As a product manager working in Arçelik, it is the utmost importance that the competition is closely followed, whether it means benchmarking the technical qualities of a product and features it includes or how the marketing communication of the product is done via various channels. Additionally, presence “near” the market or the consumer is also required to gather the consumer insight which is the main driving factor for future product/feature projects. In Product Management department, each person is responsible for certain product group and certain countries’ markets. I am in a team who is responsible for Washing Machine & Tumble Dryer product group.
The RStudio Conference by Eric Colson named “Dİfferentiating by data science” mainly posits that differentiation provides competitive advantage and differentiation should be a part of very consicious strategy. This significant differentation can be achieved multiple ways like speed (e.g Amazon Prime) or identity/branding (e.g Louis Vuitton). An alternative solution offered by the speaker is data science. Differantiation by data science is achieved fundamentally by algorithms. He states that data science should not be at a “supportive” function, but should be positioned at a more main part of the organization.
As described above, what consumers wants mainly provides the inspiration and source for product managers to develop solutions. The process of obtaining the consumers desires or opinions may have been completed before by a competitor and a solution may have also been developed. If this case is valid, then competition research - marketing research - is required, so that an alternative approach may been found. In the below link, an example over car manufacturing/marketing industry has been presented.
The importance of market research in my job, requires me to go through the huge chunks of data almost everyday. For example, obtaining a Washing/Drying Noise level of a certain model of washing machine may require for me to go through at least dozens of websites or user manuals. Below link provides an example for the Nepal Standard Industrial Classification issued by government and organized via R code. This approach may be utilized to obtain the data from a big group and categorize certain features of a product.
After the crucial step of data and feedback collecting from market is completed, developing a solution or a project comes next. As a department, product management often consolidates data from many other departments and in the managing position of a project, thus requiring an organized way of working. Below link provides the example/solution for how R software can help for the management of the project.