Now tell me which marketing student haven’t learned about this phrase: “Build a better mouse trap and customers will beat a path to you.”

And you know what? It doesn’t work that way in real life and many marketing people will tell you that. Unfortunately those who didn’t study marketing or blur about the marketing concept will continue to make the same blunder. They made a better product; but no customer beat a path to them unfortunately.

There are four basic fundamental marketing concept:
Production concept
Product concept
Selling concept
Marketing concept

The production concept is where you try to make the product at the lowest possible cost and selling it at the cheapest possible price. Sort of a demand and supply kind of situation and of course will work for commodity items or where there is a ready market for your product and price is a factor in determining your sales.

The product concept is where you try to make the best product ever beating your rivals in terms of features, bells and whistle. Things like it is the smallest item made, the largest item made, the lightest, or the best of whatever, and people look towards this kind of intriguing little things, and yes it will do well.

The selling concept is where you get your sales people to push the product. Sell, sell, sell! Don’t care whether the people like them or not, just brow beat the prospects into submission and win the sales.

And finally of course the best of the best, is the marketing concept, where you listen to what the customer wants and make a product accordingly.

Personally I would prefer to go on the Marketing concept. It make sense because it makes proper use of your time. Rather than fighting blind and pushing product to people who don’t need them. You have a product with a potential because you know the market wants it, or find a market and develop a product for it. That way you maximise your time and effort and possible gain a better income potential too.

So when I heard that my company develop a product blindly without checking what the market wants and making the best product ever but there is no such demand in the market, don’t you think it is sheer stupidity? Not to mention it is such a waste of R&D money to develop the product and also wasting the sales people time to sell a product that the market don’t need?

And history repeats itself when they went ahead and develop another idiotic product. And yet having banged my head cold calling so many companies who weren’t the least bit interested. In fact many companies treated me like shit to put it honestly and a former boss who didn’t believe the reports that I gave. He thought that I was fibbing but that was the truth. Sometimes honesty don’t pay. Anyway he has been posted back and was good riddance to bad rubbish anyway.

I would have thought this product would fade away in its notoriety, unfortunately the HQ thought they would revive this ignominious product because they want to expand their product line. Just because they managed to sell to one company (but even now the company stopped buying after all it was such an ill conceive product idea). I guess they never learn. History repeats itself. They even found a poor chap to head the project.

Rule number one, the bosses are always right. In case they are wrong, see rule number one.