“What happens when startups start getting referred to as “Web 2.0 startups” — or for that matter, “B2B startups” or “mobile startups” or “pen computing startups” — or as being in the Web 2.0/B2B/mobile/pen computing “space” — is that trends are getting mistaken for markets and products.”
– Marc Andreessen
“The majority of the products in most companies are cash traps. They will absorb more money forever than they will generate. This is true even though they may show a profit according to the books of account. Continued investment sends good money after bad. Escape from the trap requires extreme measures. Either stop investing and manage solely to maximize cash withdrawal, or invest so heavily that a leading position is reached in the market.”
– Bruce D. Henderson
“In considering differentiation, it is important to include all of the conditions of the transaction, as well as the product itself. Service, reliability of vendor and delivery times are likely to be as important as inherent product characteristics. There are often highly differentiated suppliers in markets for commodity products.”– Seymour Tilles
“Innovative efforts should never report to line managers charged with responsibility for ongoing operations. The new project is an infant and will remain one for the foreseeable future, and infants belong in the nursery. Executives in charge of existing businesses or products will have neither the time nor understanding for the infant project.”
– Peter Drucker
“Thanks to increasing interdependence, more and more of the world’s economic work gets done through long-term relationships between sellers and buyers. It is not a matter of just getting and then holding on to customers. It is more a matter of giving the buyers what they want. Buyers want vendors who keep promises, who’ll keep supplying and standing behind what they promised. The era of the one-night stand is gone. Marriage is both necessary and more convenient. Products are too complicated, repeat negotiations too much of a hassle and too costly. Under these conditions, success in marketing is transformed into the inescapability of a relationship. Interface becomes interdependence.”– Theodore Levitt
“Our 2007 study of 7,751 consumers around the world identifies barriers to buying green at all five stages of the purchase process. In the first stage, awareness, consumers must be aware that a product exists before they can buy it, but many of them don’t know about the green choices in a number of categories. Next, consumers must believe that a product will get the job done. Many, however, think the quality of green products is lower than that of their more traditional, “browner” counterparts. Consumers must then decide whether or not a product lives up to its green reputation. Many are skeptical about environmental claims, partly because they distrust corporations and the media. Finally, in the fourth and fifth stages, consumers must decide if a product is worth the expense and the effort needed to purchase it—consumers often believe that green goods cost too much and are difficult to find. To increase sales of environmentally sensible products, companies must remove these five barriers—lack of awareness, negative perceptions, distrust, high prices, and low availability.”
– Sheila M. J. Bonini and Jeremy M. Oppenheim
“Competition brings out the best in products and the worst in men.”
– David Sarnoff
“..The argument that no new product ought to be introduced without managers undertaking a market analysis is common sense. But the argument that consumer analyses and formal market surveys should dominate other considerations when allocating resources to product development is untenable. …Customers may know what their needs are, but they often define those needs in terms of existing products, processes, markets, and prices.”
– Robert H. Hayes, William J. Abernathy
“Deferring to a market-driven strategy without paying attention to its limitations is, quite possibly, opting for customer satisfaction and lower risk in the short run at the expense of superior products in the future. Satisfied customers are critically important, of course, but not if the strategy for creating them is responsible as well for unnecessary product proliferation, inflated costs, unfocused diversification, and a lagging commitment to new technology and new capital equipment.”
– Robert H. Hayes, William J. Abernathy
“The more complex the situation becomes, the more customers and salespeople alike try to simplify things. To the customer, the simplest differentiator is price, and in the absence of a quality decision process to help them understand the value of your products and services, they will tend to focus on it and use it as the criterion when making their decision. Your customers should be looking at their situation in ways they have not thought through before and quantifying the consequences of not having your solution. Your role is to guide them through a collaborative decision process.”
– Jeff Thull
“All big ideas share at least one of three business objectives: improved efficiency, greater effectiveness, or innovations in products or processes. In a way, it’s an exhaustive set of possibilities. You do things right, you do the right thing, or you do something new.”
– Thomas Davenport
“Apple does great products, but at the end of the day we think consumers want choice, consumers want openness.”
– Rob Glaser
“The experience of using a product changes the equation underlying consumers’ preferences. People initially choose products that do not maximize their long-term satisfaction because different considerations are salient in expected and experienced utility. Put simply, what looks attractive in prospect does not necessarily look good in practice.”
– Roland T. Rust, Debora Viana Thompson, and Rebecca W. Hamilton
“When the performance of two or more competing products has improved beyond what the market demands, customers can no longer base their choice on which is the higher performing product. The basis of product choice often evolves from functionality to reliability, then to convenience, and, ultimately, to price.”
– Clayton Christensen
“While markets are competitive, competition works more slowly than we sometimes assume, i.e. customers can be slow to shift allegiance. This, however, is less a result of positive loyalty than of sheer inertia which means that customers put up with unsatisfactory products and services to a remarkable degree.”
– Patrick Barwise
“Customers think about products and markets very differently from the way products and markets are bundled and sold in the physical marketplace. Customers think in terms of activities, while firms think in terms of products. Activities that are logically related in cognitive space may be spread across very diverse providers in the marketplace.”
– Mohanbir Sawhney
“A lot of companies have chosen to downsize, and maybe that was the right thing for them. We chose a different path. Our belief was that if we kept putting great products in front of customers, they would continue to open their wallets.”
– Steve Jobs