Household products are anything used inside the household. This can range from furniture to cleaning products and together it comprises a market worth billions of dollars. Naturally, a market this large has fierce competition and it can be difficult for new products, especially those introduced by new or unknown brands, to gain traction within the household products market.

While there are a great number of factors that will ultimately determine a product's success, or failure, one of the most important ones is design. Simply put, poor design creates poor products, and poor products do not perform well in the marketplace. Let us look at some basic design principles that product developers must follow in order to achieve success in the household product market.

Design For Functionality: This is a simple principle but one that is not always followed. The purpose of a product is what it does. This can be a dishwasher detergent that is environmentally friendly, or a furniture set made to used for small apartments but still be comfortable. If the product does not do what it claims it will inevitably fail. Successful research labs and development labs are ones that design for functionality first and foremost.

Design For The End User: Market research is an immensely important part of the product design phase. All to often the design team has ideas that they find themselves overly attached to, even if the market research says otherwise. The initial stage of design should always be market research. If a product is not made to fit the needs and desires of its target clientele it cannot be expected to sell. Recent research has shown that 42% of companies do not listen to their clients. This may have something to do with the high level of product failure. In a market as competitive as household products a developer simply cannot ignore client needs.

Design Based On Competition: It is not always necessary to introduce something revolutionary or new to the marketplace. Sometimes it is sufficient to improve on a product that already experiences success. A good example would be the large-screen smartphone. Once Apple released its first iPhone competitors moved towards creating their own products which they believed were minor improvements, not entirely new products.

Most product ideas are born out of an identified problem. Analyzing how competitor's products address a particular problem and the user response to it can be very enlightening; in what ways does a competitor's product address the target clientele needs and in what ways does it fall short?

Analyzing user response to a competitor's product is free market research and can be incorporated into the design phase quite easily.

As previously stated, the household products market is worth billions. This fact creates a very high risk/reward ratio as competition is high enough that breaking into a certain household product niche can be very difficult. Conversely, a successful entry can mean large financial benefits. This market saturation has created a high product failure rate and many dollars lost in the form of development investments. Neglecting the design phase is a guaranteed path to product failure.