How does a firm decide what features, attributes, or functions to push to the market when there are several options that create a multidimensional envelope? Within the envelope are barriers that force a trade-off between ruggedness and portability for example. Ideally, maximum ruggedness and portability would serve the market best, but the materials available do not allow maximizing both features.
One way to steer clear of a lumpy market would be to serve only a single target segment and specialize in serving that particular niche. Although doing so limits the potential market, and makes a firm vulnerable to other firms who may create products that appeal to your niche market.
Three components of customer response:
Basic - Technologies that are taken for granted but if not present in a product, there is no sale. HD on televisions would be a good example of this, as well as laptops with wireless built in. Features that are expected, but don't guarantee a sale.
Discriminators - Providers of cell phone services is a good example. Many choose their first provider by what free or inexpensive cell phone models are offered. Pricing is very competitive in the industry for plans, so the model of phone can often influence provider.
Energizing Features - A great example of this in my field is the availability of encrypted harddrives on new laptop purchases. Many customers are requesting encrypted harddrives on laptops for any users who handle company finances, employee benefits/health, and intellectual property. With the recent news stories about laptops being stolen that contain confidential user databases, this has become a concern with many IT departments.
Finding markets for new technologies goes back to some other chapters we read in this book where we talked about products being designed for a yet unknown market. This chapter goes a step further and proactively seeks to find both the technology and the market before anything is certain about either. It is also possible to enter into several markets with the same technology, however attributes are different for the various segments. The only reasonable example I can come up with is Alienware high performance laptops. At one point, a very high performance laptop that could compete with desktops was an emerging technology of sorts in the laptop market. Alienware saw a need for it's high performing laptops in several markets, so it started with a base system and customized it based on segment need. High end gaming laptops came with the latest and greatest video cards, memory, and high end screen. Other laptops were for engineers or designers running AUTOcad products, so they were loaded up with high speed large capacity drives and large amounts of RAM to run resource intensive applications. Alienware could target several segments by changing the attributes of its product.
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