> From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
>
> Chuck Norcutt wrote:
>> For some it looks like the number of digicam releases is inversely
>> proportional to their success in the marketplace. Perhaps there's a
>> lesson here.
>>
> Perhaps, but they may be following a well known marketing rule.
>
> Many moons ago, some merchandiser in one of our divisions decided
> to get
> smart. He looked at sales of the leading hair color. there were
> something like 15 shades, but 3 or 4 of them accounted for 80% of
> sales
> and 6 accounted for over 90% of sales. So he logically cut back to 6
> shades. Sales plummeted for each shade and for the product as a whole.
AKA "shelf space," AKA "weed philosophy."
If you pump out lots of products with slight differences, you can
often get more shelf space, and crowd out your competitors. Sorta
like Coke, Coke lite, Coke Classic, Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, etc.
Too bad John Scully didn't actually understand that when he switched
from selling sugar water to computers. Apple dropped a lot of market
share when they consolidated and simplified product lines during the
Scully tenure, and Windows machines trounced them in the "shelf
space" wars. When Jobs came back, he dropped any distributor who
would not dedicate an entire section of their store to Apple,
negating much of the "shelf space" advantage.
:::: Jan Steinman, Photo Editor, Communities Magazine http://
communities.ic.org ::::
:::: 160 Sharp Road, Salt Spring Island, BC V8K 2P6, Canada
250.537.2024 ::::
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