Why are new products important to company growth?

"7. How do organizations create new products? New products pump life into company sales, enabling the firm not only to survive but also to grow. Companies like Allegheny Ludlum (steel), Dow (chemicals), Samsung (electronics), Campbell Soup (foods), and Stryker (medical products) get most of their profits from new products. Companies that lead their industries in profitability and sales growth get a large percentage of their revenues from products developed within the last five years. A recent McKinsey survey found that 94 percent of top executives believed that their companies’ innovation approach and process needed to be updated, signaling how important new products are as the lifeblood of a company. Marketers have several different terms for new products, depending on how the product fits into a company’s existing product line. When a firm introduces a product that has a new brand name and is in a product category new to the organization, it is classified as a new product. A new flavor, size, or model using an existing brand name in an existing category is called a line extension. Diet Cherry Coke and caffeine-free Coke are line extensions. The strategy of expanding the line by adding new models has enabled companies like Seiko (watches), Kraft (cheeses), Oscar Mayer (lunch meats), and Sony (consumer electronics) to tie up a large amount of shelf space and brand recognition in a product category. Crayola now offers Crayola bubble bath shampoo. Services companies also develop new products—new services based on market research—or make changes in ongoing services. Services companies can often introduce and adapt their products faster than companies that manufacture goods because service delivery can be more flexible and changes can often be made immediately. Due to this, customers often expect and require immediate improvements to services.\n\nDeveloping new products is both costly and risky, especially for companies that sell products that are goods. New-product failure rates for household and grocery products can approach 80 percent. Overall, companies report that only 3 percent of their products exceed their initial sales targets in Year 1. Even companies such as Facebook, which launched Facebook Home in 2013 at an initial price of $99 per year, have experienced new product failures. Industrial goods failure rates tend to be lower than those for consumer goods."