KC Associates knows more than just how to promote products. We know how to package solutions and price and position them. Our product marketing consulting is based on the concepts of the Whole Product and the Technology Adoption Lifecycle.
The whole-product concept helps you understand the customer’s total problem and define an offering that meets as many customer needs as is reasonable and one that provides a competitive advantage. The technology-adoption concept makes it clear that, in each stage of market adoption, buyers generally respond to differing value statements and have varying price sensitivities.
We can analyze your customers’ needs and competitors’ products and help you define and package your products and services in a way that gives your company an offering that makes it tough for your competitors to match—without forcing you into massive product development or partnerships that will take years to complete. We do this by helping with:
In The Marketing Imagination, Theodore Levitt argues that customers buy products to solve problems and that they value products in proportion to their perceived ability to solve these problems. From a customer's view, a solution is a complex cluster of value satisfactions* that addresses their whole problem—a Total Product. Levitt says that a total product’s “customer-getting and customer-satisfying' attributes can be managed to achieve a competitive advantage. Therefore, by defining a solution that exceeds customers“ expectations, a company can out-perform competitors and position itself as a true leader.
* Value satisfactions can be tangibles and intangibles such as implementation services, post-purchase support, maintenance policies, training, extra features and advanced technology.
In his book Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey Moore uses the Technology Adoption Lifecycle to illustrate technology-based products and services are accepted by the market over time and that buyer values are correlated to the stages of adoption. As the model indicates, each stage of technology adoption has various buyer attitudes and priorities and as a market evolves, so, too, must a company's go-to-market strategy and messages.
