The Accidental Product Manager

When you want to get a cup of coffee, where do you go? In the U.S., most  of us generally head to a Starbucks. 

It turns out that if we were in  China, this is also something that we can do – Starbucks has expanded  until they are just about everywhere in China. However, as Starbucks has  become more and more successful, other firms have seen this and have  decided that they want to start to offer coffee in China. The Starbucks  product managers are now starting to face more competition for business in China than they have ever experienced before. 

What should they do with their product development definition now?

You would think that if you were a product manager at one of the world’s  largest retail companies, getting into a new line of business would not  be all that hard to do. 

I mean your company has deep pockets and can  probably spend a lot of money to do whatever everyone else in this new  market is doing. The result isn’t if you are going to be successful,  it’s really more a question of just how successful you are going to be.  

As Walmart has gotten into the home grocery delivery business, their  product managers have discovered that even being big may not be enough to ensure that they will be a success.

You would think that being a burger product manager would be a fairly  simple job: you get the burger, you make the burger, you sell the  burger. 

However, once upon a time it might have been that simple;  however, these days it has become much more complicated. If you can  ignore for a moment the fact that you are facing a great deal of  competition, it now turns out that your customer’s tastes are changing.  

Burger product managers have a challenge on their hands and they are  going to have to get creative and change their product development  definition.

Just imagine if you were a cigarette product manager. 

You are  responsible for a product that is both addictive and reviled. You’ve  been doing quite well for yourself for a very long time; however, now things are starting to change.  Young people seem to getting the message and are less likely to start  to use your products. At the same time, a new type of smoking product, vaping, has shown up and seems to be doing very well. 

What is a product  manager to do?

Think about your favorite non-water drink right now. 

What color is it?  When you pour it into a glass, it looks the way that it should – you can  recognize it. In fact, when you drink it, it probably tastes the way  that it looks. What if all of this could be changed. What if your favorite drink suddenly became clear?  No, the taste would not be changed at all, it would just all of sudden  look like water. Would you still want it? 

Some product managers are  betting that you would say yes.

It almost goes without saying that we all know about Amazon – the book  seller who has turned into the seller of just about everything. 

What you  may not know about Amazon is that they decided a while back to that they were going to enter into the lucrative video gaming market.  With the power of Amazon behind you, you’d think that there was no way  that they could ever not be successful. However, so far things have not  gone the way that the Amazon product managers had wanted it to go. 

What are they going to have to do to turn their product development  definition around?

In order to make sure that people want to buy their products, product managers have to stay on top of changes in the technology that people use to make payments. 

This used to be fairly easy: once upon a time everyone used cash, then they migrated to using credit and debit cards, next came PayPal and the like. Over in China product managers are once again moving forward in the area of payments and they are making changes to their product development definition. 

Chinese product managers are trying to get people to put their mobile phones away and make payments using facial recognition systems. 

What a wonderful time we are living in! 

With the arrival of the  internet, all of sudden there is no longer a reason for any of us to  have to go out to a restaurant any more. Instead, all we have to do is  to bring up one of those online ordering applications, select what we  want, and then greet the driver when they show up at our front door.  What could be better? 

Unfortunately, what product managers are starting  to discover is that the brave new world of unlimited food delivery comes with some downsides.

You would think that being a product manager for a hot new start-up  beverage would be a great job, right? 

Somewhat surprisingly, you’d be  wrong. It turns out that it’s fairly easy to come up with the idea for a  new beverage – it it has health benefits then it is ever easier, but it  is then hard to be a product manager that is able to figure out the  product development definition that will get your new drink beverage to  catch on. This market is littered with the remains of companies  that showed up and then just faded away. 

What does a product manager  have to do in order to make their new drink product a success?

There is no question that Amazon is a successful company. 

If you were a  product manager who worked at Amazon you would be under a great deal of  pressure to find ways for the company to make more money. One way that  they would like to bring in more revenue is to start to sell high end  products. 

It turns out that this is harder than it may have originally  looked to them…

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.

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.

Let’s face it, today when you see a car on the road you expect to see  a person sitting behind the wheel. 

