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  #101  
Old 03-22-2012, 08:32 PM
seebs seebs is offline
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Default Re: This explain everything

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What Bong Boy hasn't figured out yet is that creating a product won't create any jobs, unless there is sufficient demand to justify mass production of the new product. Five guys in marketing hobbling together a mock-up of a new product is not going to cut it. There has to be pre-existing demand at levels sufficiently high enough to warrant the investment in production.
This is a gross oversimplification. Sufficiently innovative products can create new categories of product, which exist in new markets that were not preexisting.

But for a new product and market to get off the ground, there must be a pre-existing need or desire that product fulfills or a problem that product resolves or claims to...ie: demand
But it may be impossible to measure or even meaningfully estimate.

There's a story I was told when I was a kid of two shoe salesmen who are travelling around the world, and they come to a prospective new market.

One wires home, dejected: "They don't even WEAR shoes here."
The other wires home: "Amazing opportunity, no competition!"

But you don't really know which is which until you've TRIED showing something to people. And even then, if you show it to the wrong people, you get nowhere.
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  #102  
Old 03-23-2012, 12:42 AM
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Occasionally, something completely new comes along. The Rubik cube was a good example. People had no idea that they wanted such a thing until it was invented and shown to them.
I was thinking of this exact thing this morning, when I was trying to come up with an example of a truly new product where demand didn't exist beforehand.

But then I remembered Pet Rocks. And mood rings. And a bunch of other things from the 70s that I shouldn't have remembered.....

So in point of fact, the demand already was present for mental toys and amusements. This is not a new category. Rubiks cubes, Pet Rocks, mood rings, etc. are simply new entrants into an pre-existing category.

Which takes me to seeb's comment: there are not, in fact, very many truly new categories at all. Only product variations inside existing categories.
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  #103  
Old 03-23-2012, 12:55 AM
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Default Re: This explain everything

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What Bong Boy hasn't figured out yet is that creating a product won't create any jobs, unless there is sufficient demand to justify mass production of the new product. Five guys in marketing hobbling together a mock-up of a new product is not going to cut it. There has to be pre-existing demand at levels sufficiently high enough to warrant the investment in production.
This is a gross oversimplification. Sufficiently innovative products can create new categories of product, which exist in new markets that were not preexisting.
Which doesn't refute my argument.

Again: if the demand for those new categories isn't strong enough, then it doesn't matter that you've created a new category. Demand must always be sufficient to economically justify production, before go-ahead will be granted for production. And there won't be any new jobs, without production.

New category, or no new category.

The Segway scooter is often used as an example of a new product category. Nothing like it. But marketing got the demand analysis wrong. WAY wrong. The original sales projections were many multiples higher than they finally turned out to be. Marketing "misunderestimated" how un-cool it looks to be zipping around on one of those things, and how that might impact sales.
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  #104  
Old 03-23-2012, 01:10 AM
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Default Re: This explain everything

I think the problem with the Segway is it did not come equipped with a whip antenna with an attached fox tail. That would have made it totally cool.
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  #105  
Old 03-23-2012, 01:29 AM
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I think the problem with the Segway is it did not come equipped with a whip antenna with an attached fox tail. That would have made it totally cool.
I was hoping for a militarized version. Shaped more like a chariot, with Sidewinder rockets port and starboard, grenade launcher, thermonuclear blast shield, and ablative armor resistant to both disruptor AND phaser fire.

Yeah, that'd be cool.


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  #106  
Old 03-23-2012, 01:30 AM
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Default Re: This explain everything

Well, a big part of the Segway problem was that when they were trying to build up anticipatory buzz about it, they totally made it sound like it was a personal hovercraft; so a lot of people, including me, hated it right out of the gate.
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  #107  
Old 03-23-2012, 01:33 AM
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Well, a big part of the Segway problem was that when they were trying to build up anticipatory buzz about it, they totally made it sound like it was a personal hovercraft; so a lot of people, including me, hated it right out of the gate.
Yeah, the amount of "WTF? Is that what all the fuss is about?" was so thick you could cut it with a knife.
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  #108  
Old 03-23-2012, 01:38 AM
seebs seebs is offline
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Default Re: This explain everything

Demand has to exist for sales, but it doesn't have to have already existed before the product came out. Demand for motion-based game controls was basically nil before the Wii; they had been tried and had failed. The Wii changed what there was demand for.

That said, all of this turns out to be irrelevant. AML's premise is that rich people do this, but really it's more commonly people who believe that they could be rich... And that requires a more fair society which gives them a real chance.
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  #109  
Old 03-23-2012, 02:04 AM
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Default Re: This explain everything

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So, demand. I'm not sure how much truth there is to the assertion that marketing can create demand out of thin air (it sounds plausible on its face, but I wouldn't expect it to have a huge, wide-ranging effect or anything). But, there is a way that demand can reliably be created: put money into the hands of people who don't have much of it. In other words, redistribution.
i appreciate your well thought out response, but you lose me here. we create all sorts of things out of thin air. redistribution satisfies demand, it does not create it. you seem to be talking about a way to eliminate demand (which is fine with me), not how or why it is created. that same insatiable appetite for what's right by the masses is the same instinct that drives the few. demand is about greed. i mean...just look at the word! greed is a concept that is marketed to. it a concept borne out of what is natural...like thin air.

maybe i'm wrong, but i don't think you had an argument with me. but i still think you managed to make a point.

but then i'm often wrong.
Well, Sauron already pretty much articulated what I was trying to say in the post right above yours. You can't just use marketing to convince people to buy a bag of poop. They have to already want/need something like your product to some degree or it's not going to work. Surely, you can hype your product and bring it to people's attention, which will trivially make people want it more than they otherwise would've. But, there are limits to what you can accomplish with this. That's what I mean when I say you can't create demand out of thin air; at most, it seems to me that you can intensify and redirect existing demand.

Another thing I forgot to mention, but which is quite important, is that no matter how much your company advertises its product, it's not going to sell if people don't have the disposable income to buy it. So, again, we see that putting money into consumers' hands will spur more sales than putting money into the business.
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