousins and friends for their help and guidance during this task. Last but not least we are thankful to all of them who directly or indirectly helped us in computing this report successful.

PREFACE

No professional curriculum is considered complete without work experience. It is well evident that work experience is an indispensable part of every professional course. In the same manner practical work in any organization is must for each and every individual, who is undergoing management course. Without the practical exposure one cannot consider himself as a qualified capable manager. Entering in the organization is like stepping into altogether a new world. At first, everything seems strange and unheard but as the time passes one can understands the concept and working of the organization and thereby develop professional relationship. Initially it is felt that as if classroom study was irrelevant and it is useless in any concern working. But gradually it is realize that all fundamental basic concepts studied are linked in one or other ways to the organization. But how and what can be done with fundamentals depends upon the intellectual and applicability of an individual.

INTRODUCTION

THE COMPANY

Spice Digital Ltd (erstwhile Cellebrum Technologies ) founded in year 2000, is a part of Spice Global Group a US$ 2 Billion conglomerate promoted by Dr. B.K Modi . It is one of Indias leading Mobile Value added services led by its mission to serve the under-served. SDL offers innovative mobile solutions in the field of entertainment, infotainment & utility to the under-served mobile subscribers globally. We have partnered with all operators in India and more than 20 operators globally, we also have exclusive tie ups with Govt. organizations and Enterprises to provide mobile solutions. With an impressive product portfolio SDL has been able to cater the diverse customer needs and has been able to establish a strong customer relationship .We serve 40 Mn unique users with 1Bn transactions for a single USSD self care deployment for an operator in India. We send out 5 Mn SMS Railway enquiry responses & service 1.8 Mn calls per month for one of the biggest Railway Networks in the world. We clock 120 Mn Voice MOUs per annum. SDL has more than 5000 retail outlets to provide ticketing services. SDLs growth has attracted investors from international market. Mediatek ( Taiwan ) invested in Spice Digital in 2011.SDL has acquired leading player in VAS industry such as Beo world (Malaysia) . 2

SUBSIDIARIES BeoWorld (Malaysia) Spice Digital acquired Device VAS Company BeoWorld in November 2010 order to expand their product line. Beoworld is a company incorporated in Malaysia, it provides an open platform and market place to promote and monetize 3rd party application development and content for mobile devices on MediaTek (MTK) and Android platforms. Spice Labs (India) Spice Labs was incubated to work in the area of mobile applications space. Spice Labs has worked extensively on BlackBerry platform with over 50 Million application downloads, and now we are replicating our expertise for other operating systems Spice Digital (Africa) Looking at the geographical spread and the opportunities in Africa, Spice Digital Africa was formed in early 2010, with their headquarter in Johannesburg, South Africa. Currently we are live with 16 Operators in 11 countries there.

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Dr. Saurabh Srivastava, Chairman Ms. Preeti Malhotra Mr. R S Desikan Mr. Subramanian Murali Mr. Saket Agarwal Mr. Shehzad Azad Mr. Sunil Kapoor Mr. Vikram Dheer 3

MANAGEMENT TEAM Saket Agarwal, Global CEO Services Monika Aggarwal, Director Technology & Innovation Lokesh Gupta, Business Head-International Business Jatinder Verma, Chief Information Officer Shehzad Azad, Director & Head of Business Development and Alliances

Vikram Dheer, Chief Human Resource Officer Sunil Kapoor, Chief Financial Officer Amit Nigam, Head- Retail

AWARDS IAMAI 2nd India Digital Awards 2012 -For Hangman under Best Mobile Game (Spice labs)

2nd International conference VAS Asia 2012- for 139 Rail Sampark under category Excellence in servicing the nation Spice Digital Ltd .

M-billionth Award 2012-For Mobile Radio as runner up under category Best Mobile Music Category

Aegis Graham Bell Award 2012-For 139 under category Innovative Value Added Service 2012

IAMAI 2nd India Digital Awards 2012 - For Mobile Radio under Category Best Mobile Music.

PRODUCT & SERVICES USSD ASTRO & DEVOTIONAL MUSIC IVR SMS SOCIAL NETWORKING LEARNING ZONE M COMMERCE SOLUTIONS TRAVEL MOBILE ADVERTISING MOBILE APPLICATIONS MOBILE BANKING

Faith, Religion, Devotion these are not just words; they are a way of life for most of us. In a multi faceted country of ours we have believers and followers of different religions (or faiths) live together in harmony. To most of us religion is what we need to or want to follow regularlyour Devotional Service caters to this very essential need of all! Devotional Service is designed keeping in mind and catering to the spiritual need of ours. A platform to listen to and dedicate religious musical content like songs, Aarti's, Bhajhan's, Mukhwak, etc. (with an added bonus of downloading the religious Ringtones too)! Amrit-Dhara, Aarti, Shlokas and Vedic traditions and Soothing Gospels, devotional songs, music and Ring Tonesthis Service offers the ease to the customers to choose from varied categories without the trouble of too much browsing through search engines.

KEY FEATURES

 Provides the widest range of devotional content Content approved and certified by respective religious authorities Provides over 50 subcategories of content Support special main navigation option to promote any type of content to suit any occasion Customized content for religious festivals and significant days Provides exclusive content such as Osho outlook on life & Baba Ramdev preaching Content items include Dharmil Granth/ Bhajans/ Mantras & Stutis/ Duas/ Kirtan/ Ardaas/ Gospels/ Holy songs and much more Provides an in-built occasions and festival calendar Comes with a catalogue of over 3000 clips Supports twenty (20) access languages Supports a highly intuitivr service flow, which can be customized to suit operator requirements Deploys artificial intelligence for saving language preference, religion category and sub-category

CLIENTS TELECOM

CLIENTS ENTERPRISE

CLIENTS CONTENT

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ABOUT MOBILITY - COMPANY OVERVIEW Who We Are : The Home of Innovative Technology At the brink of the digital revolution, S Mobility Ltd is a multi-faceted group prepared to embrace the change with imaginative products and innovative technology. An integral part of the Spice Group, S Mobility Ltd. began its journey in the Communication & Entertainment sector by introducing new age mobile phones in the Indian market. Since entering the handset market through the entry level segment, our progress has been rapid and constant. With a clear vision of the future and imaginative products, we forayed in the mid-premium segments. Since our inception, S Mobility Ltd achievements in this sector include introducing the first dual mode phone and dual SIM PDA (Spice D-1100 GSM/GSM) in the Indian market. Boosting our presence and credibility, S Mobility Ltd. was awarded the Golden Peacock for innovative products/service in the year 2007. Following this accolade, we added more firsts to our credit by announcing the global premier of the World's First Movie Phone and Peoples' phone at the World Mobile Congress, Barcelona in February 2008. Building on the success and the experience garnered through our initial years in this industry, we are surging ahead. Having established Spice Mobiles as competitive brand amongst global leaders, we aim to achieve ambitious milestones by introducing cutting edge technology. CHAIRMAN'S WORD "We want to see the internet in the hands of every 8 year old from the Ivory Coast to Indonesia" - Dr. B K Modi

