Marketing
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After a product has been designed, prototyped, tested and actually constructed to its final specifications, the next step is to ensure that people actually use the product: That they actually want it and that they will pay money for it. A product may have been designed by the best designers available, have passed all it's prototyping and testing and work perfectly in every way, but if consumers can see no use for it, then they will not want it. Having said this, marketing is not just about what happens to a product when it is finished: Marketing should be considered throughout the development process. Marketing is part of the "vision" for the product. Marketing links the functions and services of the product to the requirements and needs of its users. A "good" product will have a clearly defined purpose. Marketing is about showing right people what the product can do.

If the product is "good" then its success now rests on marketing. Marketing is about 5 things:
 + Identifying who needs the product.
 + Identifying what they need it for.
 + Telling the people about the product.
 + Making the people believe that they need it
 + and making the product accessible to them.

Good design dictates that, in the early stages of development, the product should have been targeted at a specific part of the market or a specific group of people. However, as the design progresses, specifics may change. It is therefore important to reevalutate where the product is required, and who can benefit from it, when it is complete. An application for a product may not be immediately obvious and it is only through reevaluation of the finished product, or maybe only further thought later on, that this application becomes apparent.

It is important that the consumers know what the product will do for them: How it will make their lives better or easier and how they will benefit from investing in it. If the product is to be released alongside another product, from a different company, that does a similar thing, then the new product must appear significantly better than the existing one in order for people to change. People will like to stay with a product or a company that they know and are familiar with. If the new product appears to offer something that the existing one does not, or if the new product makes a significant improvement over the existing one, then consumers will be less loyal to the brands and labels that they already have. It is important not only to take advantage of this lack of loyalty to win customers, but also to be aware of it when developing and marketing new products or upgrades to existing products.

If there is a gap in the market and a product is produced that fills the gap then informing people about it will be straight forward: The gap in the market was evident because people were expecting a product. Therefore, there is already an audience. Once a supplier knows what their product can do, and what it can be used for then, if consumers know about the product, the supplier can illustrate to them why the product will be useful, even invaluable, to them. If consumers are not expecting a product then there are many ways of advertising it to them. The method that is chosen will depend on, amongst other things, the type of people who are the target of the advertisment, where they will see the advertisment and, indeed, the nature of the product itself.

Once a product has been successfully advertised, it is important that it is accessible to the people who want it. This means not only must the customer be able to obtain the product with the minimum of fuss and effort, but they must be able to obtain the product at a price that they can afford. When setting a price for a product, it is important that the development, production and distribution costs are covered. However, it may sometimes be attractive to lower the cost of a product so that it is lower than the cost of an equivalent product from a competitor. If this is the case, then there must be some kind of long term plan in order to make money. - It maynot be necessary to make money on that particular product if there is a good chance of acceptance of the product enabling lots of money to be made further down the line. It is important to set out price boundries early on in the development cycle and then work to budget: There is no point in specifying a product for a group of people, only to find that none of them can afford the finished item. It is also important to decide how to deal with a project if it exceeds it budget: Should the product be scrapped, rendering all the money invested in it wasted, or should more money be invested so that the product can be made better and therefore eventually sell more.

Even if marketing is carefully considered, it is easy to make mistakes. There is a very fine line between releasing a product in the wrong place at the wrong time and making a success of the product. Where technology is concerened the time scales can be months. - If a product is delayed then it could "miss the boat". If an innovation is concieved before it is needed then people will not be interested. Despite all the precautions that can be taken and all the planning that can be employed, there is also a lot of luck involved in marketing a sucessful product.



Comments
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Sony aimed the games for the Playstation at the same people who had enjoyed the games of other consoles previously.
On the other hand, the games for the Nintendo 64 were aimed at the same age range as the games of the previous consoles.
Sony had a captive audience: They knew what they had before and they could see that the Playstation was an improvement.
Nintendo was trying to interest a new generation of console users in its product.