Launch Plan Report: Smart Refrigerator with Memory and Features

This report outlines the launch plan for a new smart refrigerator, emphasizing its memory and additional features. The project utilizes design thinking methods, including Steep Analysis, Activity System, Stakeholder Mapping, and Opportunity Framing, to refine the product idea and identify key features such as ingredient tracking, recipe suggestions, and expiry date notifications. The report details the target market, competitor analysis, and remaining design thinking activities, including ideation, prototyping, storyboarding, and concept synthesis. A comprehensive launch plan is presented, covering pre-launch communication strategies (digital media and newspaper advertisements), resource allocation (physical, human, intellectual, and financial), and a long-term strategic direction focused on expanding into other white goods. The plan includes a Gantt chart, references, and recommendations for successful market entry and growth.

Team contacts
Executive summary
This report is created for developing a launch plan for a new innovation. The chosen product
is a smart refrigerator with a memory of ingredients. The research has utilized design
thinking methods to refine the idea and come with a list of desired features. The report
presents the refined idea and a launch plan for the new smart refrigerator. Certain
recommendations have been made based on the outcomes of the design thinking activities
and prepared plan for the launch.
2

Table of Contents
No table of figures entries found................................................................................................3
Introduction: The Innovation.....................................................................................................3
Proposed Innovation...............................................................................................................3
Problems to Address...............................................................................................................3
Target Market.........................................................................................................................3
Competitors............................................................................................................................3
Further Design Thinking Activities...........................................................................................5
Completed Activities..............................................................................................................5
Remaining Activities..............................................................................................................6
Launch Plan................................................................................................................................7
Launch....................................................................................................................................7
Pre-Launch Communication...................................................................................................7
Resource Plan.............................................................................................................................7
Physical resources..................................................................................................................7
Human resources....................................................................................................................8
Intellectual resources..............................................................................................................8
Financial resources and budget..............................................................................................8
Long-Term Plan.........................................................................................................................8
Long-term strategic direction.................................................................................................8
Choice of strategy...................................................................................................................8
Recommendations and Time Frame...........................................................................................8
Gantt Chart.............................................................................................................................9
References..................................................................................................................................9
3

Introduction: The Innovation
Proposed Innovation
This project is proposed for the production of a smart refrigerator that can keep track of the
regular storing habits of the consumers based on which buying recommendations could be
made on what is missing inside through notifications.
Problems to Address
The innovation is set to address some problems and explores opportunities such as:
 People do not always remember what is missing in the refrigerator while making
purchasing plans. The smart refrigerator would keep track of storing habits of the
users based on which missing ingredients can be notified which help user of the
refrigerator would make purchasing plan.
 Plans for cooking are made based on the ingredients available at home or inside the
refrigerator. However, a person may not remember the ingredients available at home
and may have to look through the entire fridge before making a plan. The refrigerator
application can identify ingredients available and suggest recipes based on available
ingredients to make the decision easy to make.
 Things that are kept in the refrigerator can have expiry dates but users may not always
check them and keeping track of the same is difficult. The smart refrigerator would
have the capability to check the expiry dates based on which notifications can be
given to the user to use the ingredients nearing expiry fast (Danova, 2014).
Target Market
It is expected that the market of smart refrigerator would increase at the CAGR rate of 15.5%
in next 7 years as the need for advanced refrigerators would increase in the consumer’s
because of the rapid rise of urbanization and changing lifestyles of consumers. The North
America is the dominating market for Smart refrigerators today. In future, Asia-Pacific region
is expected to grow with demand for smart refrigerator expected to rise in regions of China,
Japan, and India. This refrigerator would target these rising markets including China, India,
and Japan (Research Nester, 2014).
Competitors
Major competitors of the Smart refrigerator include:
4

Figure 1: Samsung The Family Hub
Samsung: Samsung smart fridge called the Family Hub provides smart facilities such as
music play, weather display, calendar, digital whiteboard, shopping list creation, mirroring of
TV or mobile phone display on refrigerator display and monitoring content, expiration dates,
and cooling levels (PULLAR-STRECKER, 2016).
5

Figure 2: LG Smart Refrigerator
LG: LG smart refrigerator is a part of the smart home range of the company. It has a small
LCD display with programmed interface which provides features like grocery list display,
recommended recipes, content based menu, health manager, news reader, calendar, photo
album, and self-diagnosis (WORTHINGTON, 2013).
Further Design Thinking Activities
Completed Activities
Some of the design thinking activities is already completed and these include:
Steep Analysis: It included exploration of the business environment of refrigerator
that included Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, and Political areas
that were studied to form an analysis matrix (Liedtka, Perspective: Linking Design
Thinking with Innovation Outcomes through Cognitive Bias Reduction, 2014).
Activity System: A visual representation of the creation of the value through the new
innovation was created that involved identification of users and value that could help
build the competitive advantage.
Stakeholder Mapping: Stakeholder mapping helped identify key stakeholders of the
development project who had the influence on the project. Major stakeholders of the
smart refrigerator development company include its customers, employees of the
company, manufacturer, suppliers, and application developers. Customers have high
influence and high interest in the innovation. Suppliers have moderate interest but
high interest in the innovation. Employees have low interest and low influence on the
innovation. Developers have low interest but high influence on the innovation.
Opportunity Framing: At this stage, the initial idea of the production of a
refrigerator with memory of shopping list with ingredient check from inside was
6

