Successful Marketing Strategy for High-Tech Firms (Artech House Technology Management and Professional Developm)

Rating:
Summary: Worth Every Penny...and Then a Great Deal More
Review: This is the third edition of a book which has developed what could be called a cult following (especially in Europe) among senior-level executives in high-tech organizations. I think it will also be of substantial interest and value to others who are directly associated with those executives. Viardot carefully organizes his material within these ten chapters:

The Meaning of Marketing for High-Tech Firms
Corporate and Marketing Strategies in the High-Tech Industry
Knowing Customers and Markets
Understanding Competitors
Selecting Markets
Product Strategy
Distributing and Selling High-Tech Products
Communication Strategy for High-Tech Products
Pricing High-Tech Products
The Position of Marketing Within High-Tech Companies

I have included the chapter titles so as to indicate both how the material is organized and to suggest that what Viardot provides is a cohesive and comprehensive program, one which offers all manner of strategies by which an organization can avoid joining "a cemetery full of companies that [incorrectly] thought they could win the world with their innovations." Why did they fail? Because they did not have "the marketing ability to connect their innovative offer with the actual needs of the markets." Viardot cites several "famous failures" of high-tech firms which include EMI, the R&D division of Xerox, and AMD. Why have other companies succeeded? Because they have tended to market two or three times as many new products as their competitors while incorporating two to three times more technical innovations into each new product, thereby bringing actual value to their customers. "Also, they introduce their products to the market two times faster than their competitors thanks to operational excellence [which Viardot discusses in Chapter 6], one of the main weaknesses of so many dot-coms that underestimated the importance of manufacturing and logistics." For these companies, marketing is their main objective: the ultimate key to their success and resilience is their ability to "determine the needs of the [given] market and to assure that the products manufactured by [them] correspond precisely to these needs with a competitive advantage and at a profit." According to Viardot, companies which demonstrate these attributes include Nokia, IBM, Cisco Systems, Samsung, SAP, Yahoo, Vodaphone, Amazon, and eBay.

Thoughtfully, Viardot provides a Summary at the end of each of the ten chapters and then two appendices after the final chapter: "[Seven] Key Success Factors of a Marketing Department in a High-Tech Company" and "The Marketing Plan" which includes a "SWOT Analysis" by which to identify the Strengths and Weaknesses of current marketing strategies, Opportunities and Threats, and issues which must therefore be addressed. According to Viardot, successful high-tech firms must first deliberately define the place of their marketing structure within their entire organization, then design (or redesign) the internal organization of their marketing structure with the utmost attention and care, and finally, optimize the cooperation of the marketing structure with all other departments. Hence the importance of effective internal communication, productive collaboration, and sufficient resources. At all times, senior management must support these initiatives "wholeheartedly."

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Marketing As Strategy: Understanding the CEO's Agenda for Driving Growth and Innovation in which, as Philip Kotler notes in the Foreword, Nirmalya Kumar "introduces a framework for analyzing and planning marketing strategy in terms of the three Vs: valued customer, value proposition, and value network...[he also] proposes ways to deal with growing commoditization, price pressure, and the increasing market power of global mega-retailers...[as he strives] to show how the marketing discipline 'could become more strategic, cross-functional, and bottom-line oriented' than ever before." As will Viardot's, Kumar's book will be of substantial value to all organizations (regardless of their size and nature) which are in urgent need of driving their growth and innovation. I also highly recommend Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton's The Strategy-Focused Organization: How Balanced Scorecard Companies Thrive in the New Business Environment.