Tesco
Selling Blue Elephants
Book

Selling Blue Elephants

How to Make Great Products that People Want Before They Even Know They Want Them

Howard Moskowitz and Alex Gofman
Wharton School Publishing, 2007

Read or listen offline

audio autogenerado
  • 0.5×
  • 0.75×
  • 1×
  • 1.25×
  • 1.5×
  • 1.75×
1×
audio autogenerado

Editorial Rating

6

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Marketing gurus Howard Moskowitz and Alex Gofman believe their method of product testing, called Rule Developing Experimentation (RDE), can lower your costs, shorten turnaround time, and improve your product development, packaging, messaging and competitive analysis. RDE involves defining your problem, then testing a series of alternatives to determine its boundaries. The data you gather may confirm your expectations, but often enough it will contain surprises. Even if your customers can’t articulate their needs, their choices and behavior will show you what they want. RDE will also inform you about how to sell to each market segment. The authors illustrate their method with interesting case studies; they also include amusing, if irrelevant, sidebars (one covers the history of the tomato, for example). Their style may be digressive and flawed by the overuse of jargon, and some of the graphs and illustrations can be confusing, yet getAbstract recommends this book to experienced marketing managers who are tired of guessing about their strategies and want to base them on reliable data.

Take-Aways

  • Rule Developing Experimentation (RDE) is a system for testing product features one by one to analyze consumer preferences.
  • If you try to please everyone, you please no one.
  • Using RDE, the Vlasic pickle company created products such as spicy and low-salt pickles that appealed to different market segments.

About the Authors

Howard Moskowitz is the president and CEO of a strategic brand development firm. In 2005 he received the Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Research Award. Alex Gofman earned degrees in computer science and holds several patents. He has published widely on the topic of technology-based experimental psychology.

Comment on this summary or Comenzar discusión