Driving Innovation in Product Development Explored at the Summit

January 11, 2012

SBD logo image To provide a full view of product development trends and identify the opportunity gaps, a special two-session track at the Store Brands Decisions 2012 Innovation & Marketing Summit will forecast future flavor trends and analyze the past year’s new product successes as a predictor of future growth.

Kantha Shelke, principal at Corvus Blue LLC, a Chicago-based food science and research firm, will present “New Product Development Based on the Mind Genomics of Flavors” In the second session in the track, Tom Vierhile, director of innovation insights for Datamonitor, will present “New Product Development Trends in Store Brands.”

“Given input from our advisory board and feedback on attendee evaluations from our inaugural Summit, we felt creating a separate track on driving innovation in product development made sense,” said John Failla, founder and publisher of Store Brands Decisions. “These two sessions will provide unique perspective on both current store brands product development trends in addition to offering insights on where retailers should be looking for future product development opportunities”

Kantha Shelke

Shelke will explore the science and art of creating optimal store brands in different product categories for different consumer segments, touching on “mind genomics” (the science of the everyday consumer) and ethnography (the science of culture) to understand experiences with which consumers identify. The session will also discuss the ethnographic and psychophysics underpinnings of how people experience and choose flavors and fragrances, how to refine that knowledge with product ideas or prototypes, how to launch no-fail concepts and advertising for new products developed.

Shelke serves as the editor-at-large for Penton Media’s Functional Ingredients, advisory board member of Nutrition Business Journal, technical editor for Putman Media’s Food Processing and Wellness Foods magazines, science and technology commentator for the Private Label Manufacturer’s Association, contributing editor at WellWise.org, and senior council member at Gerson Lehrman.

Tom Vierhile

Vierhile has more than 20 years of experience in consumer packaged goods reporting and analysis, much of that with Datamonitor’s Product Launch Analytics database of new products. According to Datamonitor’s database, store brands accounted for nearly 31 percent of all new food and beverage items introduced in 2011, more than a three-fold increase from 2009. In his session, Vierhile will analyze the trends supporting this growth and the commonalities among successful new store brands products as well as identify opportunities that lie ahead.

“Since this is the first focused package of educational sessions on product development created for the store brands market, we’re excited about the value they will deliver to attendees to this year’s Summit,” Failla said. “Several retailers have told us they are bringing teams to this year’s event to ensure they get full benefit from all of the educational sessions taking place at the Summit.”

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Keywords: private label product development, summit 2012

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