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Examples of an inefficient product line market strategy

What are some examples of an inefficient product or product line market strategy or Product/Market Fit?

I recently recorded a Podcast with my guest Raghu Ramanujam where we discussed the “product/market fit” that has become quite popular lately to explain product successes or failures.

I think the key thing is at a more granular level: Building a product that does what a customer wants to do.  It is more granular than getting a job done or as some advocate “outcome based.”

Defining the product in terms of what is discussed here then lets you easily define the market segment to go after.  I teach this in this course:  “Do, Innovations, Design Thinking and Value Proposition.”

Here are the major reasons for product failure and a brief example of each.  By the way, some University of North Carolina professors estimate about 40% of products fail to represent a waste of over $1/2 Trillion per year

Picking the wrong market segment to go after

I once joined a startup as the second product manager for a video production product.  The company had decided to go after the Mac user who wanted to edit videos.  I went out and interviewed the first customers and found they were all video production experts.  Not Mac users. This explained why the product was not selling very well.

Not positioning the product well

Samsung, in some of their advertising, suggests that they are “leading the way”, “innovative”, and “stylish.  You have to be those things and let the customer discover it.  You do not become those things by just saying it.

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Misunderstanding the current market status

RCN Magazine credited me with shipping the first advertisement on a cell phone in 2003.  I then tried to raise venture capital for a cell phone advertising startup for a zero billion dollar market.   I couldn’t find a single investor after spending a year talking to 200 VCs and angel investors and then I went out of business because my focus was raising capital instead of selling.  Ten years later, the cell phone advertising market was over $13 Billion, hence the perils of going into a market too soon.  If I knew then how to find out what my customers really want to do, I would have known I was too early for the market and might have waited.

Where the market is going

Sears just filed for bankruptcy in October 2018.  I sold their eCommerce site, Sears.com an Amazon-like personal recommendations service.

The bricks and mortar retail stores felt that eCommerce was their competitor and refused to collaborate. But before Amazon, Sears had distribution centers and stores everywhere.  They could have leveraged that existing infrastructure and set up direct home delivery.

The market was going towards ease of use, convenience in finding what one wants quickly.  If I had a nickel for all the times over the past ten years when I took the time to go to a retail store and not find what I was looking for and as a result wasting several hours of my time, I’d be a millionaire. But Sears, perhaps blinded by their retailing business model could not or would not see the market changes.

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Not planning for changes and threats

Take the Sears example.  As a result of the internet and its increased speeds, online e-commerce became the go-to place for finding what a customer wants to buy and get it.  Then Amazon added its “Prime” service establishing a “subscription” model of creating customer loyalty (Why go to a retail store when I am already paying for free delivery?) plus an ongoing revenue stream that Wall Street loves.

Pricing that is inconsistent with the product’s position

Suppose a product’s pricing strategy if for market penetration.  Setting its price as a premium price would be contrary to the pricing strategy

Lacking distribution for the product

I made this mistake with my mobile advertising business.  I had tons of ad inventory in Europe.  But my customers, the advertising customers, were only interested in the US market.

Using the wrong metrics

There are lots of examples where the metrics selected drives behavior.  For example, Facebook has a metric of ad views in order to make money.  To them, pretty much up to now the number of people that see an ad is all that is important.  Nevermind if the ad is untrue.

David Fradin


David Fradin has trained thousands of managers throughout the world in the successful management of products. With over 47 years of experience across major companies, 75+ products and services and 11 startups, he infuses his workshops with insights gained as an expert product leader, product manager and product marketing manager at companies like Apple and HP. He was classically trained as an HP Product Manager and was then recruited by Apple to bring the first hard disk drive on a PC to market. As a result of his leadership and management skills, Apple promoted him first to Apple /// Group Product Manager and later Business Unit Manager at the same organizational level at that time as Steve Jobs. He recently authored “Building Insanely Great Products: Some Products Fail, Many Succeed…This is their Story” Lessons from 47 years of experience including Hewlett-Packard, Apple, 75 products, and 11 startups later. Go to: Amazon Store Coming soon will be "Organizing and Managing Insanely Great Products" and "Marketing Insanely Great Products." His workshops cover the founding values, vision, product lifecycle and management employed by Apple at its start and which it subscribes to today. You can learn more about his workshops at Spice Catalyst Workshops Soon to be released by Wiley and Sons, in the Early of 2017, is a seven-volume set of university-level textbooks entitled: "Foundations in the Management of Successful Products" covering keys to product success, product market strategy, marketing, soft skills, user experience, user interface, product engineering, and product support. What students will learn in the workshops, online courses and books are cover what has made Apple the most valuable company in the world today. Go to David Fradin @ Youcanbook to schedule a time to talk.

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