In today’s world of innovation where the sole motto of companies is to ‘Innovate or Die’, it is becoming difficult for companies to proliferate their technology into the markets. Users today are being bombarded with numerous choices and are facing difficulty in selecting the best alternative. Though many small companies are competent enough in the field of technology,they still lack a good marketing base. This is precisely the reason why many good products do not succeed in the market. Therefore, some of the smart organizations like Cisco and Nike are and for quite some time have been outsourcing their production to developing countries while dedicating their resources to focus more on the marketing aspect. Going by C.K.Prahalad’s Core Competence Theory, we can say that in today’s world marketing can be considered to be a core competence. A company can use this to create a sustainable advantage for itself over other organizations.
A company often tries to position itself by creating a desired image for itself as well as its products in the minds of its consumers. This positioning plays a very significant role when it comes to high tech products. Microsoft and Apple are both billion dollar brands, this is because they have been positioning themselves in such a way that they have maintained their status as top of the mind brands.
Traditional methods of segmentation are inappropriate for high tech product manufacturers because these procedures are designed for markets in which a marketer can easily identify and gather extensive quantitative and qualitative data on the appropriate industry and the customer group which is interested in its product or services.
There are several reasons as to why high-tech companies face difficulty in marketing their products. First, technology changes at a rapid rate which keeps these companies on their toes because. This is necessitated by their need to remain updated in order to stay ahead of their competition. Second, it is difficult to find buyers who are ready to accept new technology. Third, many companies do not have clarity of vision, due to which they allocate there resources to filling a small gap existing in the market. This seldom, provides them with a sizeable market and often drives them into an economic crunch.
Market positioning is a concept which can be of boundless use for the high tech companies. In order to be fruitful, a company must differentiate itself and its products from all others, thus attaining a unique position in the marketplace. If marketers themselves cannot segregate their products from those of their competitors, then how can they expect their customers to do so?
Marketers should follow the pull model of new product development. They should appreciate the demands of their customers and then onward this to their R&D team which can then devise a product which will inevitably be a close match to the customer’s requirement. The success for High Tech companies lies in connecting their customers to their R&D activities. This ensures that the product is positioned on the terms of its prospective use.
It's certainly innovative. Involving customer in R&D products is hard though. there wer unsuccessful examples in the past.
ReplyDeleteI agree to the fact that customer involvement is a hard thing to achieve but if successful it will certainly cause customer delight.
ReplyDeleteSo even if it is difficult I will say that it is worth a shot.