Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers (Collins Business Essentials)

From the customer perspective, then, as we argued in the previous chapter, the key issue when crossing the chasm is market leadership versus a viable competitive set, captured by comparison to your two reference competitors, and the key pricing strategy is premium margin above a norm set by these comparisons. That is, you have earned a premium over

Every truly innovative high-tech product starts out as a fad—something with no known market value or purpose but with “great properties” that generate a lot of enthusiasm within an “in crowd” of early adopters. That’s the early market.

If you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go with others. In the age of the Internet you need to do both at the same time, and that’s where whole product partners can make all the difference.

The fundamental principle for crossing the chasm is to target a specific niche market as your point of attack and focus all your resources on achieving the dominant leadership position in that segment as quickly as possible.

These are the two “natural” marketing rhythms in high tech—developing the early market and developing the mainstream market. You develop an early market by demonstrating a strong technology advantage and converting it to product credibility, and you develop a mainstream market by demonstrating a market leadership advantage and converting it to comp

If they are installing a new product, they want to know how other people have fared with it. The word risk is a negative one in their vocabulary—it does not connote opportunity or excitement but rather the chance to waste money and time. They will undertake risks when required, but they first will put in place safety nets and manage the risks very

Generic product: This is what is shipped in the box and what is covered by the purchasing contract. 2. Expected product: This is the product that the consumer thought she was buying when she bought the generic product. It is the minimum configuration of products and services necessary to have any chance of achieving the buying objective. For exampl

Winning over one or two customers in each of five or ten different segments—the consequence of taking a sales-driven approach—will create no word-of-mouth effect. Your customers may try to start a conversation about you, but there will be no one there to reinforce it. By contrast, winning four or five customers in one segment will create the desire

The truth is, conservatives often fear high tech a little bit. Therefore, they tend to invest only at the end of a technology life cycle, when products are extremely mature, market-share competition is driving low prices, and the products themselves can be treated as commodities.