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Betamax went into the chasm, a mountain chain was built from VHS

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Tuesday, 2 Mar 2010, 15:15

I need a great understanding of this marketing talk

None of the terms and ideas being used by Rogers or Moore register with me despite four years working in above the line advertising. Maybe I was too divorced from the marketing process

A marketing manager from Procter & Gamble told me that all this marketing talks was nonsense, that you could not say definitively what worked ... but you had to do something! He linked it to fluke & alchemy more than any prescriptive method. At the tip of any marketing pyramid were the advertising agencies and creative teams coming up with imaginative ploys to get a product noticed.

A poorly promoted brilliant piece of technology could fail. The Wright Brothers might have 'invented' flight but they were dreadful at marketing their product however innovative it might have been. My own experience, first with a web agency & then a documentary production company trying to create e.tv was that however innovative the broadcasters could not see how an audience would pay for these 'add-ons' and they also took the view that people wanted to be entertained, not educated. Look however how well video games have and how films spin off into video games ... and video games have spun off into films.

A well advertised product, that is also a product that people want, may be under supplied causing a chasm when no one can get the product. If people get bored with lack of supply and move onto something else there will be a chasm sad

I’d like some figures on the purchase of GPS positioning for cars, Wispa bars, Apple Cube, Sony Betamax ...

Is the history of Sony Betamax a case of a chasm turning into an abyss?

Panasonic launched VHS, SONY launched a superior quality Betamax. VHS became universal, Betamax was slowly left to rot. Though professional BetaCam became an industry standard for making videos, whilst VHS took over as the medium for distributing videos to buy & rent.

To form my own opinion I need more that just excerpts from Roger's book 'Diffusions of Innovations' or excerpts & commentary on Moore. I need their books & journals they've contributed to on the topic.

So far the OU Resources give me an e.book of Roger's book, but only excerpts. Say 20 pages out of 280. I feel I am commenting on hearsay until I have had more of the facts. I also feel I am not qualified to comment as I don't have a background in marketing. (or at least not marketing 'by the book.')

I need to have something to say about:

  • market segmentation
  • market targeting
  • market  positioning

 

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