Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/09/03

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Subject: Re: [Leica] A rant on Leica marketing
From: Hans-Peter.Lammerich@t-online.de
Date: Sun, 03 Sep 2000 10:13:56 +0200
References: <200009030216.TAA14738@mejac.palo-alto.ca.us>

Great innovations like the Leica or the walkman are certainly not the
result of "scientific" marketing by MBAs. That is for optimising.

At work, our neighbour is a research firm doing consumer surveys. I
often participate in their surveys covering anything from non-alcoholic
beer, frozen pizzas, packaging etc.. They actually pay more per hour
than I get on my main job, after German tax and social security!

As such I am really impressed how much companies spend to get some very
superficial data on consumer preferences. I am even more impressed by
the bad taste of some product managers, as if they never eat, drink or
use their themselves. They just apply their tools, doing airlines today
and bananas (or dog food) tomorrow.

But don't forget that almost the entire German optical industry, at
least the part catering for the mass market, went down the drain,
because of patriachic (patriachalic?) management, ignoring modern
management tools and of course marketing.

Hans-Peter