The Accidental Product Manager

SEPTEMBER 18, 2023

Getting customers is hard, keeping them is even harder Image Credit: Stock Catalog There’s no question that streaming services are very hot right now. No matter if you are talking about Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon Prime, or any one of a number of other services, people seem to be signing up for these new services in droves. Sure would be good to be a product manager for one of them.

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The Accidental Product Manager

SEPTEMBER 11, 2023

NASCAR product managers try to attract a new fan base Image Credit: roger blake So when I say “NASCAR” to you, what do you think of? Probably a bunch of good ‘ol boys flying confederate flags, drinking beer, and whooping as stock cars go whizzing by. In the past, this image would have been fairly accurate. However, times are changing.

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The Accidental Product Manager

SEPTEMBER 4, 2023

Can drug stores transform themselves into a health care destination? Image Credit: Mike Mozart I’m pretty sure that we all make use of the drug stores that are in our area. The big chains, like Walgreens and CVS seem to be just about everywhere. For the past few years the product managers at the big drug store chains have been struggling. More and more people have been ordering what they need online and are no longer making the trip to their stores.

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The Accidental Product Manager

AUGUST 28, 2023

Sometimes good ideas just don’t make it to market Image Credit: Vaping360 As product managers, the one thing that we’d all like to do is to be in charge of a very popular product. However, something that we often don’t consider is that if a product is popular, it’s going to get a lot of scrutiny. This scrutiny can make the life a product manager much more difficult if not downright impossible.

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The Accidental Product Manager

AUGUST 14, 2023

Equipment product managers are searching for steady revenue Image Credit: Laura Gilmore The product managers for heavy equipment, you know things like cranes, backhoes, rollers, etc., have a bit of a problem on their hands. When times are good and people are buying their product, then times are really good. When times are bad, and people stop buying their products, then times are really bad.

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The Accidental Product Manager

AUGUST 7, 2023

Virtual concerts have paved the way to know more about an artist’s fans Image Credit: jane1000 So I think that we can all agree on one thing: the pandemic changed just about everything. In the world of music performances the change was sudden and dramatic: all concerts were cancelled. Clearly, for the product managers who promote musicians this was a major setback.

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The Accidental Product Manager

JULY 31, 2023

Fast delivery is causing problems for product managers Image Credit: Hamilton Greene Selling products online has become a part of just about every business’s operation. This has opened up new markets for product managers to go after. However, it turns out that selling online comes with a number of rules that product managers may not realize when they first start selling online.

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The Accidental Product Manager

JULY 17, 2023

Patient medical records may be a new product area Image Credit: Kevin Spencer Nobody ever wants to go to the hospital. However, if we do find ourselves there, we would like to think that the doctors know exactly what is wrong with us and that they have a way to fix us. However, let’s face it – the human body is really, really complex and often doctors are just guessing at what ails us.

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The Accidental Product Manager

JULY 10, 2023

Product managers have to get ready for what the future holds Image Credit: Roland Legrand As though you didn’t think that you already had enough to do, now you have to get ready for the metaverse. Look, over at Facebook they are investing millions of dollars into creating virtual worlds for visitors to come to and interact with each other in. If Facebook thinks that this is going to be a big deal, then they are probably on to something.

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The Accidental Product Manager

JUNE 26, 2023

The A380 plane was a bad idea that saw the light of day Image Credit: Photo by Daniel Eledut on Unsplash If you were looking for an exciting product manager job, then being a product manager at the European aircraft company Airbus would probably be a safe bet. Airbus is always locked in battle with the U.S. firm Boeing and both companies sell hundreds of their large airplanes to airlines around the world.

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The Accidental Product Manager

JUNE 19, 2023

A battle is brewing for your car’s dashboard screen Image Credit: may bird If you think about it, all of the screens in your life have already been claimed by someone. Your PC screen is owned by either Microsoft or Apple. Your phone screen is owned by either Google or Apple. The list goes on. Right now there is really only one screen that is still up for grabs.

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The Accidental Product Manager

JUNE 12, 2023

What needs to be done to get cruise customers to return? Image Credit: Mish Mish It’s not cheap to take a cruise. That’s why being a cruise line product manager can be a very good job. However, the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic literally shut down the cruise industry – the boats didn’t leave port for over a year. Now that they have once again been granted permission to sail, how are their product managers going to go about finding ways to get their customers to come back and trave

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The Accidental Product Manager

MAY 22, 2023

Is making a product suggestion a good thing? Image Credit: Hash Milhan As any of us who have gone shopping online know, online retail sites often make product suggestions based on our browsing history. New research is suggesting that this may be a mistake. The reason is that it turns out that consumers dislike being observed while they are deliberating.