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The Mobile Internet wave has swept most developed markets and is only time before it hits our shores and Mobile Internet becomes a part of our daily life. It has already become one of the fastest growing sectors. The enormous appetite for internet content will largely get driven by mobile customers as access of internet by mobile subscribers will start to overtake desktop internet users. The Group today, has established itself as a key solution provider in the Mobile Internet space, distinguishing itself from other companies. We believe that we are on the brink of witnessing prospects that are soon to unravel as market trends globalize. The Group today personifies transformation that symbolizes a uniquely integrated business model, providing a robust meticulous approach that delivers, experience, through products and services which allow convenient access to mobile internet to our vast consumer base. Our well synergized business arms come together to form a unified entity that most efficiently delivers cutting edge mobile internet solutions. We possess scale, efficiencies and offerings that have not been heard of in the region before. VISION & STRATEGY One step ahead of the needs of the mobile internet society. Our brand vision is a long term objective. It's what we seek to achieve and how we wish to be perceived by our audiences in the future. The only thing constant in the world is change. We will always be fuelled by the desire to make a difference, bring about a change for the better. We dream of continuously enriching the mobile society, enabling them to live life to its fullest and bringing their dreams alive. STRATEGY Switch Up ! To motivate consumers to "Switch On" to the latest mobile internet technology via the hottest digital trends and cutting-edge handset designs, thus enabling them to "Move Up" to a more fulfilling digital experience that goes beyond basic connectivity -the 12

brand positioning for 'S' is expressed as a combination of the 2 rallying cries, driving consumers to Switch Up! Two short, yet powerful words which tell the consumers that the Brand 'S' gives them more than just a handset; it opens a window to the digital world. Beyond connectivity, Brand S delivers the promise of "Advancing You" in more than one life-changing ways:

Switch Up! to being GLOCAL wielding global resources to fulfill local needs and bring Indonesians in-step with the rest of the world. Switch Up! to powerful mobile internet technology that connects Indonesians from diverse origins - regardless of age, economic strata and lifestyle choices. Switch Up! to democratize mobile internet that brings more value than the numbers on the price tag. Switch Up! to ensure confidence and understanding among our customers through quality in service standards and products. Switch Up! to stay abreast of constant innovation in mobile technology worldwide as delivered through its content, hardware and software to its fullest and bringing their dreams alive.

COMPANY VALUES The four pillars which lay the foundation of our core values are: Fearless We are entrepreneurial and challenge conventions to inspire change, so that our customers can expect more and better. Imaginative We anticipate market needs to provide cutting-edge product and services, and constantly seek new ways to serve our constituents. Vibrant 13

We are professional but we are also fun, spontaneous and outgoing. Thanks to our passion, dynamism and energy. Open We are not only accessible and responsive to our customers' commitments and suggestions but also understand their needs and help fulfill them.

ABOUT SPICE HOTSPOT Spice Hotspot, Indias No.1 Digital Lifestyle Retail brand of S Mobility, was established in the year 2005, as Hotspot Retail with a single store operation in Delhi. Built on the ethos of Enjoy Mobility, Spice Hotspot was the first organized modern retail format in the Indian telecom sector offering mobile devices, airtime products ( Data Cards,new connections and mobile recharges) as well as mobile accessories. The unique customer service experience, led by quality counter sales advice and devices knowledge enhanced the business potential of a hitherto uncharted retail territory and very soon spawned an entire industry vertical of telecom-tech retailing, in which Spice Hotspot quickly emerged as a leader. Over the last eight years, with the strategic acquisitions of Cellucom Retail and Global Access India Pvt Ltd catalyzed further quick growth and expanded the portfolio and business horizon of Spice Hotspot. From being a pure telecom retailing solution, the format expanded to include digital lifestyle products such as Tablets, Smart Phones, Mobile Handsets, Laptops, Data Cards and Storage Devices, as well an enhanced portfolio of mobility accessories. Today Spice Hotspot is more than 850 stores strong, across 172 cities/towns in India and Dubai, which include both COCO (Company Owned- Company Operated) as well as successful franchisee model (FOFO- Franchisee Owned-Franchisee Operated). After the unified homogenization of Spice as the mother brand across the group, Hotspot Retail was rebranded to Spice Hotspot across Indias urban centres starting with Delhi, where the brand is 240+ stores in strength. 14

Spice Hotspot has been commended and recognized industry wide as Indias number one Mobility and Digital Lifestyle retail brand by leading Marketing journals and established forums including a Pitch-Mint Survey in 2007, where it was awarded the Best Large Format Retailer in Technology (in Customer Service Experience) MOBILE PHONES

Smart Phones Feature Phones Basic Phones Dual Sim Phones Touch Screen Phones Multimedia Phones QWERTY Phones Tablets

SPICE LABS Spice Labs is a mobile game development studio. Creators of highly successful Hangman was founded in 2009.Spice Labs set out to develop casual games for the masses and has started to enjoy the world-wide chart success. Our game studio has been able to develop several award-winning titles for various mobile platforms. Headquartered in Singapore, Si2i (formerly known as Spice i2i Limited) has transformed itself from a one-stop service provider for voice, data and communication to a global company focused on promoting a digitally connected lifestyle through its innovative mobile phones and mobile internet solutions. Given its experience of operating in fast-growing and rapidly evolving markets, the Company has implemented its 'i2i' strategy that focuses on 'Innovation to Infinity' to bring groundbreaking new mobile products and services to emerging markets across the Asian region.

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Over the course of the year, the Company has made significant progress towards the achievement of its 'i2i' strategy by expanding its footprint through brand acquisitions of 'Nexian' in Indonesia, 'WellcoM' in Thailand and the Greater Mekong Sub-region, 'CSL' in Malaysia and the creation of 'S' brand in Singapore. The strengthened market presence together with its ingrained technological expertise has created a solid platform to ride the growing band of mobile users in the region. Moving forward, Si2i is confident of meeting the evolving needs of its consumers to facilitate their aspirations for a 'SWITCH' to the Mobile Internet and the ensuing digitally connected lifestyle. The Company operates under two business groups, namely Mobility and Technology. MOBILITY Si2i Limited set up its new Mobility business unit in March 2011 to leverage on the growing demand for mobile internet solutions and products. In Mobility, the Company is primarily involved in the procurement and sale of mobile phones, which it sells through its vast retail and distributorship network across the region. Portfolio of leading domestic mobile phone brands The Company has acquired a host of leading mobile phone brands around the region, namely CSL, WellcoM and Nexian. This allows the Company to tap into each brands uniquely built up brand equity and combined retail network of more than 3,200 outlets across the region. Strength along the supply chain As the largest producer of Dual SIM mobile phones in the region, Si2i has garnered greater bargaining power when procuring supplies along the supply chain. The Company has also taken decisive steps to build up its technological capabilities, having entered into a strategic partnership with Mediatek Inc. through its sister company "Spice Digital". The partnership allows Si2i to tap onto Mediatek's chipset technologies which are currently used by top mobile phone brands across the globe.

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Mobile value-added services Extending beyond traditional hardware for mobile phones, Si2i's range of feature and smart phones come embedded with its rich offering of mobile solutions including push mail, social networking options, analogue TV and customized Value-Added Services. Si2i offers a host of mobile Value-Added Services like S-Unno (a mobile application that allows users to make calls to anyone in the world at low cost rates) that encourages greater user stickiness. TECHNOLOGY In the Technology business group, the Company continues to maintain its market share and competitiveness in their respective markets in Singapore, Malaysia, India and the Middle East. By partnering with established global companies such as HP and IBM, the Company is able to offer a comprehensive suite of voice & data services and Information & Communication Technology (ICT) solutions to both corporate and consumer clients. Leveraging on its portfolio of in-house developed and patented technologies, the Company specializes in comprehensive and high quality communication solutions without the need for massive investment. Premier IP Communications Solutions Provider Voice Services - A pioneer of consumer VoIP services, Si2i now offers a wide range of superior quality VoIP services to carriers, enterprises, service providers and consumers worldwide. Strong technological capabilities, extensive global IP network and established partnerships with over 100 world-class carriers enable us to connect calls to land and mobile lines in more than 240 countries at highly competitive rates. Since 2004, we have been generating over one billion calling minutes annually, giving Si2i a significant share of the global pure-play VoIP market. Data Services - Strategic acquisition of an ISP in 2006 enabled expansion of our offerings to include a comprehensive suite of fast speed Broadband Access, Managed Network and various Network Based services delivered on reliable and robust network architecture with carrier grade network facilities that is managed 24/7 by our team of professional network engineers. Si2i thus attained a competitive edge in meeting growing demands for a convergent solution of Voice and Data services. 17

