Comments on: Structure of the Software Industry

By: Alaric Snell-Pym

Alaric Snell-Pym — Sat, 08 Oct 2005 20:42:41 +0000

Indeed, there is no global best product in a market, just a best product for each purchaser - although that does depend on the market; see Natural Monopoly.

And yes, I feel that one of the big problems with a marketing-led economy is that it becomes harder and harder for the little companies to get a foothold. Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM, as they say - but that's not a good way to choose a multi-million pound mainframe that will be the core of your business.

In some markets, the "We are a friendly little local company" angle works - like in Stroud near us, there are a lot of local handicrafts, farmer's markets, and so on. But that doesn't go very far in the cynical world of business to business commerce, and only seems to appeal to a certain proportion of consumers.

By: Alex B

Alex B — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 22:09:06 +0000

What have you to say about the "best product" being a per-person metric? AOL's marketing emphasises online safety, BT's emphasises a particular feature (music downloading), Bulldog's emphasises speed. Yes, BT allude to high speed and you and I know that's laughable, but for their target market, their message is right. There are almost no companies whose message is not right; the guys who got it wrong went out of business.

By: Charlee

Charlee — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 17:26:15 +0000

I agree. I don't like marketing, because I can't afford to do it for my business. We used to get customers on word of mouth. But thanks to a) marketing of PC World as actually being quality etc, and b) Government training schemes, we don't seem to get customers anymore. Who cares whether we are any good or not? We don't have a chain of stores, we don't have flashy marketing, and we're honest. So we're buggered.