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The Accidental Product Manager

MAY 8, 2023

With deliveries, sometimes later is better Image Credit: Javi The good news is that your customer has ordered your product. The bad news is that they don’t have it yet. It’s going to take some time for you to get it from where you store it to their location. This means that your customer is going to have to put up with a delivery delay. As a product manager, how should you go about dealing with this delay?

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The Accidental Product Manager

MAY 1, 2023

It turns out that people only buy things under the right conditions Image Credit: Jurgen Appelo I’m pretty sure that this has happened to all of us. We’ve found something that we are interested in buying, but we can’t quite make up our mind as to if we really want to get it right now. Then all of a sudden we discover that there are only a few of this item left.

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The Accidental Product Manager

APRIL 17, 2023

Can the Home Depot product managers keep the customers that they got? Image Credit: Mike Mozart I think that we can all agree that the Covid-19 pandemic was a huge disruption for pretty much the entire world. However, over at the Home Depot their product managers were able to make the most of the opportunity presented by having everyone stay at home with nothing else to do.

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The Accidental Product Manager

APRIL 10, 2023

Roku product managers are creating an ad-supported streaming strategy Image Credit: Mike Mozart The product managers at the streaming hardware provider Roku had a bit of a problem on their hands. They were looking for ways to boost their revenue and they needed some new ideas. I’m not sure if you would call them lucky, but that pandemic thing came along and all of sudden they had a lot more customers for their product.

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The Accidental Product Manager

MARCH 27, 2023

Is free shipping really a good idea? Image Credit: Mike Mozart As a product manager, our goal is to get more people to buy our products. This can be a challenging thing to make happen! If you happen to be selling your products online, both you and your customers are very aware that your advertised price is not what they’ll end up paying – they also have to pay shipping costs.

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The Accidental Product Manager

MARCH 20, 2023

Walmart product managers think that they know how to compete with Amazon Image Credit: Ben Schumin Let’s face it: being a product manager at Walmart is both the best of worlds and the worst of worlds. It’s best because Walmart is a very large company. Oh, and they have stores that are located just about everywhere. It’s also the worst because you are the company that Amazon is coming after.

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The Accidental Product Manager

MARCH 13, 2023

Pay-TV product managers are losing customers Image Credit: Mike MacKenzie So here’s a question for you. When you go home at night and want to relax, what do you do? Most people plop down and click on the television. Now this is where things start to get interesting: who provides you with your television signal. Sure, you could pull four or five channels off the air using an antenna, but if you want the really good stuff you need to subscribe to a provider.

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The Accidental Product Manager

MARCH 6, 2023

The goal is to build a community of repeat customers Image Credit: Flazingo Photos Let’s face it: it’s pretty easy to set up shop online. All you really need is a website, a way to take orders, and the ability to ship purchased goods to your customers. The ease of doing this is one of the challenges that product managers are facing these days.

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The Accidental Product Manager

FEBRUARY 27, 2023

Product managers start to equip their tires with AI Image Credit: Yamanaka Tamaki When was the last time that you thought about the tires that are on your car? I’m willing to bet that it probably hasn’t been since you had a problem with them. Either the “low pressure” bulb on your dashboard lit up or you had a flat tire. However, I think that we can all agree that no matter how plain or fancy your car is , the tires are a critical part of it.

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The Accidental Product Manager

FEBRUARY 13, 2023

Do online reviews of products really matter? Image Credit: Gayla Baer-Taylor In this digital age in which we are living, we create our product using our product development definition and then our customers can purchase our products and then go home and write a review of it. This review can be posted online. This means that what one of your customers says can be seen by hundreds, thousands, or even millions of other potential customers.

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The Accidental Product Manager

FEBRUARY 6, 2023

The 0.99 trick works – most of the time Image Credit: Steve One of a product manager’s hardest tasks is to come up with a price for their product. Our goal here is to use our product development definition to pick a price that will maximize revenue for our company while at the same time not scaring away our customers. We’ll create a price and then we’ll watch and see what happens.

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The Accidental Product Manager

JANUARY 30, 2023

Getting clothes that fit has always been hard to do Image Credit: S Pakhrin In the world of fashion , product managers understand that their customer’s #1 driver is that they want to look good. However, it turns out that there is something else that can determine if a customer will purchase the products that we offer to them: if they fit. This has always been a challenge for product managers and as the world has moved to making purchases online, fashion product managers have seen this prob

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The Accidental Product Manager

JANUARY 23, 2023

Burger product managers are battling for the same customers Image Credit: cyclonebill One of the biggest challenges that product managers face is when there is someone else offering a product that is very similar to ours. When we find ourselves in a situation like this, we need to get creative in how we go about attempting to attract customers to our product.