Computing Services - Through acquisition of a leading IT infrastructure company, Si2i also offers an innovative Utility-On-Demand business model. This relieves enterprises from huge upfront capital expenditure and the constant risk of technological obsolescence, while obtaining full access to the latest technologies, comprehensive IT infrastructure and maintenance. A vital value addition to our suite of Data services, this need-based system allows Si2i to package and offer (a) hardware and software, (b) storage and hosting plus (c) 24/7 service and support at cost-elective rates. Dedicated 24-Hours Support - Provided by our Network Operations Centre (NOC), a team of highly experienced network engineers work around the clock 24/7 to ensure the reliability and availability of our services. Equipped with sophisticated network management, monitoring hardware and software tools, our network engineers proactively monitor and troubleshoot any potential threat that may compromise the service. Immediate actions are executed to rectify and resolve issues that arise without jeopardizing our customers' business operations.

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RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

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PRIMARY OBJECTIVE The main objective of the project is to study about Product Development of SPICE DIGITAL LTD. SECONDARY OBJECTIVE To find consumer awareness about various SPICE DIGITAL LTD. in the market. To study the perception of the consumers about SPICE DIGITAL LTD. Forecasting its potential for the upcoming years. PROBLEM DEFINITION Over the last few years the mobile service segment has undergone a major change which is creating direct impact on potential markets. So in the process the company has experienced high degree of fluctuations in their market share. NULL HYPOTHESIS Hypothesis 1 (H o) : Performance of SPICE DIGITAL LTD. in Mobiles segment will eventually help company to obtain No-1 position in the overall mobile service provider segment. Hypothesis 2(H o): SPICE DIGITAL LTD provide complete satisfaction and services to its customers.

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ALTERNATE HYPOTHESIS Hypothesis 1 (Ho): Performance of SPICE DIGITAL LTD in Mobiles segment will not help company to obtain No-1 position in the overall mobile service provider segment. Hypothesis 2(H o): SPICE DIGITAL LTD do not provide complete satisfaction and services to its customers. RESEARCH DESIGN Research is common parlances refer to a search for knowledge. Explanatory & Conclusive Research As the term suggests, provides insights and comprehension of the problem. We develop the hypothesis rather than testing it. This type of research design is tentative and the type of research is qualitative in nature. The outcome is that the findings are followed by further research which has to be concluded. It aims at exploring in order to find out trends and shifts in consumer patronage pattern. Explanatory research is often conducted because a problem has not been clearly defined as yet, or its real scope is as yet unclear. It allows the researcher to familiarize him/herself with the problem or concept to be studied, and perhaps generate hypotheses to be tested. It is the initial research, before more conclusive research is undertaken. Explanatory research helps determine the best research design, data collection method and selection of subjects, and sometimes it even concludes that the problem does not exist! Another common reason for conducting explanatory research is to test concepts before they are put in the marketplace, always a very costly endeavor. In concept testing, consumers are provided either with a written concept or a prototype for a new, revised or repositioned product, service or strategy.

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Explanatory research can be quite informal, relying on secondary research such as reviewing available literature and/or data, or qualitative approaches such as informal discussions with consumers, employees, management or competitors, and more formal approaches through in-depth interviews, focus groups, projective methods, case studies or pilot studies. The results of explanatory research are not usually useful for decision-making by themselves, but they can provide significant insight into a given situation. Although the results of qualitative research can give some indication as to the why, how and when something occurs, it cannot tell us how often or how many. In other words, the results can neither be generalized; they are not representative of the whole population being studied. Conclusive Research is the type where one tests the hypothesis and comes to a conclusion. This research is concrete and final. The type is qualitative in nature. The findings are final and used for decision making by the managers. Since this research describes the market characteristics or phenomenon etc ,this is descriptive in nature and here we test the hypothesis which has already been formed in the explanatory research where job is to collect the primary data. The research that has been undertaken here is a combination of explanatory and conclusive research. In the first part of the research, primary data has been collected from the market and then a hypothesis has been formulated based on the data. In the second part, the already developed hypothesis is tested with the help of sampling and statistical tools and a conclusion is arrived at. Sample design Sampling may be designed as the selection of some part of an aggregate or totality on the basis of which judgment or interference about the aggregate or totality is made. It is the process of obtaining information about an entire population by examining only a part of it in which generalizations or influences are drawn on the samples about the parameters of populations from which the samples are taken.

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The study was restricted to Noida, Sahibabad, and Ghaziabad regions only keeping in mind convenience to sample because of accessibility lack of abundance of time and cost and because of the fact that the population of these cities is composed of people of diverse background income level etc., the sample were chosen on the basis of convenience sampling. The sample size taken for the purpose of study is 100. For this purpose customers were contacted at their working places and homes.

SCOPE OF THE STUDY

1) By undertaking this project we shall be able to understand the total mobile Industry, their Product development and along with it the directly proportional SPICE DIGITAL LTD, a company which is making its presence in the international markets. 2) How much is the market potential of the SPICE DIGITAL LTD.

LIMITATIONS OF THE PROJECT 1) The survey was restricted to Delhi/NCR because of time and resource constraints. Therefore the generality of the findings cannot be claimed until further research has been carried out. 2) 3) 4) The time duration for this study is June 2013. The location of study was selected keeping the convenience factor in mind. The situation in which person is questioned about routine action is an artificial one at best due to the influence of questioning process, respondents may furnish quite different from facts. 5) 6) The respondents are chosen through convenience. It is also pretty hard to pursue customers and retailers to share their findings as they are in hurry so possibility of bias of the respondents may not be precluded.

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The Software used for data analysis is SPSS, which being a little cumbersome, some graphs have to be further explained and clarified using the annexure. DATA COLLECTION A research can call for gathering primary data, secondary data or both. The data have mainly been collected via primary source. However a good amount of secondary data was also used to have a general understanding of the subject. 1) Primary Source The primary data gathered for specific purpose and are collected by the researcher himself. It includes direct communication and feedback from customer, sales and marketing executives of SPICE DIGITAL LTD. and other related person . For the purpose of collection of information from customers , a structured questionnaire was formulated and the customers were directly contacted. 2) Secondary Source The secondary sources are data which were collected for another purpose and already exists somewhere. The secondary source of information here includes library resources, articles in various newspapers and magazines, product catalogs brochure and online resources like company websites, online reports and articles.

