Is there a technical or industry term for this? Marketing, sales, business or manufacturing.

[tectonicplates]

Is there some kind of technical term for when a company makes a product but deliberately doesn't advertise it, or advertises it very poorly, so as to deliberately generate poor sales to "prove" there was no demand for it so they don't have to make it again?

Don't tell me it doesn't happen because it blatantly does!

Can you give an example? And why would they do it?

I can really only imagine this happening in the third sector, ie; a business making a product or service at the request of a government body/ board of directors/

They know hey won't make money from the product/service therefore choose to do it badly?

I don't imagine any private business would do this on purpose, could be wrong!

Can't imagine a private sector company wanting to do this.

Who know's whether charities might do this in order to release funds from being 'restricted' to a specific purpose.

Companies sometimes pay to keep a trademark going, even though you would think there is no point, for example 'Access' used to be a make of credit card.

Train companies run trains at funny times, that never carry passengers, to keep the 'right' to do so.

Train companies run trains at funny times, that never carry passengers, to keep the 'right' to do so.

That's different. Parliamentary trains are there because of the cost of closing down stations and lines. The cost and beaurocracy of closing lines was made deliberately difficult to prevent a repeat of the Beeching Axe, which isolated communities.

Loss leader ? But that's not a flop, it's just things companies sell at cost or less to get people in the door.

Otherwise I'd say a doozy ? But I'm sure they would make on purpose.

Personally I see many faults in products and I can tell they have not properly gone through the prototyping stages. They may have just been made after one prototype to save money/ time. There can be some major communication difficulties working with factories in China.

*not sure ( sorry long day)

Loss leaders tend to be things that sell very well though, e.g. milk. They put them very clearly on display so as to get people into the shop, which is the opposite of what I was thinking of. Thanks for the idea though.

It's expensive to launch new products (even without "marketing" - by which I assume you mean Above the Line marketing like adverts on tv/online/posters outside?). Bribing a new product out involves marketing activities such as consumer research, product design, packaging creation, artwork, and then it needs sold to shops. Getting a new product onto ship shelves is resource hungry and expensive- dealing with supermarkets needs experienced staff and large budgets to cover listing fees and promotional support.

Loads of products and brands don't do ATL marketing as tgey either can't afford to it believe the BTL activities mentioned above are enough. Also, in many cases too that need to establish distribution broadly before ATL is sensible (eg no point putting a national tv ad on if you can only buy the product in 100 shops nationwide).

What types of products do you think this happens with? Do you have examples?

As above, NPD is expensive and having working in the private sector for years, I’ve never know a product to be purposely unsuccessful.

We have products that we don’t advertise because they’re a bi product (waste) which we generate a product on. However, we are reliant on volumes from our normal product for the waste product to be available, therefore we are particular as to who receives it.