What Others Are Doing: New Product Route-To-Market (RTM)
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Assignment
An ongoing part of our work at Dechert-Hampe & Co. involves helping leading CPG Companies develop the most successful route-to-market for their new products. The DHC Route-to-Market ModelSM has been helpful in working with clients to select the most effective route-to-market for any new product or channel. The Model starts with the Consumer Proposition and a product design that best meets that need. The Model then looks at all the potential Channels and store locations within those channels that the selected product design might fit. How consumers shop that section of the store then becomes a critical driver of package design, shelf location, promotion strategy, and so on. After these critical Consumer Driven elements of the Model are addressed, we move on to the Customer Focused. Matching the product design and delivery system to the Customer Business System is imperative for optimizing today’s new product launches. And doing so is often more complex than simply selecting warehouse versus direct store delivery vehicles. Similar to the delivery system, Selling Systems often need to be rationalized and/or redesigned as well, depending on the product or category. The final stage of the model – Demand Generation – is where all of the various elements of the marketing mix come together synergistically, and should include things like an in-store marketing and merchandising plan.
Result
In the last three years alone, we have worked on five new product launches that ranked in the Top Ten of the New Product Trendsetters Report, published by IRI. This included the explosive launch of the Sara Lee® Brand into the fresh bread category, where Sara Lee® is now the leading branded bread nationally after less than four years in the market. The DHC Route-to-Market ModelSM has proven useful in working with manufacturers to reach the market more effectively and efficiently across a wide-range food, OTC drug, frozen food, general merchandise and perishable categories. 