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CONCEPTUAL DISCUSSION

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LITERATURE REVIEW

Information Technology and Product Development: A Research Agenda presents important new research from varied disciplines aimed at developing new theoretical concepts and insights on the application of IT in product and service innovation. Drawing on the work of researchers in such varied management areas as information services, technology management, marketing, operations, business strategy and organizational behavior, the book redefines the role of IT in product and service development and the organizational and management issues underlying the successful deployment of IT in innovation contexts, and provides a foundation for future research on the diverse types of IT applications in product development and their potential impact on both product and service innovation. Reflecting two critical shifts in the service sector the increased complexity and convergence in products and services, along with the rise of the Internet and rapid digitization of products and services the book is organized into three sections. Section 1 presents four chapters that focus on the traditional areas of project and process management; Section 2 presents four chapters focusing on the emerging areas of collaborative innovation and knowledge co-creation; and Section 3 presents one chapter that draws it all together and identifies some of the important themes and issues for future research. This important new work has much to offer academic researchers in management in its in-depth theoretical analysis of the wide range of organizational and management issues associated with the application of IT in product and service development. It will also appeal to researchers and thought-leaders in consulting organizations whose primary area of interest is product development or IT applications. Presents important new research on traditional and emerging areas of Information Technology (IT) applications in product and service development Redefines the role of IT in product and service development and provides a foundation for future research Important reading for academic researchers and consultants 26

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY (IT) Humans have been storing, retrieving, manipulating and communicating information since the Sumerians in Mesopotamia developed writing in about 3000 BC,[6] but the term "information technology" in its modern sense first appeared in a 1958 article published in the Harvard Business Review; authors Harold J. Leavitt and Thomas L. Whisler commented that "the new technology does not yet have a single established name. We shall call it information technology (IT)." [7] Based on the storage and processing technologies employed, it is possible to distinguish four distinct phases of IT development: pre-mechanical (3000 BC 1450 AD), mechanical (14501840), electromechanical (18401940) and electronic (1940present). This article focuses on the most recent period (electronic), which began in about 1940.

PRODUCT DEVELOPEMENT 1. Introduction and Scope This is a review of research design and development. We define product development as the transformation of a market opportunity and a set of assumptions about product technology into a product avail-able for sale. Our review is deliberately broad, encompassing work in the academic fields of marketing, operations management, and engineering design. The value of this breadth is in conveying the shape of the entire research landscape. The review is intended primarily for two audiences. First, we hope to benefit new researchers entering the field of product development (e.g., doctoral students). We also hope this review will be valuable to experienced researchers who are interested in learning about the range of research in product development, perhaps to identify new research opportunities or to locate issues that intersect their current interests. Despite the broad scope, we limit the review in several ways. We focus on product development projects within a single firm. This focus is in contrast to much of the literature on technological innovation, which addresses innovation at the level of an entire industry or an entire firm (e.g., Abernathy and 27

Utterback 1978, Utterback 1994). We also devote our attention to the development of physical goods, although much of the work we describe applies to products of all kinds. We focus on the academic literature, reviewing the practitioner literature only to the extent it has been influential in the research community. Finally, we focus on decision making in product development, as discussed in more detail in the next section. The decision-making focus excludes a substantial body of research focused on the importance of environmental and contextual variables, such as market growth rate, the competitive environment, or the level of top-management support. (For a review of this literature, see Montoya-Weiss and Calantone 1994.) There have already been several excellent review articles in the general area of product development (Shocker and Srinivasan 1979; Finger and Dixon 1989a, 1989b; Whitney 1990; Cusumano and Nobeoka 1992; Brown and Eisenhardt 1995; Griffin and Hauser 1996; and Balachandra and Friar 1997). These complement our efforts. In areas where there is an excellent review article, we do not provide a comprehensive survey of the literature, but rather cite the review. We found it challenging to keep the length of the paper manageable when attempting a review of disparate work from several different academic communities.

2. Theoretical Approach Our approach to developing theory for this paper is inductive (Babbie 1995). We base our theory, or systematic generalizations of product development practice, on both our observations of industrial product development and our review of the literature. The existing literature on product development is vast. To sharpen our understanding of the literature, it is useful to organize this literature into a few competing paradigms. Such a clustering is an attempt on our part to elucidate differences, and may lead in some cases to an exaggeration of these perspectives. Indeed, we argue in this paper for a synthesis of these paradigms into the decision perspective of prod-uct development. There are at least four common perspectives in the design and development research community: marketing, organizations, 28 engineering design, and operations

management. The organizational perspective is focused at a relatively aggregate level on the determinants of project success. (An excellent review of the large body of papers from the organizational perspective is Brown and Eisenhardt 1995.) On the other hand, much of the engineering and marketing literature is at a more detailed level of abstraction, with the focus being the individual product engineer or market researcher and the issues confronting them. Finger and Dixon (1989a, 1989b) provide an excellent review of the engineering design literature, while a number of survey papers have been published reviewing the marketing perspective (Green and Srinivasan 1990, Shocker and Srinivasan 1979, Mahajan and Wind 1992). Several articles have been published in recent years reflecting the operations perspective, and some of them even serve to bridge two or more perspectives. There has been no comprehensive survey of these papers, and we intend to fill this void. The Decision Framework There are significant differences among papers within each of the perspectives we have identified, not only in the methodology used and assumptions made, but also in the conceptualization of how product development is executed. These differences reflect, in part, the enormous diversity of firms developing products, and it is difficult to develop a single theory amidst such differences. We observe, however, that while how products are developed differs not only across firms but within the same firm over time, what is being decided seems to remain fairly consistent at a certain level of abstraction. To illustrate how decision at an aggregate level offer an opportunity to generalize, consider the example of developing a product such as an ink-jet printer. Some product development decisions include: Which (printing) technology will be adopted in the product? Where will the (printer) product be assembled? Who will be on the product development team and who will lead the team? Which variants of the (printer) product will be developed as part of the product family? Clearly, different organizations will make different choices and may use different methods, but all of them make decisions about a collection of issues such as the product concept, architecture, configuration, procurement and distribution arrangements, project schedule, etc. Adopting the perspective that product development is a deliberate business process involving scores of such generic decisions is what we call the decision perspective. The decision perspective helps us get a glimpse inside the "black box" of product development with-out being concerned about how these decisions are 29

made, and thereby offers an opportunity to generalize and develop a grounded theory. In fact, at many companies these decisions may be made not by intention but by default. Collecting decisions across the multiple academic perspectives helps us not only integrate these perspectives but also identify interdependencies among these decisions. The decision perspective also seems to provide a description of product development that is both comprehensive and parsimonious, perhaps because it cuts across the functional perspectives without getting involved in the functional details of how the decisions are made (Whetten 1993). Note that this approach is consistent with and draws on prior work in that it clearly assumes an organization that manages uncertainty through information processing (Thompson 1967, Galbraith 1977). However, we do not mean to imply, by taking the decision perspective, that firms make all product development decisions in a deliberate fashion, merely that most of these decisions are eventually made, even if through inaction. We believe in the bounded rationality of individuals and teams (Simon 1969), and we acknowledge the role of organizational culture and individual behavior in the effectiveness of product development processes.

3. Decisions within a Development Project We organize product development decisions into two broad categories (Hultink et al. 1997). In this section, we consider the decisions made within the context of a single project in actually developing the product. We consider the decisions a firm makes in establishing an organizational context and in planning development projects. As an organizational convenience, we further divide decisions within a project into four categories: concept development, supply chain design, product design, and production ramp-up and launch. Concept Development Concept development decisions define not only the product specifications and the product's basic physical configuration, but also the extended product offerings such as life-cycle services and after-sale supplies. There are five basic decisions to be made. What are the target values of the product attributes? What will the product concept be? What variants of the product will be offered? What is the product architecture? 30

