Breaking the Barriers of Sound with New-Product Development Case Analysis

X-1: Breaking the Barriers of Sound with New-Product Development Case Analysis

X-1, previously named H2O Audio, offers unique products with waterproof, sweatproof and weatherproof feature that allow individual who participate in spots bring music with them wherever they go. X-1 also offers earphones with custom fit ear tips that would fit women’s petite ears. With success in aquatic athletes, H2O decided to rebrand itself to expand to boarder market but focus on professional and amateur athletes. In order to examine X-1’s decision on expansion and production offering, SWOT and 4P analysis would perform to evaluate X-1 in all perspective.

H2O’s success has brought brand recognition and first mover advantage, which is the strength that X-1 may lose with the rebrand. Weaknesses of X-1 include lack of brand exposure and direct link with aquatic sports with product feature. The opportunity X-1 has is the growing trend in digital product that X-1 could utilize and X-1 might offer an unsought product for customers. Threat X-1 facing is other substitute product may come into the market. From the SWOT analysis, it reflects that the rebrand strategy may cause X-1 lost some competitive advantage in the market and X-1 may have another unrevealed customer group.

The 4Ps analysis includes product, placement, promotion and prices. X-1’s products include waterproof and washable earphones, armbands and accessories, unique features of X-1’s product made it appealing to athletes. X-1 sales its product through specialty stores, sports event, e-tailers, and inter personal sales from the team of amateur athletes. The major distribution channels of traditional earphones were digital electronic stores, supermarket and other department stores that sell digital products. While X-1 is so focused on its niche market, it may neglect that the rest customers may also interested in such product. As X-1 boarder its target market group, the sales channel could also expand to traditional stores.

The uniqueness of X-1’s initial product idea provided a solution to a specific group of people, who are enthusiastic in music and sports. There were several issues involved with X-1’s decision on expansion, through X-1’s product attributes provides them significant difference in the original core target market group, which is waterproof, but the demand of customer in expanded target market group is unclear. Even through X-1 has a group of amateur athletes to try their product; there is no comparison group in the testing market process for X-1 to truly identified the demand from its customer. Therefore, X-1 identified customer’s demand in the same core customer group without expansion in the test market basis to gain the market knowledge, which might provide false feedback on its product. X-1 would also have to educate customers and retailers about its product features, X-1 offered a new product with continuous innovation, the differences would have to be stressed and gain customer awareness on its product offering.

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