Market's Life

by Thomas Sim, 8 April 2002

We have life. Most people won't disagree with this statement.

Market has life? Oh, wait a minute! We know product has product life cycle. Is market life same as product life?

My answer is that product life is a resultant of a market's response to a product. Without market, there is no product life cycle.

Once a good friend told me that he had impressed his new boss that he could successfully launch a new product. He told his boss that he didn't want to discuss his salary as yet because he would demand for his pay after he had achieved his launch project. If the boss couldn't give him his package, he would leave the company and the product would die.

I had to agree with you that he is one kind of an ego person. On the other hand, he probably forgot one thing - market has its own life.

The question: Is a product successfully launched in jeopardy if someone behind the launch were to leave?

People can come and go, product is still a product. What is most alarming is that: no matter what product you are launching, the respondent - the market - is still the market. You probably want to change the perception of the market to your product, but market is a third party - it has its own perception of the product, and thus "its life".

I told him that market would still be there even if he left the company, the product would probably slowly die after his departure - if he was that good! However, a good package should be discussed before than after.

Another common scenario is that we assume what we invest in the market would equate its yield. This is entirely wrong! The market has its substitute choices. There are competitors. Every thing we do has to be relative to what market would response to other substitutes. This is dynamic and ever changing in manner. To illustrate this point, giving a key customer special treatment doesn't necessarily translate to higher return. Your special treatment for him is in your perspective. To him, you are just another substitute.

Where to benchmark? The average should be average of your competitors, not your view of how much you have done for him.

Marketing is always a perspective of the environment, not our view of that environment. That is why market survey is so important and understanding customer behaviour is the key factor to understanding market forces. However, there are many bosses who prefer to look at things only in their own perspective.

In that myopic view, marketing is a dying profession.