And, what will be the overall physical form and industrial design of the product? A useful representation of a product is a vector of attributes (e.g., speed, price, reliability, capacity). We intend attributes to refer to both customer needs (also referred to as customer attributes or customer requirements) and products specifications(a lso referred to as engineering characteristics or technical performance metrics). Griffin and Hauser (1993) offer a comprehensive discussion of the issues associated with assessing and using customer needs. Given a representation of a product as a set of attributes, conjoint analysis is a structured approach to optimally determine the target values of these attributes. We point the reader to three excellent survey articles by Shocker and Srinivasan (1979), Green and Krieger (1989), and Green and Srinivasan (1990). Attribute-based methods are limited in their ability to represent the overall appeal of products, especially those for which aesthetics and other holistic product attributes are important. Srinivasan et al. (1997) offer a hybrid methodology in which attribute-based methods are supplemented by the use of realistic physical prototypes to elicit consumer preference information. Much of the research on setting attribute values is also aimed at maximizing customer satisfaction or market share, and does not explicitly consider design and production costs or overall profitability. In addition, the research on setting attribute values (done in the context of packaged goods) often assumes that arbitrary combinations of specifications are possible. While it may be feasible to provide any combination of "crunchiness" and "richness" in a chocolate bar, it is not possible to offer an arbitrary combination of "compactness" and "image quality" in a camera (Ramaswamy and Ulrich 1993). Attributes are an abstraction of a product. Concept development also involves the embodiment of these attributes into some kind of technological approach, which we call the core product concept. The decision of which technological approach to pursue is often supported by two more focused activities: concept generation and concept selection. Most textbooks on design and development discuss concept generation and selection. See, for example, books by Crawford (1987), Ullman (1997), Ulrich and Eppinger (2000), and Urban and Hauser (1993). A common theme is that a wide variety of concepts from a wide variety of sources be considered. The traditional approach to concept selection stipulates that the concept be frozen before detailed prod-uct design commences. However, Bacon et al. (1994) find from their study of high-technology industries that unchanging product specifications in dynamic environments is at best an elusive goal. The work of 31

Srinivasan et al. (1997) cited earlier argues that with the new economics of product development (e.g., declining costs of prototyping, more powerful computer-based tools), it may be optimal to pursue multiple concepts and select the best design later in the process. Their argument is reinforced by the findings of Dahan and Srinivasan (2000) that concept selection and testing using virtual prototypes on the World Wide Web offers nearly the same results as the use of physical prototypes. Bhattacharya et al. (1998b) also find that finalizing specifications later may be desirable in dynamic environments. The choice of product variants must balance het-erogeneity in preferences among consumers and economies of standardization in design and production. Lancaster (1990) provides a comprehensive discussion of the basic economics of product variety. Ho and Tang (1998) is a collection of research articles addressing issues in the management of product variety. Closely related to the decision of which variants to offer is the decision about which components to share across products in a firm's portfolio. Rutenberg's work is among the earliest in this area. He shows that the problem of determining the cost-minimizing set of components maps into a dynamic program (Rutenberg 1969). More recent papers on this topic. The ability to share components across products is determined in part by the product architecture, which is the scheme by which a product's functionality is partitioned among components. Perhaps the earliest discussions of the architecture of engineered systems are by Alexander (1964) and Simon (1969). Recent research has focused on the implications of product architecture for operations and marketing issues (Ulrich 1995), for organizational design (Sanchez and Mahoney 1996), and for the evolution of entire industries (Baldwin and Clark 1999). A product concept is generally brought to life through decisions about the physical form and appearance of the product. These decisions are part of an activity generally called industrial design. Lorenz (1990) provides an overview of the field of industrial design from a practitioner perspective. Although critical to the commercial success of many massmarket products, with the exception of Yamamoto and Lambert (1994), industrial design has received almost no research attention. Supply-Chain Design We use the term supply chain to encompass both the inbound and outbound flows of materials, as well as the supply of intellectual property and services to the firm. Supply-chain design decisions therefore include supplier selection as well as 32

production and distribution system design issues, and address the following questions. Which components will be designed specifically for the product? Who will design and produce the product? What is the configuration of the physical supply chain? What type of process will be used to assemble the product? Who will develop and supply the process equipment? Most engineered assembled goods are comprised of a mixture of components designed specifically for a product and standard off-the-shelf components. Ulrich and Ellison (1999) find that components are likely to be designed (rather than selected) if the requirements they serve are "holistic" or arise in a complex way from all or most of the elements of the product. If a product contains designed components, decisions must be made about who will design these components and who will produce and test them. Ulrich and Ellison (1998) argue that these decisions benefit from being made simultaneously. These decisions are also closely related to the classic make- buy decision (Mahoney 1992, Fine and Whitney 1996). Operations management researchers have directed a great deal of research attention to the design of the physical supply chain. Fisher (1997) argues that the optimal supply chain for innovative products is different from that of non-innovative products, because of differences in the relative magnitude of direct production costs and the costs of a mismatch between supply and demand. Product design has also been found to contribute to leaner supply chains by postponing the point of differentiation in the order-fulfillment process (Lee 1996, Lee and Tang 1997). Product Design We use the term product design in its narrow sense to refer to the detailed design phase, which constitutes the specification of design parameters, the determination of precedence relations in the assembly, and the detail design of the components (including mate-rial and process selection). These decisions generally result in geometric models of assemblies and components, a bill of materials, and control documentation for production. There is a vast literature in the engineering design community relating to design decisions. Two influential books are authored by Pahl and Beitz (1988) and Hubka and Eder (1988). Finger and Dixon's two-part article (Finger and Dixon 1989a, 1989b) is comprehensive in its review of the literature through 1989. Our review focuses on work since 1989, and we cite archetypal articles in areas where there is too much activity to review comprehensively. The goal of the parametric design phase is to decide values of design parameters while satisfying 33

and/or optimizing some desired performance characteristics. Parametric design is generally performed after a basic product concept has been established, when creation of a mathematical model of product performance is possible. There is a large body of literature on using mathematical programming approaches to solve the parametric design problem. We refer the reader to the overview article by Papalambros (1995), who also notes that there is a significant gap between theory and practice, and that most "optimal" design in industry is in fact the result of using engineering models in trial-and-error mode. Parametric design problems often have objective functions that are monotone increasing or decreasing in the decision variables, and the optimal solution can be determined by simply solving for the active design constraints. Papalambros and Wilde (1988) have formalized this approach into a technique called monotonicity analysis. Attempts have also been made by researchers to integrate artificial intelligence techniques such as qualitative reasoning with optimization to obtain insights about the parametric design problem (for example, see Agogino and Almgren 1987). Other related work on design reasoning and optimization. Nevins and Whitney (1989) address the interactions between product design and production processes, with particular emphasis on assembly processes. In an influential article, De Fazio and Whitney (1987) extended the work of Bourjault (1984) to model the space of possible assembly sequences for a product. Boothroyd et al. (1994) provide a methodology for designing components that are easy to assemble. This work is built on the idea of iteratively refining a design using a metric of assembly performance (e.g., assembly time) to provide feedback on design quality. Ulrich et al. (1993) caution against myopic application of design guidelines, finding that application of common design-for-manufacturing rules can in certain cases reduce profitability. Nevins and Whitney (1989) provide a comprehensive treatment of production process design issues, including the design of tools, facilities, and equipment. Thierry et al. (1995) discuss the importance of including product disposal and recovery considerations in the product design process under the heading of Product Recovery Management (PRM). PRM's objective of recovering as much of the product's economic and ecological value upon disposal is likely to become increasingly important as both customers and governments insist on reducing waste generation. This may indeed require further research on a larger life-cycle perspective in product development with the intention of making the product fit its natural environment as much as it fits the business environment (market). 34

