A recent news article (San Jose Mercury News: 3/3/09) was very enlightening – and provided 2 wonderful reminders of confused thinking that even high-tech marketing folks can make. The headline stated “PC Market Weakens for ‘09”, and the very well-regarded Gartner Group was quoted as saying that “a 12% decline in global PC sales is forecast for 2009”. Sounds like only bad news here – but it isn’t so. Our 2-day “Strategic Marketing Workshop” addresses numerous errors + misunderstandings that high-tech professionals make. Here are 2 that showed up in the 3/3/09 Mercury News article:
Error #1 -- Averaging Your Market Data
Too often, marketers lump together various product categories to come up with an average % rise or drop in demand. Way too superficial. And very dangerous, because it obscures what is truly happening. While it is correct that overall global PC sales will decline about 12% in 2009 – that 12% data point is actually made up of 3 very distinct PC categories, each in a different stage on the TALC (Technology Adoption Life Cycle).
Surprise, surprise. Turns out that Desktops will decline 32%, Laptops will grow only 3% -- but that Mini-Notebooks are exploding in growth (forecasted to be up 79%, representing a non-trivial 21 million units).
Bottom line: don’t combine various categories to reach average growth rates – very misleading. Kinda like averaging out AARP members and high school students to come up with an average age across these 2 groups. The answer of “46.3” doesn’t tell you much.
Misunderstanding #1 -- Tornado Success Can Indeed Occur in Lousy Economic Times (Really!)
Hypergrowth growth rates can happen in even the worst of economic times. Not for Early Market, Bowling Alley, or Main Street products, but definitely for those products fortunate to be in or near the Tornado stage on the TALC.
Examples include Digital Cameras in the slump of 2001-2003, and Mini-Notebook PC’s today (in the darkest of economic periods). In our workshop, we go into greater depth about what growth rates constitute a true Tornado, how long they will last, and whether / how they can be predicted.
By the way, what market errors or misunderstandings have you seen of late ?