explored which was the single idea. It was further refined to explore the entire system
of refrigeration and additional alternatives for development were identified such as
using the ingredients memory, recipes could be suggested and while scanning the
ingredients, even the expiry dates could be checked. This refined the idea such that
the team came up with more features for the Smart Refrigerator (Accenture, 2014).
Need Identifying: For need identification, an interview was taken of a potential buyer
who was introduced to the idea of the Smart refrigerator with highlights of the
features decided. The objective of the interview was to understand the view of the
customer on the ideas and identify if there was any additional need or pain point that
can be addressed by the innovation. It was found that besides shopping list, expiry
date checking, and recipe displays, the customers also wanted to have self-diagnosis
and health manager.
SAM (think-feel-do) framework: SAM framework helped identifying social context,
consumer behaviour, and motivation behind the behaviour. The key motivation
behind purchasing a smart refrigerator were status and comfort.
SPICE Needs framework: This framework helped in understanding social needs of
people, their physical requirements, identity related needs, communication needs and
emotional needs. It was found that socially, people wanted to stay connected to the
refrigerator system while they were outside for shopping and thus wanted an
integrated mobile application that could be remotely connected to the refrigerator and
send notifications. The identity was found the be important and consumers needed the
LCD system on the refrigerator to store the name of the owner and use greetings.
User Personas: A few persona’s of the customers were created including
 A young 25 year old woman who likes to try new things and purchases new
ingredients every time failing to remember their expiry dates and forgets to
use them on time. She is an introvert, intuitive, and a judgemental thinker. She
is looking for guidance on how to store food effectively and learn the recipes.
The goals of this person include wastage reduction, gaining storage
knowledge, and cooking skills.
 A young 20 years old male forgets to remember what is to be brought while
doing shopping and wants to keep a track of the food he purchases. He is an
extrovert, intuitive, thinking and judgemental guy whose goals are to keep a
record of what is in the refrigerator and have reminders on expiry dates of
perishable foods for consumption and replenishment (Transparency Market
Research, 2014).
Ideation using SCAMPER: The idea helped refine the features of the refrigerator.
Reminder system on refrigerator could be used in place of other reminder systems if
the customers were allowed to store reminders. The refrigerator could adapt to the
user behaviour and make changes in recommendations (Comeau, 2015).
Remaining Activities
Ideation: The ideation would be continued to identify more needs of the consumers
of the smart refrigerator. For this, two designing thinking methods including
Analogous Inspiration and Deconstruct & reconstruct would be used. In analogous
7

inspiration, the inspiration would be taken from an unrelated industry to create
innovative ideas. Further, the essential parts of an existing smart refrigerator such as
Samsung The Family Hub would be explored and differentiation would be created in
them to bring innovation. This would add some more features to the innovation that
can be developed (Liedtka, Perspective: Linking Design Thinking with Innovation
Outcomes through Cognitive Bias Reduction, 2015)
Prototyping: After all the features have been identified, a prototype of the product
would be planned for which first the user experience journey would be explored. The
key elements identified to be included in the innovation would then be tested with the
users for each stage of the user journey. For this testing, appropriate prototypes would
be built such as mobile application, print out or more (Jeruchimowitz & Bull, 2017).
Storyboarding : Each action that a user would take while using the refrigerator
would be shown using visuals which would be the display of the touch points of the
innovation. These activities would cover the story of specific personas including
touchpoints at the introduction to the product, needs or pain points of customers, and
resolution through the innovation (Peixoto, Seshaiyer, Lee, Suh, & Jung, 2000).
Concept Synthesis: the innovation idea would be refined and its impact on the
stakeholders including target users and the company would be identified. This would
include identification of consumer needs that would be fulfilled with the solution and
the value preposition it would provide to the stakeholders (Tshiteem, Hwa, Leow,
Lau, Ho, & Yong, 2017).
Launch Plan
Launch
Pre-Launch Communication
The communication channels that would be used for the launch would include the digital
media and newspaper advertisements. The digital media would be used for running social
media marketing campaigns on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Google Ads. Newspaper
advertisements would be used for promotion through the PR articles that would talk about the
smart refrigerator technologies and would cover the news of the upcoming model (Chauhan,
2014).
Specific promotion activities that would be carried out would include:
 Social media challenge throw to engage users with the brand
 Creation of an experience for the users through a demo video or application
 Creative advertisements would be used with specific offers on social media to engage
users
 An interactive micro site would be developed where users can create and store their
shopping list and see the recipes based on ingredients.
8

