Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers

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Description

Here is the bestselling guide this created a new strategy plan for marketing in high-tech industries. Crossing the Chasm has become the bible for brining cutting-edge products to progressively big markets. This revised and updated edition offers new insights into the realities of high-tech marketing, together with exclusive emphasis on the Internet. It's necessary reading for anyone together with a stake in the world's much exciting marketplace.

Author Geoffrey Moore makes the case this high-tech products require marketing strategies this differ from those in other industries. His chasm theory describes how high-tech products initially sell well, mainly to a technically literate client base, but then hit a lull as marketing professionals try to cross the chasm to mainstream buyers. This pattern, says Moore, is distinctive to the high-tech industry.

Moore suggests remedies for the problem this can help businesses meet their long-term goals. He coaches marketing professionals on how to move slowly throughout the gulf, teaching them to make profiles and target specific segments of the population rather than trying to plow right into the mainstream. He cites examples of successful chasm crossings by such companies as Apple, Tandem, Oracle, and Sun, showing what they all had in common and exposing the different weaknesses in their strategies. Moore in addition assigns responsibility for success to programmers and developers by suggesting they design a "whole product model." Here, for the reason that integration tasks are daunting to the mainstream market, all the components of a technological product must be in one package. Moore in addition describes strategies for competing together with rival companies and assessing the excellent distribution channels for penetrating the target market.

Written not just for marketing specialists but for all employees whose futures ride on the success of a technical product, Crossing the Chasm brings crucial information in an engaging, readable tone.

Customer Reviews

A Bible in High-Tech Marketing 2010-07-04

By Omar Halabieh (Houston, TX USA)

This book offers a true blueprint for companies looking to market and sell innovative high-tech products in a mainstream market.

This blue print begins by segmenting customers into groups with different needs and goals (innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority and laggards). These groups do not form a continuous spectrum. Indeed, there are gaps that exist that any company looking to succeed needs to understand and bridge. Once the company identifies the highly specific target segment within a mainstream marketplace, they then proceed to understanding their compelling reasons to buy. Then they must build around the notion of a "whole product" with the aid of partners as required to make that a reality. To further help the customer, the company must clearly define their competition and how they position themselves with respect to them. Finally comes selecting a distribution channel and ensuring that the sales force is empowered to deliver the required results.

From my perspective, this book helps any IT executive understand how to better work with technology vendors. In addition to helping them identify the ones that are indeed there to stay and grow. It also pushes IT executives to make fundamental decisions on where in the consumer spectrum they want to position themselves based on their needs and the risks that they are willing to undertake.

In all a very good and informative read. Despite it being originally written in the 90s the fundamentals of the blueprint still hold true. This is a true bible in the field of technology marketing. On the critiquing side, I would say that this book could have been written in a more concise fashion. It seemed slow at times, when reading it. Also, it would have been great to see updated examples of the principles described which would make it easier to reflect upon from a more recent perspective.

Amazing insight 2010-05-31

By Hiren Panchasara (Bay area, California)

I am a newbie in this space. The most imp thing I like is the examples provided. Good read to know American business history.

Awesome book 2010-02-18

By California Dreamin (San Francisco, CA United States)

This book is about market segmentation and the challenge of retargeting a business from early adopters to mainstream buyers. I have seen businesses fail because of insufficient market segmentation, including my own business. One company I once worked for had about 30 software products (acquired through mergers) and perhaps $100M/year in revenue, but did not distinguish in its catalogs, presentation, or sales force training, between mainstream products and experimental (buggy) early adopter products. Within a year they had failed. If they understood this book they would still be around.

If I had read this book ten years earlier I would be much wealthier than I am today. The book is packed with examples, strategies, tactics and marketing insights which are not easily sumarized in a brief review. It is a pleasure to read and will withstand several re-readings. I highly recommend it to any businessperson, engineer, entrepreneur or investor.