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Designing the Best Strategy for Your Next Global Product Rollout

Your product is ready to launch, but what’s the best strategy? Should you open the floodgates or be measured with your release? If you opt for a global launch, you are bearing large risks if it doesn’t go well. If you are cautious with your approach, then competitors could step in front of you.  

The right choice is far from obvious. Toyota launched the Prius only in Japan before moving globally. Honda launched their hybrid car, the Insight, in both Japan and the US. Americans didn’t immediately take to the Insight giving space for the Prius to become the first choice for a hybrid car, but did Honda make the wrong move or get unlucky?

Experiment First or Go All-In?

The authors, Ronald Klingebiel and John Joseph, documented the rollout of more than 300 mobile phone innovations across thousands of models. The mobile phone was an interesting product to study because they are global products, but launches are handled on a country-by-country basis.

“We consistently found that being the pioneer of a given innovation in one market did not guarantee that a firm would be the first in other markets: In our sample, pioneers were overtaken in two-thirds of all subsequent markets. We also found that failure was far from uncommon: Eighty percent of the innovations in our study failed, suggesting some caution is called for when rolling out an untested product feature.”

Innovators typically launched with more caution than their followers. Since a new capability is being brought to the market, the innovators would want to test the market for validation. Followers know there is a product-market fit. 

They noticed a relationship between how a company launched products based on past experience. If a firm was recently surpassed by a rival, they were quicker to launch but were slower if they experienced a recent flop. It’s hard to separate, but “lessons of the past are not relevant as the characteristics of the innovation and market at hand.”

Good Testbeds Are Uncomfortable

Determining your rollout strategy is only step one, implementation comes next. If a global rollout is decided, coordination will be required at scale. If you want to test the market, you will have to determine where to start.

“Safe markets are uninformative testbeds. Your most loyal customers’ response to your newest product doesn’t tell you anything about its commercial viability in more-challenging environments.”

The ideal testing ground is a place where customers can choose competing offerings. This might not make financial sense in the short term, but can tremendously help you make the most of your innovation resources in the long run. If Motorola was looking to launch a new camera phone, they would launch in Japan or Korea where there is competition. If their launch is successful in those markets, it would likely succeed anywhere.

On the flip side, if a skincare company decided to launch a new multi-step product in Paris or Tokyo and it failed, it would have a high chance of failure in other places. The people in Paris or Tokyo are used to multi-step skincare products and if it doesn’t catch on there, it would be hard for adoption in other areas.

Conclusion

There is no one-size-fits-all solution for market entry. That being said, the authors did come away with the following conclusion:

“An early mover interested in trying a wider range of innovations should launch sequentially, beginning with challenging test markets, in order to glean more information around consumer preferences and demand in different markets before expanding. In contrast, once a late mover has carefully determined the type of innovation that the market seems to want, it will likely benefit most from a simultaneous worldwide rollout.”

There is no guarantee that your product will take off, but a well-thought-out rollout strategy can help improve the odds of success.

You can check out the full article here.

End Note

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Have a great day,

Nick