Product ComplexityTurning to another dimension of industrial marketing uniqueness, technical product complexity, the major barrier to a true marketing orientation in the industrial firm remains excessive product, engineering, manufacturing and technical orientation.
One class or business strategies available to industrial companies calls for a high degree of technical innovativeness and risk taking with related high expenditures for research and development.
In such companies, top management is likely to have been grown in the engineering and research garden and technical values may be prominent in management decision making.
The real risk in these cases is “loving the product more than the customer,” becoming so enamored with a technical accomplishment or particular product parameters that the necessary flexibility for responding to customer needs in a competitive marketplace disappears.
As a result, one of the most common marketing sins can be unwittingly committed – trying to change the customer to fit the product.
Assuming there can be degrees of sin, this sin of product orientation is more serious in industrial marketing than in consumer complexity of the problem the customer is trying to solve.
Therefore greater supplier flexibility is required in contrast to consumer marketing.
One marketing guru offers four key concepts for understanding the nature of industrial market selection and product planning:
*The basic and most important decision in planning marketing strategy are those related to the choice of market or markets to serve. All else follows.
*The form of the product is a variable, not a given, in developing marketing strategy. Products are planned and designed to serve customers. In other words, various product options must be evaluated and the best selected to serve the needs of particular market.
*The product is what it does; it is total package of benefits the customer receives when he buys.
*The product, in this broad sense will have different meaning to different customers – important with regard to both market selection and pricing.
Product Complexity
