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Customers Don’t Know Best, When it Comes to Creating Breakthrough Products and Services (June 3, 2008)
Many companies create new products and services based on what their existing customers request. In fact, “customer focused” is a strategy that many business schools teach. However this strategy narrows a market needlessly say the authors of Tuned In, the new book from Pragmatic Marketing.
Scottsdale, AZ June 3, 2008 – There is a fundamental flaw with being a customer-driven organization, say the authors of Tuned In the new book about uncovering the extraordinary opportunities that lead to business breakthroughs. This remarkable insight is contrary to what many business leaders believe and is taught at some business schools.
Existing customers represent a small percentage of the market opportunity for most businesses, so basing a product development strategy solely on what your existing customers want is flawed, the authors say. Worse, existing customers have different market problems than non-customers (buyers who don’t yet do business with you), and only frame their view of the future on incremental improvements to their past experiences.
“For example, if a company in the late 1990s that made and sold portable music devices asked their existing customers what they wanted, they might say ‘more storage’ or a ‘smaller unit’,” says Craig Stull, CEO of Pragmatic Marketing and co-author of Tuned In. “But the companies that listened to their customers all missed the biggest market problems which were identified by Apple when they developed the iPod—existing portable devices were too difficult to use and impractical for downloading and managing more than a few songs.”
The authors of Tuned In offer a model for success used by many companies to create breakthrough products and services.
Tuned In: Uncover the Extraordinary Opportunities That Lead to Business Breakthroughs by Craig Stull, Phil Myers, and David Meerman Scott is published by Wiley on June 27, 2008 and available wherever business books are sold. ISBN: 978-0470260364
Anyone can use Tuned In to replicate the model for success. It works for well-known companies like Ford, Apple, and GE and those not-so-famous like GoPro and Zipcar. It works for realtors, doctors, ministers and even rock stars. Tuned In will teach you how to transform your everyday activities into those which create the kind of culture that builds market leaders.
Authors Craig Stull and Phil Myers lead the team at Pragmatic Marketing, the company behind Tuned In. David Meerman Scott is an online thought-leadership strategist who teaches the New Rules of Marketing seminar for Pragmatic Marketing.