However, if some very smart product  managers have their way, in the future you might be seeing driverless cars whizzing around.  This is all brand new stuff, but there have been a number of very large  investments being made in companies that make robotic delivery vehicles  that are driverless. 

Will their product managers be able to solve all  of the challenges that will be coming with this new technology?

If you’d like to sign up for a challenging product manager job, then  perhaps you’d like to look into what it would take to become the product manager for a mall.  

Back in the day, malls where where everyone in town would go to do  their shopping. They had movie theaters, food courts, and, of course,  plenty of parking. However, times have changed. Now people do more  shopping online and we don’t seem to be heading out to the mall nearly  as often as we used to. Clearly it is time for mall product managers to  update their product development definition. 

What’s a mall product  manager to do in order to keep their product alive?

So product manager, how do you measure how successful you are being? 

If you are like most of us, if you are always on the move and always have  things that you need to be doing you are probably feeling pretty good  about how things are going for both your product and your company.  However, in the world of food delivery services, their product managers  are running around like chickens with their heads cut off and yet they  are still not being profitable. Something is wrong with their product  development definition. 

What are they doing wrong?

The arrival of the Covid-19 virus has upended the lives of most of our customers. 

Many people have lost their jobs and just about everyone has  been forced to stay home. The result of all of this is that our  customers are starting to feel “cash poor” – they are looking for ways  to save money on everything that they buy. 

What this means for product  managers is that we need to make some changes to our product development  definition in order to appeal to our newly price conscious customers.

So product manager, what does your product look like? 

No, I mean when  your customer first has a chance to get their hands on their version of  your product, what does it look like? Does it show up in a nondescript  cardboard box? Is it in an unremarkable container? 

You do realize how  very important first impressions are, right?

Let’s face it, being a product manager for a movie theater chain was not an easy job before the Covid-19 virus showed up. 

Netflix and other  streaming services were cutting into people’s desire to go out and  purchase movie tickets. Now that the virus has arrived, movie theaters  have been closed and even more people have become comfortable sitting at  home watching TV instead of going to the movies. It looks like these  product managers have a real challenge in front of them. 

How are they going to change their product development definition in order to get customers to come back to the movies?

Product managers are starting to discover that something that we may have stopped thinking about in this digital age is still very, very  important.

 Even as more and more of our customers are buying things  online, it turns out that they still go out and go shopping. When they  do this, they want to see and touch the things that they are going to be  buying in a store. 

What this means for product managers is that store shelves are still a very important place for our products to be.

The life of a freezer product manager is generally fairly boring. 

Your  product development definition tells you to create more and more  efficient products in order to replace the older units that your  customers are using. You replace the ones that wear out and you are  always looking for new customers. However, with the arrival of the  Covid-19 vaccines that have to be kept very cold, all of a sudden the demand for freezers, and a lot of them, has exploded. 

How are freezer product managers going to deal with their new found popularity?

How would you feel about taking on a challenge? Yes you say? Well good –  I’ve got one for you. A very big one. 

The companies that dig minerals  out of the earth have a real problem on their hands. They use a lot of  different vehicles to accomplish their work and currently all of these  vehicles run exactly the same way that the car that you drive to work  does – using a combustion engine. As you can well  imagine, if you are operating in an enclosed underground area, the  exhaust fumes are bad, the impact on the environment is bad, and the  cost of keeping all of those vehicles running is bad. 

These companies  want a better solution and that’s what a group of product managers is  trying to use their product development definition to provide them with.

How would you feel about taking on a challenge? Yes you say? Well good –  I’ve got one for you. A very big one. 

The companies that dig minerals  out of the earth have a real problem on their hands. They use a lot of  different vehicles to accomplish their work and currently all of these  vehicles run exactly the same way that the car that you drive to work  does – using a combustion engine. As you can well  imagine, if you are operating in an enclosed underground area, the  exhaust fumes are bad, the impact on the environment is bad, and the  cost of keeping all of those vehicles running is bad. 

These companies want a better solution and that’s what a group of product managers is  trying to use their product development definition to provide them with.