Product Adaptation
This article covers meaning, importance, factors & example of Product Adaptation from marketing perspective.
What is Product Adaptation?
Product adaptation is a strategy in which a new product is based on customizations or modifications on existing products. Product adaption looks to modify a product based on customer beliefs, preferences, culture etc. which is more popular in a particular geography or social group.
While the core product benefit remains the same, product adaption makes changes and alterations based on customer requirements.
Importance of Product Adaptation
A product is manufactured to provide a certain benefit. However, across the world, the same product can be perceived as well as consumed differently. While the core product remains the same, slight modifications can help reach out to a wider customer base. This strategy of adapting a product based on customer needs is product adaptation.
These products are sometimes internal products or they can be also competitors' product. These products don’t depend on innovations and are a mixture of previous products. It is sometimes modifying your existing product and re-launching it.
Factors for Product Adaptation
Product adaption is largely driven by the following factors:
Culture
Every society, country, city, state etc. has a specific culture which binds the people.
Certain products need to be modified based on a regions culture, religion, preferences, beliefs etc.
Laws
The laws and policies in a particular country demands some products to be altered, and hence product adaptation needs to be done.
Market Need
Sometimes a product needs to be altered to target a particular market based on demand and how developed the market is.
A highly developed market would need lot of features and differentiation for a product but a new market would require more functional and basic features of a product in a particular category.
Competitors
In certain businesses, product adaptation strategy is implemented because competitors have created a new segment by modifying an existing product demand.
Examples of Product Adaptation
Certain examples of product adaptation strategy are mentioned as below:
1.Car Models: Across the world, car models are modified or altered based on the country they are sold in. Some vehicles are left hand drive in countries like USA, France, Germany etc whereas right hand drive cars are available in India, UK, Australia etc. Hence the same car brand & model is adapted as per the laws.
2.Food products: Consider food brands like McDonald’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut etc. which have their food products sold worldwide. However, they have taken a product adaptation strategy by offering meal options like vegetarian, sea food based on food preferences etc. in the country of operation.
Hence, this concludes the definition of Product Adaptation along with its overview.
Browse the definition and meaning of more similar terms. The Management Dictionary covers over 1800 business concepts from 5 categories.
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