MBA PT 6 – Grenoble Graduate School of Business | The marketing applied to farming machinery | Product innovation – ACGO Corporation, Fendt | | Anaël BIBARD | 29/11/2009 |

Marketing assignment. Teacher: Paul Gaffney. |

* Table of contents

Table of contents 2 Executive summary 3 Introduction 4 1. Critical literature review about product innovation 4
1.1. Marketing and product innovation are highly connected 4
a. Efficient innovation brings performance 4
b. Definition of the possible innovations 4
1.2. The new product development (NPD) 5
a. Organizational and market knowledge matters 5
b. A new path to innovation: the Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS) 5
c. From idea to concept testing 6
d. The NPD process, from business analysis to commercialization 7
1.3. The associated risk with innovation 8
a. Time response of the market and new product (NP) obsolescence 8
b. The payback problem: customers do not act always as expected 9
c. You will face competition anyway 9 2. The company case study 10
2.1. Presentation of the company 10
2.2. The agricultural machinery market 10
a. Market overview 10
b. Market perspectives 10
c. Competitors 11
2.3. Fendt and AGCO strategy 11
a. Major recent innovations of the company 11
b. SWOT analysis of AGCO 12
c. Results of Fendt and AGCO 12
2.4. Advices 13 Conclusion 13 Bibliography 15 Table of charts 19 Table of appendix 19

* Executive summary
Agriculture has significantly evolved during the last century. Technological innovations, like selective breeding, mechanization improvements or chemical researches, have greatly contributed to increase yields and productivity (Sassenrath, et al., 2008). Therefore, product innovation was a major issue for agricultural machinery firms. Fendt, the high-tech brand of AGCO Corporation, is recognized as one of the leading brand for his innovative culture.