So I’m willing to bet that you are pretty proud of your product. 

You  believe that you are using your product development definition to  provide your customers with a high quality product that can meet their  needs better than any other product that is currently on the market.  This is all fine and good as long as the product that you are delivering  is truly high quality. It can only be high quality if it is built out  of high quality parts. 

What is a product manager to do if they suddenly discover that some of the parts that are going into their product are NOT high quality?

At one point in time, being a Peloton product manager must have felt  like having the best job in the world. 

It seemed like everyone had  fallen in love with the pricy stationary bike and video subscription  service. The product was literally flying off the shelves. However,  things changed. Oh yeah, there was that pandemic thing. Then there was a  botched new product introduction. These days things are not looking so  great over at Peloton. 

What went wrong for these product managers?

You would think that a business as well established as the cosmetic  business would not see a lot of disruption. 

I mean, customers try  products, select the ones that they like, and that’s the end of the  story, right? Well, it turns out that in the cosmetics business product  managers at some of the smaller firms are in the process of changing how things are done. 

This is big news because they are going after the next generation of cosmetics buyers: the millennials.

If there is one job that most of us would agree that we would not like  to have these days, it’s any job in which we would be going up against  Amazon. 

They have spread into so many different areas that it is  becoming harder and harder to avoid competing with them. 

However, there  is one product manager who works at an independent bookstore that has  found a way to not only survive, but also to thrive even as they sell to the same customers that Amazon does.

Product managers who are responsible for selling alcohol are in a bit of  a bind these days. 

For some reason, perhaps because of everyone’s  health kick, sales of alcohol have been declining over the past few  years. Today’s millennials are just not buying as much beer, wine, and  hard liquor as their parents once did. This news is sad for alcohol  product managers. However, there is some good news for them. It turns  out that some of the fastest growing alcohol drinks in the U.S. are  called “alcopops”.  The product development definition for these drinks defines a strong,  sugary alcoholic soda that is targeted towards younger drinkers. 

Could these be the products that alcohol product managers need to save their market?

Can anyone besides me remember back in the day when you wanted to play a  video game and you’d stuff your pockets with quarters and head on down to the video parlor?  

Those days are now long gone and you can play great games almost  anywhere without spending a penny. However, although you might not pay  to play anymore, getting that game into your house can end up costing you a pretty penny. 

Just exactly how are video game product managers going about pricing their products?

Just in case you didn’t know it, Gucci is a one of the largest and most successful fashion brands out there. 

Everyone wants to both own and be seen wearing Gucci apparel. In the past few years, Gucci has had a fantastic run and has become one of the hottest brands in fashion.  However, their growth has recently cooled off a bit. It turns out that  their product managers forgot what was in their product development  definition and made a product mistake that this has ended up having huge  ramifications online where Gucci had been doing very well. 

Every product manager wants their customers to be able to buy their  product when they decide to make a purchase. 

The worst thing in the  world that could happen is that your customer is ready to buy and you  have nothing to offer to them. Grocery store product managers are facing  a situation like this. Product shortfalls are forcing them to have to  get creative. Their goal is to be able to present their customers with  full shelves. 

What kind of magic is this going to require?

I can only speak for myself, but it seems as though anytime I walk into a  store that sells food, there is some sort of sticker on the door that  proclaims that if I’d prefer to have my food brought to me, there is a  service that will do it. 

What a fantastic age we now live in! The  product managers at these food delivery services are working hard to try  to establish their new market while fending off all of the other  companies that are doing the same thing that they are. 

However, there is  a fundamental problem that they are all dealing with: their customers are not turning into repeat customers.

So here’s a quiz for you: if you were going to buy a TV, how would you  go about doing it? 

If you are like most of us, you’d go look online,  find the model that you wanted, and then order it online. The idea of  going to a store and picking one out is something that a lot of us no  longer consider. Product managers for stores are starting to realize  this and they are starting to look at their product development  definition and make adjustments to meet the new world that they find  themselves living in. 

What’s happening is that stores are now being  transformed into warehouses.