Performance Testing and Validation While detailed design decisions are being made and refined, the design is also prototyped to validate for, fit, function, and fabrication. Ulrich and Eppinger (2000) provide a comprehensive description of the prototyping process. Typically, the firm has a choice of developing prototypes sequentially or in parallel with different cost, benefit, and time implications. Dahan and Mendelson (1998) derive optimal hybrid sequential-parallel prototyping policies by modeling prototyping as a probabilistic search process. Thomke and Bell (1999) show that the optimal prototyping and testing strategy should balance, among other things, the cost of prototyping and cost of redesign. Thomke (1998) studies the costs and benefits of different proto-typing technologies, and offers insight on which prototyping process to use under what circumstance. Product Launch and Production Ramp-up A number of decisions must be made in association with product launch and production ramp-up. For instance, the firm must decide the degree to which test marketing should be done, and the sequence in which products are introduced in different markets. These questions have been researched to a consider-able degree in the marketing literature (Urban and Hauser 1993; Mahajan and Wind 1988; Mahajan et al. 1990). Launch timing is a decision that trades off multiple factors, including threat of competitor entry and the completeness of development, as discussed by Kalish and Lilien (1986). The firm must be careful in communicating its launch timing to the market, as not meeting preannounced launch dates can have a significant impact on the market value of the firm (Hendricks and Singhal 1997). In practice, poor product-design decisions can also slow the rate of production ramp-up. There has been some work on production ramp-up (Terwiesch and Bohn 2001) and on coordinating the rollover of new products (Billington et al. 1999), but essentially none on the relationship between rate of production ramp-up and product-design decision making. 4. Decisions in Setting Up a Development Project

35

A particular product development project tends to be part of a constellation of other projects within an organization. Here we consider the decisions relating to product strategy and planning, product development organization, and project management that set the stage for an individual development project. Product Strategy and Planning Product strategy and planning involve decisions about the firm's target market, product mix, project prioritization, resource allocation, and technology selection. Mansfield and Wagner (1975) show that these factors have a significant influence on the probability of economic success. In structured development environments, product planning often results in mission statements for projects and in a product plan or roadmap, usually a diagram illustrating the timing of planned projects. Specific decisions include the following. What is the firm's target market? What port-folio of product opportunities will be pursued? What is the timing of the product development projects? What assets will be shared across products? Which technologies will be employed in the planned products? Efforts are generally made to coordinate these decisions with the firm's corporate, marketing, and operations strategies. Approval of the product plan is often based on how well it meets strategic goals, justification of the product opportunity, and how well the target market fits the company's image and vision ure (of who it wants to serve). In essence, product planning is the set of decisions that ensures that the firm pursues the right markets and products from a strategic viewpoint. Because there exists a large body of research on the issue of target market definition, we refer the reader to the excellent discussion by Urban and Hauser (1993). Product/project portfolio selection has also been a topic that has been studied for the last three decades but has received renewed attention in the last decade. See, for example, the work of Ali et al. (1993), who present a taxonomy of the project selection problem and offer detailed references. In deciding which product opportunities to pursue, a potential pitfall is to focus on existing markets. Christensen and Bower (1996) show, using data from the disk drive industry, that successful firms often fail to recognize technological and/or market shifts because product planning is biased towards existing markets. An operational version of the portfolio decision is the product line design problem, in which the number and identity of individual products must be decided. Green and Krieger (1985) pioneered the development of decision support models for product line design by formulating it as a choice problem 36

from a set of candidate products while maximizing an objective function such as social welfare or firm profit. Several heuristic procedures have been developed to solve this combinatorial problem (McBride and Zufryden 1988, Kohli and Sukumar 1990). Others have expanded the scope of the problem to include richer cost structures (Dobson and Kalish 1988, Dobson and Kalish 1993, Krishnan et al. 1999). In launching a product, the firm decides the tim-ing and sequence of product introduction. An interesting trade-off confronting the timing decision is one of cannibalization versus faster accrual of profit. When products are introduced simultaneously, low-end products might cannibalize the sales of the high-end products. Moorthy and Png (1992) were the first to address this trade-off, and argued that in the inter-est of cannibalization it is inappropriate to intro-duce low-end products before high-end products. More recent work by Padmanabhan et al. (1997) and Bhattacharya et al. (1998a) suggests that it may be appropriate in some circumstances to introduce low-end products before high-end products (such as in the presence of network externalities or exogenous technological improvements). Decisions are made about executing product development projects in parallel and sharing resources across different projects. Adler et al. (1995) high-light the congestion effects that arise from pursuing multiple product development projects in parallel. Their production-process metaphor also helps under-stand the pitfalls of high capacity utilization and processing time variability in development projects. Resource sharing may, however, lead to better utilization of resources, reduction in required development hours, as well as better learning across projects (Nobeoka 1995, Nobeoka and Cusumano 1997). Substantial sharing of assets across products results in the development of product platforms (Meyer and Lehnerd 1997, Meyer et al. 1997). Much of the work on platforms, however, focuses only on platform benefits. Robertson and Ulrich (1998) highlight the loss of customer-perceived differentiation due to platforms, and Krishnan and Gupta (2001) discuss the overdesign of low-end products due to product platforms. A key component of product planning is the decision about which technologies to incorporate in a forthcoming product (lansiti 1995a). While prospective technologies are attractive along several dimensions, they are also not fully proven, and can increase the degree of risk of the new product development process. Wheelwright and Clark (1992) discuss the "pizza-bin approach," in which products are assembled from proven technologies. While this approach can make the development process more manageable, competitive 37

conditions may require a firm to develop technologies and products simultaneously (lansiti 1995b, Krishnan and Bhattacharya 1998). Product Development Organization By product development organization, we mean the social system and environment in which a firm's design and development work is carried out. Related decisions include team staffing, incentives and reward systems, metrics for monitoring performance, and investments in productivity-enhancing tools and "processes" for product development. The literature on organization design is extensive.. We refer the reader to the excellent review article by Brown and Eisenhardt (1995) for a comprehensive treatment of this topic. Project Management In managing a development project, decisions are made about the relative priority of development objectives, the planned timing and sequence of development activities, the major project milestones and prototypes, mechanisms for coordination among team members, and means of monitoring and controlling the project. Product development performance is generally measured by the lead time to develop the product, the cost of the development effort, the manufacturing cost of the product, and the product's quality or attractiveness in the market (Clark and Fujimoto 1991, Griffin 1997, Jansiti and Clark 1994). Foster et al. (1985a, 1985b) provide an excellent discussion on how metrics can be used to clarify the link between research and development and corporate profits. Cohen et al. (1996) have shown that these performance measures are often traded off against each other. Other research studies indicate that these measures may have different effects on firm's profit in different markets, so it may not always be appropriate to force-fit one approach (such as leadtime minimization) to all development situations. Formal project-scheduling techniques such as PERT and CPM enjoy widespread use in the construction industry for planning the timing and sequence of activities, however product development processes are not as easily modeled with these techniques (Eppinger et al. 1994). The exchange of information among product development professionals can be modeled using a tool called the Design Structure Matrix (DSM), introduced by Steward (1981) and further developed for large projects by Eppinger and his colleagues. One popular strategy for minimizing lead time is overlapping nominally sequential development 38

activities (Clark and Fujimoto 1991). Overlapping coupled development activities, often called concurrent design, involves the use of preliminary design information and is challenging to manage because of its ability to lead to development rework (Krishnan, Eppinger and Whitney 1997). Careful management of overlapping requires the detailed representation of the information exchanged between individual tasks and a deeper understanding of the properties of the information (Krishnan et al. 1997, Loch and Terwiesch 1998). lansiti (1995c) and Kalyanaram and Krishnan (1997) also argue that in turbulent environments over-lapping is required in order to provide flexibility in making major changes in the design of the product. Closely coupled to the decision of how to schedule development activities is the decision of what types of communication to facilitate and to what extent. Cross functional communication (e.g., between marketing and engineering) is widely viewed as positive, although insights about the nature of coupling among development tasks offer the promise of fostering communication where it is most valuable (Moenaert and Souder 1996, Griffin 1992). The issue of the timing and frequency of project monitoring and intervention has been addressed only to a limited extent in the academic literature (Ha and Porteus 1995), although practitioners seem to struggle to strike the right balance between excessive intervention and inadequate oversight. 5. The Organization of Academic Research In our review of the literature, we deliberately did not map product development decisions to organizational functions such as marketing, engineering, and operations. In this section, we consider the different functional perspectives of product development, and then argue that coordinated decision making requires an approach to research that is driven by the intrinsic interdependencies among decisions, rather than being driven by attempts to bridge the extant functional structure of the research community. The organization of a manufacturing firm into functions is particularly beneficial for managing an ongoing business with stable products, in which marketing is responsible for generating demand and operations is responsible for fulfilling that demand. The task of developing new products, however, presents an organizational challenge in that it introduces a discontinuity in ongoing operations. A common approach is to assemble a team of individuals from various functions for the duration of the development process and to allocate among them the task of making subsets of 39

