How to define the market is the second lesson—the lesson of what was both a marketing success and a major marketing fiasco: the conquest of the American market by the fax machine. The Japanese did not ask, “What is the market for this machine?” Instead they asked, “What is the market for what it does?” And they immediately saw, when looking at the growth of courier services such as Federal Express, that the market for the fax machine had already been established. The next lesson is that marketing starts with all customers in the market rather than with our customers. The final lesson is that
...more
