Today’s technological development has shed new light upon the management practiceproduct management and it is considered more important than ever to manage products.Moreover, organisations to a growing extent face external bodies that evaluate them andimpose organisational structures that they need to comply with. Product management isnevertheless characterised with ambiguity, broad definitions and various depictions. Ascattered research field together with practitioners struggle to define the area stress the needto clarify product management structuring. This thesis uses a sensemaking perspective and akaleidoscopic approach in order to capture product management structuring in a fragmentedarea. It means that we investigate what the sensemaking outcome of product management isand why organisational members make sense this way. This thesis has found that productmanagement is understood on two main levels and that the practice comprises bothconsistency and inconsistency on an inter-organisational level. Findings suggest that sharedidentity, strong commitment, cues, metaphors and expectations have influenced consistentunderstandings and crystallised the sensemaking outcome. In addition, product governanceinfluences product management and therefore the sensemaking outcome are inconsistent inseveral structuring elements. The thesis concludes that our contemporary productmanagement practice is comprised with general components that can be structured similarlybut also components that require a customised structuring due to the product governance trait.

This project aimed to design the interior of a Super Premium refrigerator and a freezer of Electrolux directed to a Chinese market. To carry out this, the user and its environment was analysed in detail in order to get as much information as possible to obtain a successful design. The market was also analysed to see the competitive products that other brands could have. Taking into account all the information collected in the analysis some innovative concepts were proposed and from these concepts a solution was obtained which met all the objectives. This final product fits with the daily life of the user. In addition, it gives a touch of innovation to the market of household appliances.

No description available.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Washington University in St. Louis, 2006. / Adviser: Panos Kouvelis. Includes bibliographical references.

Originally presented as the author's thesis, Hamburg. / Bibliography: p. 283-293.

Originally presented as the author's thesis, Hamburg. / Bibliography: p. 283-293.

Zugl.: Fribourg, Univ., Diss., 2006.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 113-119). Also available in electronic version.

The aim of this thesis is to describe marketing communication and product placement in the theoretical part, consequently analyze examples of product placement from the practice and last but not least also analyze the perception and examples of product placement based on the survey research. Therefore the thesis is divided into three main parts. The first, theoretical part, describes the marketing mix, concept of communication, communication mix, new forms of communication, integrated marketing communication, history of product placement, legal framework in the Czech Republic and the forms of product placement. The practical part then focuses on concrete examples of product placement in selected industries (namely TV shows and series, music videos, publishing and novels and computer games) followed by real offers of product placement in the Czech market -- concretely offerings within TV shows of Czech TV channels of Česká televize, Nova and Prima. The third part of the thesis analyses perception of product placement and examples of good and bad product placement based on personal questionnaires. In conclusion, there is an evaluation of the presented information and overview of the survey findings.

Product Platform Planning is an emerging philosophy that calls for the planned development of families of related products. It is markedly different from the traditional product development process and relatively new in engineering design. Product families and platforms can offer a multitude of benefits when applied successfully such as economies of scale from producing larger volumes of the same modules, lower design costs from not having to redesign similar subsystems, and many other advantages arising from the sharing of modules. While advances in this are promising, there still remain significant challenges in designing product families and platforms. This is particularly true for defining the platform components, platform architecture, and significantly different platform and product variants in a systematic manner. Lack of precise definition for platform design assets in terms of relevant customer requirements, distinct differentiations, engineering functions, components, component interfaces, and relations among all, causes a major obstacle for companies to take full advantage of the potential benefits of product platform strategy. The main purpose of this research is to address the above mentioned challenges during the design and development of modular platform-based product families. It focuses on providing answers to a fundamental question, namely, how can a decision support approach from product module definition to the determination of platform alternatives and product variants be integrated into product family design? The method presented in this work emphasizes the incorporation of critical design requirements and specifications for the design of distinctive product modules to create platform concepts and product variants using a data clustering approach. A case application developed in collaboration with a tire manufacturer is used to verify that this research approach is suitable for reducing the complexity of design results by determining design commonalities across multiple design characteristics. The method was found helpful for determining and integrating critical design information (i.e., component dimensions, material properties, modularization driving factors, and functional relations) systematically into the design of product families and platforms. It supported decision-makers in defining distinctive product modules within the families and in determining multiple platform concepts and derivative product variants. / Ph. D.