decisions. Typically, the marketing function is responsible for many of the product planning decisions and the operations function for the supply-chain design decisions. Engineering design is entrusted with the task of making the bulk of concept and detailed design decisions. This approach benefits to a certain extent from the specialized knowledge that may reside within a function. For instance, product positioning and market segmentation decisions are assigned to individuals with detailed knowledge of market needs. However, the risk is that interdependencies among the development decisions may be ignored. For instance, the number and identity of product variants offered is often decided based only on market preferences and ignores design and operational considerations. There has been a recent shift in the organization of product development in practice, and many firms have adopted a team structure in which the traditional functional divisions are less pronounced (Ettlie 1997). Despite this shift in practice, academic groups within most schools of business and engineering mirror the typical functional organizations of the 1950s, with groups focused on operations, market-ing, and engineering, for example. Like most functional organizations, academic communities are adept at addressing certain decisions in isolation and have honed the associated analytical and pedagogical tools. However, to the extent that they mirror the historical functions of the enterprise, these academic structures impede an understanding of how to coordinate inter-dependent product development subset of researchers, often distributed across traditional university academic units, are concerned with product development. A recent approach to bridge the differences among the different academic groups has been to formulate "cross-functional research problems" such as how to coordinate the marketing-operations inter-face. An insightful example is Karmarkar (1996). In our opinion, focusing on coordinating marketing and operations addresses an emerging problem with a dated organizational logic. A focus on coordinating these traditional functions may, in fact, confuse and complicate the underlying coordination problem in product development. To express the problem of coordinating product development decisions as one of coordinating, for example, marketing and operations, assumes a particular functional organizational scheme and masks the microstructure of the interdependencies in development decisions. An alter decisions. We highlighted these differences in the way the academic groups view product design and development. Note that these distinctions are somewhat stereotypical, and that there are notable exceptions. 40

6. Concluding Remarks Several areas for future research seem promising. Research in the marketing community has flourished on methods for modeling consumer preferences and for optimally establishing the values of product attributes. Yet, a weakness identified in ? 3 is that models of the product as a bundle of attributes tend to ignore the constraints of the underlying product and production technologies. Parametric optimization of complex engineering models is a well-developed area within the engineering design community. We see an opportunity for these communities to work together to apply the product-design methods developed in marketing to product domains governed by complex technological constraints. We noted that there is essentially no academic research on industrial design, the activity largely concerned with the form and style of products. Yet aesthetic design may be one of the most important factors in explaining consumer preference in some product markets, including automobiles, small appliances, and furniture. The lack of academic research on industrial design may reflect an inherent difficulty in modeling the relevant factors, yet we perceive an opportunity to contribute substantially to development performance by understanding this activity better. Product planning decisions and development metrics seem particularly ad hoc in industrial practice. For example, there are few research results that inform the question of how to integrate the efficiency issues associated with the use of product platforms with the market benefits of high product variety. We see an opportunity to bring together market, product, and process considerations on the decision of what products to develop, when, and with what level experiencing situations in which the bulk of the profit from the product accrues from post launch services and supplies associated with the product. Additional research is needed along the lines of the work of Cohen and Whang (1997), who studied the design of the joint product/service bundle for the product life cycle. Research on physical supply chains has focused productively on inventory and lead-time considerations. Relatively little attention has been paid to the topic of product engineering and development sup-ply chains. There has been some work on implications of product architecture for supplychain effectiveness (Ulrich and Ellison 1999, Gupta and Krishnan 1999). We see an excellent opportunity for research in the area of product development supply chains that enable development teams to decide on outsourcing product development, levels 41

of product variety, product architecture, inventory policy, and process flexibility that provide the best combination of customer satisfaction and firm profitability. The development of new information technologies appears to be revolutionizing commerce generally and product development to a considerable degree. The benefit of new tools to manage product knowledge and support development decision making within the extended enterprise needs to be explored in greater detail (Liberatore and Stylianou 1995, Ruecker and Seering 1996). The research challenge is to understand the situations in which advancements in information technology are likely to change the established wisdom about how to effectively manage product development. Product definition, development, launch and project management methodologies are highly contingent on the market uncertainty and other environ-mental characteristics (Brown and Eisenhardt 1995, Shenhar and Dvir 1996, Lynn et al. 1996, Chandy and Tellis 1998). Insights on customizing product development practices to diverse environments such as small entrepreneurial firms and varied industries should also help increase the relevance and applicability of the development literature (Meyer and Roberts 1986, Dougherty and Heller 1994, Eisenhardt and Tabrizi 1995, Gatignon and Xuereb 1997). We observe that research seems to flourish in problem areas with powerful representational schemes. For instance, the development of attribute-based representations by the marketing community led to the large body of work on conjoint analysis. The parametric representation of the engineering design problem led to hundreds of papers on design optimization. More recently, the Design Structure Matrix spawned dozens of research efforts on organizing product development tasks. We might therefore infer that the development of representation schemes should be a high priority in the product development research community. Finally, we believe that research in product development must be tightly motivated by the needs of industrial practice. This is because product development is essentially a commercial function, and there-fore most knowledge about product development does not have much meaning outside of the commercial realm. The models employed in product development research are at best coarse approximations of the phenomena under study, unlike in the physical sciences where the language of mathematics seems to map in a remarkable way to the physical world. We believe that this loose connection between models and practice implies that the product development research community could benefit from stronger adherence to the scientific method, and

42

proceed only a short distance ahead of empirical validation, lest energy be wasted on understanding models with lit-tle relevance to the motivating questions.

43

DATA ANALYSIS

44

DATA ANALYSIS

AGE GROUP OF RESPONDENTS Age Group Respondents 15-25 26-35 36-45 above 45 Respondents (%) 38 27 19 16

Age group of respondents

15 - 25

16% 19% 27% 38%

26 - 35

36- 45

above 45

45

OCCUPATION OF RESPONDENTS Occupation of Respondents Businessmen Students Doctors Engineers Govt. servant Housewives Executives Traders Others Respondents (%) 30 20 18 8 8 2 7 5 2

Occupation of respondents
2%

7% 8% 8% 18% 2%

5%

30%

20%

INCOME GROUP 46

Income Group (yearly) Less than 50000 50000-150000 150000-300000 300000 & above

Respondents (%) 48 25 16 11

Income Group

11% 16% 48%

Less than 50000

50000-150000

25%
150000-300000

300000 & above

MOTIVE BEHIND USING MOBILE 47

Motive Communication Snob value Good facility others

Respondents (%) 55 12 31 2

Motive behind using mobile

2% 31% 55% 12%

Com m unication Snob Value Good facility as com pare to PNT Others

DURATION OF USING MOBILE

48

Duration of using mobile Less then one year 1-2 year 2-3 Year 3 & above

Respondents (%) 42 22 21 15

Duration of using mobile

15% 21% 42%
Less than one year

1-2 year

22%
2-3 year 3 & above

MOBILE OWNERS Mobile Owners Respondents (%)

