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They said it! "Hits the mark. You formalized what others have felt [about marketing and market research] but could not articulate as well as you did. I have received good feedback on your Commentary from our readers, including several phone calls. An excellent piece. I am very pleased with it."
"Enjoyed your article, Ralph. I think that it emphasizes the importance of studying the market and the customers’ problems before investing in the product design. We made a similar change in our engineering process at KVH Industries, when we decided to spend additional time defining the product before designing it. Now, with your study, you have pointed out that you should spend even more time and money studying [in market research] to define each new product, than you expect to invest in the engineering design itself."
"You have presented a new way to look at marketing. Very interesting information and statistics. Frankly, not too many people have focused on the upstream marketing investment, as you have. "At State Street Bank, we look at a series of financial relationships to ascertain the strength and fundamental underpinnings of businesses. We, ourselves, would be well served to incorporate your M/E Ratio™ into our business models for high tech enterprises, and into our analyses. I am directing my people to your work."
"I enjoyed your article on the M/E Ratio™. It’s a good way to look at things. "I followed the efforts of one of the "Flaming Failures" in your study, Essential Research, for as long as it lasted. It seemed like that company began doing market research only after the product was finished. I think that Essential Research missed a number of points about the interaction of technical skills at the potential customer that was necessary for their product to be successful, and about the pricing structure to make it attractive. Maybe that’s what the up-front marketing studies, as suggested by your evidence, might have pointed out. "For an interesting comparison, look at two other articles in the issue of Electronic Business where your M/E Ratio™ article appeared. See "Silicon Germanium Finds The Spotlight" and "Shoot First, Do Market Research Later." They form quite a contrast in doing your marketing homework for years versus rushing ahead with a product that may have no one truly interested in buying it."
"Ralph, I read your article with interest. My dream, seriously, is to build Triangle MicroSystems into an honest-to-goodness marketing outfit. "As President of a small high tech company, I have often been concerned about our excuses for not investing more in market research. We manufacture control systems (software and hardware) for convenience stores, and building automation systems for lighting, HVAC, and power monitoring equipment; all having computer graphics interface systems. All our systems interact with computers, whose options and operating platforms are constantly changing. If you have anything to do with the latter, you must keep up with market research if you want to be relevant. "As far as excuses go, it is much easier to grab a belief in a product concept, internalize it, and become the traditional product champion; all without asking the market for their opinion. The latter is the safe thing to do. If you don’t research it you won’t get any negative or bad responses. That’s wasteful in resources and valuable time. I have seen so many products handled in that fashion. "We have exciting new products that we are working on, all because I got my butt out of the office and went around to our long-time dealers and tested several product concepts. That is why I was attracted to your article."
"Really liked your article. One of the biggest problems is to get the marketing department to properly define the product. My experience is that when asked about tradeoffs - features for price, completion date versus features - most marketing people don’t want to make the hard choices. Possibly if marketing was funded per your evidence, at $2 in market research for every $1 in engineering, they would have the resources to gather enough customer and market data to enable making those decisions."
"I am intrigued by your article in the recent Electronic Business magazine regarding the M/E Ratio™. Having spent much of my career in engineering design and development, I have long believed in what you are saying here. Great article."
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