 Promotional advertisements would be put in the newspapers and magazines (Das,
2010)
Resource Plan
Physical resources
For the launch, some physical resources would be required such as the product,
the place that the project team would be using for ideation, creation of prototype
and planning as well as executing the launch activities.
Human resources
Human resources required for the launch include the marketing staff that would be
responsible for running marketing campaigns, business partners including the
vendors and supermarkets who would be helping the company promote their
product in their location, and the suppliers who would be responsible for
providing the quality parts and components for the smart refrigerator
Intellectual resources
The idea of the refrigerator has to be copyright protected and the company would
take the rights to the intellectual property that would include the new design of the
refrigerator and its components.
Financial resources and budget
A significant budget of $100,000 would be required to execute the launch plan
which would be utilized in paying staff, developing marketing campaigns and
running them on various media.
Long-Term Plan
Long-term strategic direction
In the long term, the plan is to start a new business of white goods where not just the
refrigerator but other goods including washing machine and air conditioner would
also be sold with unique designs. This plan has been made as the innovation can be
brought in for the a range of household devices and an existence and acceptance of an
already running innovative product would add the value and would make it easier for
the company to get into similar goods in the category and sell the new innovation in
the market.
Choice of strategy
The strategy chosen for the long term plan is to develop a brand position of innovation in the
consumers mind such that that every product the company comes up with is seen as new and
innovative design.
9

Recommendations and Time Frame
Based on the launch readiness plan, certain recommendations can be made for the company
launching the idea such as:
 The company should include the additional features as identified during the design
thinking activities
 All the ideas identified must be tested choosing a buyer persona to understand the
level of acceptance they would have for each of them
 In case a specific feature is not much needed as per the customer feedback, it can be
eliminated from the idea of development
 The company should use innovation even while engaging consumers during pre-
launch as the product is innovative. It can be done through the use of innovative
promotional schemes such as consumer competition and micro site helping consumers
do some activities like shopping list creation.
10

References
Accenture. (2014). The Future of Consumer Adoption : The Future of Consumer Adoption .
Accenture.
Chauhan, R. (2014). Branding and promotion of INeoChill Refrigerator for Whirlpool of
India Limited. Whilerpool of India Limited.
Comeau, J. (2015). The Industrial Design Portfolio. River Knife.
Danova, T. (2014). THE CONNECTED-HOME REPORT: Forecasts And Growth Trends For
The Leading 'Internet Of Things' Market. BII Mobile.
Das, B. (2010, April 22). Samsung Refrigerators comes up with another 'fresh' positioning.
Retrieved September 21, 2017, from Afaqs:
http://www.afaqs.com/news/story/26881_Samsung-Refrigerators-comes-up-with-another-
fresh-positioning
Jeruchimowitz, P., & Bull, N. (2017). Use Design Thinking to drive Outcomes. Accenture.
Liedtka, J. (2014). Perspective: Linking Design Thinking with Innovation Outcomes through
Cognitive Bias Reduction. Wiley Online.
Liedtka, J. (2015). Perspective: Linking Design Thinking with Innovation Outcomes through
Cognitive Bias Reduction. J PROD INNOV MANAG , 925-938.
Peixoto, J. S., Seshaiyer, P., Lee, K. H., Suh, D., & Jung, Y. (2000). Using Design Thinking
Tools to Promote. Fairfax, USA: George Mason University.
PULLAR-STRECKER, T. (2016, September 23). A tale of two fridges - the digital divide
reaches the kitchen . Retrieved September 20, 2017, from Stuff.co.nz:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/84447199/A-tale-of-two-fridges-the-digital-
divide-reaches-the-kitchen
Research Nester. (2014). Car Refrigerator Market : Global Demand Analysis & Opportunity
Outlook 2024. Research Nester.
Transparency Market Research. (2014). Smart Kitchen Appliances Market (Products - Smart
Refrigerators, Smart Dishwashers, Smart Ovens, Smart Cookware and Cooktops, Smart
Scales and Thermometers and Others) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth,
Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2022. Transparency Market Research.
Tshiteem, D. K., Hwa, L. C., Leow, J., Lau, J., Ho, A., & Yong, C. H. (2017). Design
Thinking : The Guidebook. Royal Civil Service Commission.
11

WORTHINGTON, N. (2013, November 25). SMART FRIDGE: SIMILAR INTERFACES.
Retrieved September 20, 2017, from ART 410 – PRINCIPLES OF INTERACTION
DESIGN: https://art410f13.wordpress.com/2013/11/25/smart-fridge-similar-interfaces/
12