49

B/W Color Bar Color Folder Bar Camera Folder Camera High-end Camera Phone

30 20 14 16 9 11

Mobile Owners
B/W Color Bar Color Folder Bar Camera Folder Camera High-end Camera Phone

11% 9% 16% 14% 20% 30%

USERS OF CAMERA User of Camera Yes No 50 Respondents (%) 47 53

Frequency Once in a Day Once in two Day Once in a Week Occasionally

Respondents (%) 50 23 10 17

users of Camera

Yes 53% 47% No

Frequency of accessing Camera

Atleast once aday Once in tw o day 50% 23% Once in a w eek Occasionally

17% 10%

USERS OF VIDEO User of Video Yes No 51 Respondents (%) 28 72

Frequency Once in a Day Once in two Day Once in a Week Occasionally

Respondents (%) 15 10 19 56

users of Video

28% 72%

Yes No

Frequency of accessing Video

Atleast once a day 15% 56% 10% 19% Once in tw o day Once in a w eek Occasionally

USERS OF FM User of FM Yes No Frequency 52 Respondents (%) 18 82 Respondents (%)

Once in a Day Once in two Day Once in a Week Occasionally

76 15 5 4

users of FM

18% Yes No 82%

Frequency of accessing FM
Atleast once a day 5% 4% 15% 76% Once in tw o day Once in a w eek Occasionally

USERS OF GPRS User of GPRS Yes No Frequency Respondents (%) 36 64 Respondents (%)

53

Once in a Day Once in two Day Once in a Week Occasionally

6 19 18 57

users of GPRS

36% 64%

Yes No

Frequency of accessing GPRS

Atleast once a day 6% 57% 19% 18% Once in tw o day Once in a w eek Occasionally

AWRENESS ABOUT NEW LAUNCHINGS Awareness Yes No Source of information Respondents (%) 42 58 Respondents (%)

54

Media Retailer Friends others

46 30 18 6

Awareness about new launchings

42%

Yes No

58%

Media 18% 30% 6% 46% Friends Others Retailer

USERS OF SPICE User of SPICE First time Switch over Respondents (%) 46 54

55

Users of Spice

First tim e 54% 46%

Sw itch over

REASON FOR GOING THE SERVICE OF SPICE Reasons Good reputation Low investment Brand quality Features 56 Respondents (%) 14 24 18 44

Reason for going the service of Spice

Good Reputation Low initial Investment

14% 44% 18% 24%

Brand quality Features

AWARENESS ABOUT SERVICES PROVIDED BY SPICE

Awareness Yes No Partially 57 Respondents (%) 65 25 10

Awareness about Services provided by Spice

10% Yes 25% 65% No

Partially

MARKET SHARE Market Share Nokia SAMSUNG L.G Sony Ericson SPICE 58 Respondents (%) 48 29 12 5 6

Market Share
Nokia 6% 5% 12% L.G 48% 29% Sam sung

Sony Ericson

SPICE

SATISFACTION LEVEL Satisfaction level Respondents (%)

59

Very satisfied Satisfied Neither/Nor Dissatisfied Highly Dissatisfied

22 48 15 8 7

Satisfaction level Spice

Very satisfied

7% 8% 22%

Satisfied

Neither/Nor 15% Disatisfied 48% highly disatisfied

60

FINDINGS

61

FINDINGS
Company should give more importance in Brand Building. Brand equity and Brand awareness should be created. Prices should go with the features and according to the competitors. Dealer oriented schemes giving moral boost should be encouraged on par with other companies. 100 % Transparency and accuracy in transactions to dealers should be made available from time to time. Logistic arrangements should be assured to dealers/ consumers for intercity movements. Confidence building measures should be periodically under taken.. Relatively new company in the market and having high competition, the respondents agreed to a certain level that the easy availability and quality of the service provided is the main and leading selling point. Being a mobile service provider it is very important for the company to set their preferences in regard to target audience.

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SUGGESTIONS

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SUGGESTIONS

SPICE DIGITAL LTD. is entering the market and therefore has to necessarily preparing the entire costing with an intention to provide the best goodwill. Although the satisfaction level is good but the company should focus on building the brand equity SDL should make the consumes aware about the products. The products launched by Spice should provide maximum satisfaction to consumer.

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CONCLUSION

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CONCLUSION

From above the details I conclude that 70% Spice consumers preferred to remain with Spice.Although the market share is only 6%.Spice is governing the market on the basis of features provided and cost of its products . Hence, these statistics imply a bright future for the company. SDL have partnered with all operators in India and more than 20 operators globally, It also have exclusive tie ups with Govt. organizations and Enterprises to provide mobile solutions. With an impressive product portfolio SDL has been able to cater the diverse customer needs and has been able to establish a strong customer relationship .

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BIBLIOGRAPHY
WEBSITES:
www.SPICE DIGITAL LTD..com www.scribd.com www.google.com www.wekipedia.com http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPICE DIGITAL LTD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPICE DIGITAL LTD. http://www.salespromo.co.uk/article/40 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPICE DIGITAL LTD. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPICE DIGITAL LTD. SPICE DIGITAL LTD. notebooks Catalogue

NEWSPAPERS & MAGAZINES:

Times of India Hindustan Times India Today Business Today

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QUESTIONNAIRE

1) What is your age group? a.15-25 b.26-35 c.36-45 d.above 45 1.1) What is your occupation? a.Businessmen b.Students c.Doctors d.Engineers e.Govt. servant f.Housewives g.Executives h.Traders i.Others 1.2) How much is your annual income ? a.Less than 50000 b.50000-150000 c.150000-300000 d.300000 & above 2) What is your motive behind using mobile? a.Communication due to extensive mobility b.Snob value c.Good facility as compare to PNT phones d.Others (specify if any) 68

3) Since how long have you been using mobile? a.Less then one year b.1-2 Year c.2-3 Year d.3Year and above

4) What kind of mobile do you own? a. B/W b. Color Bar c. Color Folder d. Bar Camera e .Folder Camera f. High-end Camera Phone

5) Are you a user of Camera? a. Yes b. No 5.1) If yes what is the frequency of your use? a. Once in a Day b. Once in two Day c. Once in a Week d. Occasionally

6) Are you a user of Video service? a. Yes b. No

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6.1) If yes what is the frequency of your use? a. Once in a Day b. Once in two Day c. Once in a Week d. Occasionally 7) Do you use FM radio on your mobile? a. Yes b. No 7.1) If yes what is the frequency of your use? a. Once in a Day b. Once in two Day c. Once in a Week d. Occasionally 8) Are you a user of GPRS/INTERNET services on your mobile? a. Yes b. No 8.1) If yes what is the frequency of your use? a. Once in a Day b. Once in two Day c. Once in a Week d. Occasionally

9) Are you aware about the new launchings in the mobile industry? a. Yes b. No

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9.1) if yes, what is the source of your information? a. Media b. Retailer c. Friends d. others 10) Are you the first time user of the SPICE mobile? Or Have you availed services of some other mobile? a.First time b.Switch over c.Both 11) Which attribute characteristic have you most preferred? a. Good reputation b. Low investement c. Brand equity d. Features 12 ) Are you aware by the services provided by SPICE DIGITAL Ltd. ? a.Yes b.No c.Partially 13 ) Are you satisfied with the services provided by SPICE DIGITAL Ltd ? a. Very satisfied b. Satisfied c. Neither/Nor d. Dissatisfied f. Highly Dissatisfied

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