Re: better product wins
There are just too many examples of inferior products 'winning' that people
have already pointed out, that show your laws to be wrong. People have
already mentioned the Tucker automobile, Beta tapes, George W. Bush
(jokingly), and a few more.
Here are some others: Nagra and Stellavox. Most of you have probably
never heard of either, but Nagra has been the world standard in film
production recording for decades. Stellavox made a better, smaller,
easier-to-use product. So why have even most people in the film industry
never heard of Stellavox, whereas everyone has heard of/uses Nagra?
Because Nagra won a big military contract, and thereby prospered.
Stellavox was not yet established enough to be able to deliver the
quantities needed. Nagra continues to be dominant to this day, and
Stellavox is all but forgotten. It is not that Nagra is bad--it is
absolutely excellent. But Stellavox was a better product.
That is but one example. There are just too many factors, including the
most powerful, "It's who you know", to be so naive as to think that a
better product will always win.
It is interesting reading the discussions on Euphoria, regarding
open-sourcing it, etc. I sense that many are getting frustrated, and
reaching a sort of critical mass. On the other hand, Rob Craig doesn't
seem too rushed at all, and is willing to be patient, and watch Euphoria
gain momentum more slowly than many of the users would like.
Open-source doesn't necessarily mean no money. As anyone in IT knows, the
up-front costs for most items, be they hardware or software are minor
compared to the maintenance and improvement of those products. Red-Hat
does quite well SUPPORTING free software, and also makes some money by
putting it in a box. Other companies make a good living SUPPORTING Linux,
Apache, BIND, content-management systems, and other open-source projects.
But a programming language? It seems only O'Reilly and other publishers,
and progammers make money off of an open-source programming language. But
who else does? I'm eager to hear how anyone would think RDS could bring in
profits were they to open-source Euphoria. Obviously Rob would be the
first guy O'Reilly called if they wanted a book on the subject... Rob could
probably charge more for any programming he does, were that book to come
out, and Euphoria to go mainstream. Any other ideas? I can't think of too
many.
Regards,
Ted
--On Monday, July 02, 2001 10:19 AM -0600 jstory at freenet.edmonton.ab.ca
wrote:
>
>
> I never formally studied marketing, but I read some books about
> marketing, among them "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing" by Al Ries
> and Jack Trout. At first I was impressed by this book, before I spent
> much time thinking about it. After reading it over and over, and parts
> of it many times, and pondering it, I came to the conclusion that this
> book contains probably more crap, page for page, than any other book
> I ever read. Especially chapter 4, The Law Of Perception.
> It was at this time that I said "to hell with books about marketing"
> if this is the kind of crap they are full of, and I decided to do my
> own thinking on the subject. Poor as my own thinking is, it can't be worse
> than this kind of crap.
>
> As I said in a previous message, my theory of marketing is:
>
> Rule 1. Between unequal products, the better one wins.
> Rule 2. Between equal products, the first one wins.
>
> The word "better" in rule 1 has to be properly understood.
> It means better for the customer's purposes. Different customers have
> different purposes. And their purposes are not necessarily what the
> creator of the product thinks their purposes ought to be.
>
> Obviously these rules assume that a product is advertised enough so that
> people know of its existence, and is accessible so people can get it if
> they want it, and is not prohibited by law.
>
> Al Ries and Jack Trout believe that whether a product wins has nothing
> to do with quality of the product.
>
> ADVERTISING:
> Can an inferior product be successfully advertised so that it wins over
> the superior product, thereby invalidating Rule 1 ?
> David Ogilvy was probably almost the ultimate guru on the subject of
> advertising. He speaks from experience as a professional advertiser.
> He says that if he puts his mind to it, he can write an advertisement
> that will sell an inferior product. Once. As soon as people find out
> that it is an inferior product, they stop buying it. In fact the more
> money is spent advertising the inferior product, the quicker people
> find out that it is inferior and the quicker they stop buying it.
> Therefore his policy was to advertise only the best products.
> Not even the great master of advertising, David Ogilvy, Himself, could
> violate my rule number one.
>
> MICROSOFT:
> Can rule number 1 be violated by means of enough market-domination,
> such as Microsoft has?
> No. Not even Microsoft can violate rule number one, keeping in mind
> a proper understanding of the word "better".
> ( BTW, Microsoft spends something like half a billion a year finding out
> what people want. This fact demonstrates that Microsoft understands the
> meaning of the word "better" in rule number one. )
> As evidence that even Microsoft can't win with inferior products, I
> offer:
>
> http://www.independent.org/tii/news/990921/IBD.html
>
>
> Jerry Story
>
>
<snip>
>
>
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