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

Moore, Geoffrey A.

4.02

28,989 ratings by Goodreads

9780887307171: Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0887307175 ISBN 13: 9780887307171

Publisher: Harperbusiness, 1995

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Every year, companies gamble away millions of dollars and countless hours of technical talent on doomed efforts to market technology products that are greeted with enthusiasm by a few technologically literate consumers but ultimately fizzle in the wider marketplace.

With more high-tech products scrambling for the home market every day, it is essential that marketing professionals learn to transcend the outmoded marketing theories that have led to more failures than successes in the challenging technology marketplace.

Based on the revolutionary model derived from Geoffrey Moore's extensive experience in high-tech markets, Crossing the Chasm is the definitive book on a vital, rapidly growing but capricious market.

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Review:

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

Moore suggests remedies for the problem that can help businesses meet their long-term goals. He coaches marketing professionals on how to move slowly through the gulf, teaching them to create 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 also assigns responsibility for success to programmers and developers by suggesting they design a "whole product model." Here, because integration tasks are daunting to the mainstream market, all the components of a technological product must be in one package. Moore also describes strategies for competing with rival companies and assessing the best 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 delivers crucial information in an engaging, readable tone.

About the Author:

Geoffrey A. Moore is president of The Chasm Group, Palo Alto, CA, which provides consulting and education services to numerous high-tech firms. He lives in Los Altos Hills, CA.

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