All good product development starts with a series of questions. You might think of these as a series of hurdles your product has to jump over to justify its right to exist in the marketplace. Some businesses call them 'gates', others refer to the whole new product development process as a 'funnel'. However you choose to define the stages of getting from a blank sheet of paper to a finished bottle of wine, we think you should have good answers to the following eight questions. Below each we have listed the sorts of things we can do to help you clear each hurdle

1. Opportunity definition: "What should we be doing?"
   Wine Intelligence contributions
   • Overall market assessment using proprietary Consumer Access survey data and desk research
   • Category/sub-category analysis
   • Business assessment of opportunities and threats
2. Capability definition: "Where do we hold the high ground?"
   Wine Intelligence contributions
   • Business Benchmarking
   • Relationship analysis
   • Planning session facilitation
   • Capability and relationship map of potential 'sweet spots'
   • Gap analysis to define appropriate target product niches
   • Preliminary brand profile
3. Brand definition: "What should our brand look like?"
   Wine Intelligence contributions
   • Insights about consumer behaviour in specific target segments
   • Market and competitive landscape within those segments
   • Manage/participate in creative process
   • Finalise 2 or 3 shortlisted potential winning concepts
   • Set of hypotheses to test in the consumer research
4. Concept testing: "Will our brand engage our target market?"
   Wine Intelligence contributions
   • Design and manage exploratory consumer research - often (but not always) involving a focus group programme
   • Thorough evaluation of the alternative concepts, examining all packaging combinations including glass, labelling and closure
   • Review potential amendments to maximise consumer interest
   • Build a case to clearly show which concept to take forward to the next stage
5. Competitive performance & pitch building: "Will this work competitively?"
   Wine Intelligence contributions
   • Test the Champion concept through the Wine Intelligence Brand Benchmarking consumer hall test programme to
     • Define competitive strengths and weaknesses
     • Test the value proposition
     • Identify final product refinements to optimise propensity to trial
   • Identify attribute strengths to exploit and weaknesses to fix
   • Build pitch documents for trade sales and marketing efforts
6. Finalise the launch plans: "How are we going get this brand into market?"
   Wine Intelligence contributions
   • Guidance on the most effective messages/channels to reach target consumers
   • Analysis of the most effective media to reach target consumers
   • Guidance on spend and emphasis across the marketing mix
7. Launch roll-out: "What must we achieve in the first 6 months of sales?"
   Wine Intelligence contributions
   • Ensure key positive features from all previous stages get maximum emphasis
   • Review effectiveness of initial presentations and gatekeeper pitches
   • Participate where appropriate in launch presentations
   • Participate in "how are we doing" reviews
8. Measure, review, assess and re-plan: "How is our brand doing?"
   Wine Intelligence contributions
   • "Ask the gatekeepers" qualitative analysis
   • Sales and brand performance tracking
   • Consumer Access tracking studies to assess movement in brand awareness & propensity to buy