4 ms·

Of course those things matter, and they're part of the customer experience. Your marketing and sales strategy should be of the same quality as your product. Don

by dcurtis 17y ago

Of course those things matter, and they're part of the customer experience. Your marketing and sales strategy should be of the same quality as your product. Don't think of them separately. You're providing value with the product and convincing people to buy it with the sales and marketing strategy. Sure, the budget allocations shift back and forth, but both should always be above some minimum threshold of quality. If you think of your entire company as providing a "customer experience," then you only have one threshold, and everything is held to that standard. The companies I am angry at are the ones sacrificing product quality and value for sales and marketing. (And also companies that just ignorantly release crappy products and ignore their customers/employees.)

sanj 17y ago
But if crappy products sell and don't sell any worse than better (and more expensive) products, then it is a mistake to invest effort into making them better. customer experience != maximizing value to shareholders I wish it were. I really do. But it isn't.
- dcurtis 17y ago
  Can you provide a real world example of where this is the case in a healthy market? I do not think this is true except in very poor market conditions like with monopolies or odd social situations.
  - swombat 17y ago
    Enterprise sales. Though of course you'll argue it's not a healthy market.
  - whatusername 17y ago
    User Experience / Price / Design / Exclusivity / existing infrastructure / external pressure (see legal reqs, etc) A product / service can create value in all of those areas.. some are either mutually exclusive or at least practically so. To even use Apple as an example.. Great Operating system - unless you want a netbook. Or want to play games. Or create blu-ray disks. Put it this way - I'm sure you can make a better hamburger than mcdonalds. But I'm sure Ray Croc made a whole lot more money than most of the people on HN ever will.
  - jnorthrop 17y ago
    My brother was the brand manager for a dying food brand (well known national brand). The first thing he did when he was hired to improve the brand was to improve the quality of the food (better cuts of meat, fresher veggies, lower sodium, etc.). You know what happened? The customer complaint line was jammed with pissed people. He did a complete 180 and removed the higher quality items (the healthy stuff like vegetables), increased the quantity and sales started to climb. That is a clear case of people wanting crap... in fact demanding it instead of the better quality product. Note: Sorry for being vague about the brand but he is still there and might not want the full story public.
    - michael_dorfman 17y ago
      The key point of your story is that your brother's definition of "higher quality" didn't mesh with the customer's. That's a problem. If people were satisfied with the product, changing the ingredients is definitely going to add risk. I worked for a food manufacturer, once upon a time, and we did extensive triangle testing even when sourcing ingredients from a new vendor. People want quality. That doesn't mean their taste is the same as yours...
      - joshu 17y ago
        Triangle testing?
        michael_dorfman 17y ago
        Sorry, it's a common "term of art" in the food sciences. Basically, it is blindly tasting three samples, and trying to tell which one of the three is different. (The other two are the same.) So, if you are testing a new supplier, you can give the subjects two samples from the old supplier and one from the new supplier, and see if they can pick out the odd one with any kind of statistical significance. The key factor is that it is not attempting to measure "which tastes better", but rather, "which tastes noticeably different".
        17y ago
  - chollida1 17y ago
    > Can you provide a real world example of where this is the case in a healthy market? McDonalds hamburgers. They have arguably the worst tasting hamburger of any restaurant chain and yet they sell more than anyone else.
  - auston 17y ago
    Wal-Mart: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=653051 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=653051
  - randomtask 17y ago
    Supermarket own brand products are often of a much lower quality than branded versions, but sell well because they are cheaper. There is a quality/price trade off with a lot of products and a demand for those on both ends of the spectrum.
    - ahoyhere 17y ago
      Um, everything I've read says that supermarket brand foods are often name brand excess sold under private label. Yes/no?
      - anamax 17y ago
        You're both correct/wrong. (Except that the premium store brands are not "excess" - they're planned that way.) Some store brand products are premium equivs while some aren't. (Some stores even have two brands so they can compete with the premium with the same quality at a slightly lower price and at lesser quality at a significantly lower price.) There was a big Harvard Biz Review article about store brand strategies several years ago.

by dcurtis 17y ago

sanj 17y ago

But if crappy products sell and don't sell any worse than better (and more expensive) products, then it is a mistake to invest effort into making them better. customer experience != maximizing value to shareholders I wish it were. I really do. But it isn't.

dcurtis 17y ago
Can you provide a real world example of where this is the case in a healthy market? I do not think this is true except in very poor market conditions like with monopolies or odd social situations.
- swombat 17y ago
  Enterprise sales. Though of course you'll argue it's not a healthy market.
- whatusername 17y ago
  User Experience / Price / Design / Exclusivity / existing infrastructure / external pressure (see legal reqs, etc) A product / service can create value in all of those areas.. some are either mutually exclusive or at least practically so. To even use Apple as an example.. Great Operating system - unless you want a netbook. Or want to play games. Or create blu-ray disks. Put it this way - I'm sure you can make a better hamburger than mcdonalds. But I'm sure Ray Croc made a whole lot more money than most of the people on HN ever will.
- jnorthrop 17y ago
  My brother was the brand manager for a dying food brand (well known national brand). The first thing he did when he was hired to improve the brand was to improve the quality of the food (better cuts of meat, fresher veggies, lower sodium, etc.). You know what happened? The customer complaint line was jammed with pissed people. He did a complete 180 and removed the higher quality items (the healthy stuff like vegetables), increased the quantity and sales started to climb. That is a clear case of people wanting crap... in fact demanding it instead of the better quality product. Note: Sorry for being vague about the brand but he is still there and might not want the full story public.
  - michael_dorfman 17y ago
    The key point of your story is that your brother's definition of "higher quality" didn't mesh with the customer's. That's a problem. If people were satisfied with the product, changing the ingredients is definitely going to add risk. I worked for a food manufacturer, once upon a time, and we did extensive triangle testing even when sourcing ingredients from a new vendor. People want quality. That doesn't mean their taste is the same as yours...
    - joshu 17y ago
      Triangle testing?
      - michael_dorfman 17y ago
        Sorry, it's a common "term of art" in the food sciences. Basically, it is blindly tasting three samples, and trying to tell which one of the three is different. (The other two are the same.) So, if you are testing a new supplier, you can give the subjects two samples from the old supplier and one from the new supplier, and see if they can pick out the odd one with any kind of statistical significance. The key factor is that it is not attempting to measure "which tastes better", but rather, "which tastes noticeably different".
        17y ago
- chollida1 17y ago
  > Can you provide a real world example of where this is the case in a healthy market? McDonalds hamburgers. They have arguably the worst tasting hamburger of any restaurant chain and yet they sell more than anyone else.
- auston 17y ago
  Wal-Mart: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=653051 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=653051
- randomtask 17y ago
  Supermarket own brand products are often of a much lower quality than branded versions, but sell well because they are cheaper. There is a quality/price trade off with a lot of products and a demand for those on both ends of the spectrum.
  - ahoyhere 17y ago
    Um, everything I've read says that supermarket brand foods are often name brand excess sold under private label. Yes/no?
    - anamax 17y ago
      You're both correct/wrong. (Except that the premium store brands are not "excess" - they're planned that way.) Some store brand products are premium equivs while some aren't. (Some stores even have two brands so they can compete with the premium with the same quality at a slightly lower price and at lesser quality at a significantly lower price.) There was a big Harvard Biz Review article about store brand strategies several years ago.