{"id":1336,"date":"2006-02-20T13:51:03","date_gmt":"2006-02-20T11:51:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/2006\/02\/marketing-broad-vs-niche\/"},"modified":"2006-02-20T13:51:03","modified_gmt":"2006-02-20T11:51:03","slug":"marketing-broad-vs-niche","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/2006\/02\/marketing-broad-vs-niche\/","title":{"rendered":"marketing: broad vs. niche"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"market<\/p>\n

Should KDE target a broad or a niche market?<\/strong>
That question has been
\nraised on the kde-promo list recently, and people are arguing away. The question itself is rather
\nvalid, of course, but — and here comes the surprise — the right way to answer it is not discussing
\nto reach consensus. The right way is doing research.<\/p>\n

From a scientific point of view (yeah, marketing is also a science), there’s a couple of things
\nthat can help with answering the ‘broad vs. niche’ question. First, the strategic situation has to
\nbe taken into account. Crossing the Chasm<\/a> offers quite some insight on that topic. I’ll not go into too much
\ndetail here, but consider two scenarios. <\/p>\n

Imagine you want to introduce your product into a mainstream market (‘crossing the chasm’
\nbetween early and mainstream market), choosing for a broad approach is generally considered the
\nwrong thing to do. The right thing in this situation is concentrating on a market segment (niche)
\nand try to become market leader there. Rationale: Being a market leader in one market will gain you
\nmuch more than being second in several markets. Supporting technologies are developed for the
\nleading product, not for the second. Mouth-to-mouth advertising does not promote the ‘second best’
\nimplementation, and there are many more situations where the 2nd winner is the first loser.
\n
So you’ve entered the mainstream market, you have a market segment where you are the
\nfirst choice. Consider that the king-pin that initiates a chain reaction. Now you can concentrate on
\nthe second wave of market segments to take over. Look at your strenghts, the needs of possible
\ntarget markets and use mouth-to-mouth advertising. But why not keep concentrating on one market?
\nHere’s why: The added support of the first market segment you took over gains you additional
\nresources, makes you stronger, and offers a basis to work off. Now you actually have the resources
\nto broaden your strategic approach.\n <\/p>\n

\n Second, what is your product. Some product have been designed for niche markets. (To be clear,
\nKDE as a ‘general purpose Desktop’ is not one of those.) KDE is a platform, rather than a product.
\nThis has certain implications on a decision for or against a niche-strategy, as I stated above. In
\nfact, a general purpose ‘platform’ such as KDE can be used in many niche segments. So what do we
\nhave? A product that can easily be changed to serve as a good solution in a niche, and a product
\nthat can easily be changed to accomplish a task in another niche. Voila, low switching costs when it
\ncomes to ‘marketing mandates product development strategies’. In fact, consider a whole product<\/a> based on KDE. Now try to work out what has to be changed to
\ntarget one market, or the other. You’ll probably come to the conclusion that those changes have to
\nbe made in the outer ring<\/a>. That’s why KDE can easily be marketed into different
\nmarkets. But there’s also a threat buried in this conclusion: The fact that we can does not mean we
\nshould<\/em> target broadly. It merely means that we could<\/em>.\n <\/p>\n

So the actual strategic position is one consideration for the choice “broad vs. niche”. I do
\nnot want to advocate one or the other right now, but show that we should not ask each other the
\n‘broad vs. niche’ question, but we should try to answer the question “Where are we
\nnow?”<\/strong>. The answer to that question mandates one or the other approach.\n <\/p>\n

Yeah, mandates. Marketing is – sadly<\/em> – no rocket-science. Uuuhm, sadly? – Exactly.
\nHere’s where the infamous bikeshedding<\/a> comes into the picture.
\nWe should be aware that one possible approach to those strategic issues is discussing it and trying
\nto reach consensus. It’s rather easy to have a personal opinion on the ‘broad vs. niche’ issue. But
\nfrankly, this is wrong<\/strong> as an approach to get real results. Marketing has been
\nresearched for quite some time, and trying to solve the problem by discussion does throw away all
\nthat previous work we have available. But luckily<\/em>, marketing KDE is no rocket-science. It
\ncertainly makes sense to lay the marketing and strategic groundwork in a structured and validable
\nfashion – it even isn’t all that hard to do. Structured<\/em> means scientific here, it means
\napplying professional methods. Validable means: Make it easy to follow why you took a certain
\ndecision. You’ll need that validity in two respects: First, strategic decisions are generally
\nimportant ones. You have to convince people why your direction is the right one. People need to
\nunderstand why a decision is made. Second, you’ll be getting new data and new insight all the time.
\nDecisions based on longish discussions would have to be reiterated then. That does not scale.
\nStructured and validable strategic analyses can be reworked in the input data that have been used,
\nyou can change only the bits that have changed.
\n And all that’s worth nothing if you do not open your mind for a strategy that seems
\ncounter-intuitive.<\/p>\n

Marketing KDE is moving towards a structured, professional approach.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Should KDE target a broad or a niche market?That question has been raised on the kde-promo list recently, and people are arguing away. The question itself is rather valid, of course, but — and here comes the surprise — the right way to answer it is not discussing to reach consensus. The right way is… Continue reading marketing: broad vs. niche<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1336","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kde"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1336\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vizZzion.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}