It is a well established fact that many new products fail. Most companies follow a “build it and they will come” strategy. This might work when you are selling a “new and improved” version of something for which people have an established need. However, that is not the case these days. If there is an established need and therefore, demand, the product must become differentiated to avoid commoditization. If there is no established need, that is, the product is innovative or requires new knowledge to use, the company cannot just sell it and expect success. This is true even if they have a crackerjack sales team that temporarily pushed the product onto customers.
 
While this might seem self-evident to some, it apparently isn’t to most companies. The overwhelming majority spend the lion’s share of their go to market budgets on sales that push and very little on strategies that PULL. Push can lead to short-term wins for the company. But, long-term viability requires a deliberate focus on helping customer gain greater consumptive value.

As the following excerpt illustrates, failure to help customers have a greater consumption experience with the product can damage its desirability for years to come.

“Bringing Duck Home,” Janet Fletcher, SF Chronicle, 10/25/06

Jim Reichardt, a fourth-generation duck farmer from Petaluma whose Liberty brand ducks are served in top Bay Area restaurants, says I have plenty of company (with her phobia about cooking duck). He suspects many Americans developed duck anxiety in the 1960s, when several new York farms formed a cooperative and began promoting Long Island ducklings.

“They marketed the hell out of them,” says  Reichardt, “but they didn’t teach people how to cook them. So a generation was turned off from cooking duck at home because there were so many bad experiences: houses full of smoke and burned duck and having to go out for pizza.”

Posted by John Todor on Thursday, October 26th, 2006 at 4:53 am.