Every year hundreds of millions of dollars are spent marketing products (or services) that fail. Millions of dollars those companies would love to get back.

Fortunately you happen to have a functioning time machine that you bought on Craig’s list. And now you’ve got one chance to fix what went wrong in the marketing research process and convince one of those companies not to spend that money.

You’re going to investigate and document the story of a famous new product flop (and market research failure) and how you went back in time to fix it. 

• Identify and research a prominent new product/service failure.
• The press loves failures, so you won’t have any problem finding examples.
• Identify the following: product/service name, the company who marketed it, the year it was introduced and where (particularly if not in the U.S.).
• Find a sample ad for your failed product/service.
• YouTube is great for TV ads; image searches are great for printed ads. If you can’t find an ad, you probably haven’t picked a big enough flop!
• Grab the link for your ad.
• Answer the following questions about the market research process.
• Refer to section 2.3 of the text as needed.
• What are the steps in a market research process? Provide a brief explanation of each step relating it to your product as possible.
• Where was the failure in your product’s market research process? Which step was missing, not followed correctly, misinterpreted, or misrepresented?
• What, in a single sentence, is the market research finding that you’re going to go back in time and share with management to stop this introduction?

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