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The Accidental Product Manager

DECEMBER 12, 2022

Product managers are taking a different approach to vaping Image Credit: Lindsay Fox. It’s currently a tough time to be a product manager for vaping products in the U.S. right now. Vaping products exploded on the scene a while back and have become very popular. However, there have been a number of serious health-related issues that have started to show up and all of sudden people are starting to view vaping as perhaps being a dangerous thing to do.

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The Accidental Product Manager

DECEMBER 5, 2022

A new machine is going to make it easier to make cocktails Image Credit: Thomas Hawk. If you enjoy a cup of coffee in the morning when you are at home, just exactly how do you go about making that cup of coffee? These days, if you are like most people, you probably pop one of those “K-cups” into your Keurig machine and then sit back and let the magic happen.

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The Accidental Product Manager

NOVEMBER 28, 2022

Changes at Google will have an impact on product managers Image Credit: Mary Crandall. In order to be a successful product manager, we need to have data. In fact the more data that we can get our hands on, the better we are able to do our jobs. In the world of consumer products product managers have been having it pretty easy in the past few years. The powerful data collection abilities of Google have make large amounts of information about our customers available to us to purchase.

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The Accidental Product Manager

NOVEMBER 7, 2022

Robots are being seen as a solution to a throughput problem Image Credit: Jeremy Noble. Customers have become used to going online and placing orders for items that then magically show up at their door. Nowhere has this been more transforming than in the ordering of grocery items. Each consumer can pick out a wide range of different items that all have to be collected and placed into the correct order.

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The Accidental Product Manager

OCTOBER 24, 2022

Ace Hardware product managers want to move into the 21st Century Image Credit: Roadsidepictures. Let’s face it, being a product manager for a hardware store does not seem like it would really be a cutting edge job. Hardware stores have been around for a long time and we all know what they do: sell a lot of different things that we can use around the house.

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The Accidental Product Manager

OCTOBER 10, 2022

How can an elevator be designed to meet customer needs? Image Credit: Melissa Maples. I’d be willing to bet that most of us really don’t spend that much time thinking about elevators. I mean, we walk into a building thinking about where we want to go, we press a button, an elevator door opens, we step in and ride to our destination. Done. However, it turns out that there is a lot more going on behind the scenes than we may realize.

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The Accidental Product Manager

SEPTEMBER 26, 2022

How can Peloton keep growing after the pandemic is over? Image Credit: Tony Webster. You might be thinking that there is no good side to a pandemic. However, you wouldn’t be thinking that if you were a product manager who works for the stationary bike company Peloton. Their sales have shot up as more and more people were forced to stay home and could no longer go to the gym to exercise.

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The Accidental Product Manager

AUGUST 15, 2022

The big question for FitBit product managers is what comes next? Image Credit: Mack Male. When we think about what it would be like to be the product manager for a very successful product, we often think about something that everyone has. If that is the criteria that we use, then the product managers at FitBit would certainly meet the criteria. It seems as though just about everyone has one of those FitBit gadgets on their wrist.

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The Accidental Product Manager

AUGUST 8, 2022

Steaming music is popular in India, but who will people listen to? Image Credit: Gabriel Jorby. In just the past few years, the music industry has been rocked. Once upon a time people would go out to the store and purchase a CD with the latest music album on it. However, that all changed when Apple opened their online music store. Now people were able to purchase digital copies of their music and download them onto their phones, tablets, and computers.

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The Accidental Product Manager

AUGUST 1, 2022

Delivery wars cause product managers to search out unused spaces Image Credit: Parm Parmar. Just in case you didn’t know it, ordering food to be delivered to your home has exploded in the past few years. More and more customers are going online and placing orders for food that they expect to show up at their home quickly. For the product managers who are working at the restaurants that are providing all of this food, times have been tough.

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The Accidental Product Manager

JULY 18, 2022

Competition is heating up for coffee in China Image Credit: dunhilaryu. When you want to get a cup of coffee, where do you go? In the U.S., most of us generally head to a Starbucks. It turns out that if we were in China, this is also something that we can do – Starbucks has expanded until they are just about everywhere in China. However, as Starbucks has become more and more successful, other firms have seen this and have decided that they want to start to offer coffee in China.

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