Contract terms as conditions or warranties Term Paper

Contract terms as conditions or warranties - Term Paper Example Therefore, the court conclude that the defendants had a right to end the contract because the plaintiff breached a condition of the contract Poussard v. Spiers & Poland, 1876).However, in a similar case, Bettin v. Gye (1876); a singer was contracted to perform and sing for 3 whole months with six rehearsal days. The singer, however, fell ill and thus missed the six days of rehearsals, which resulted in the defendant replacing him with another singer. However, in this case the court held that the termination of the contract was uncalled for because the failure to attend the rehearsals only amounted to a breach of warranty and not a condition and thus the singer was entitled to the contract because the breach did not go to the contract’s very root (Bettin v. Gye, 1876). Thus, based on this case contracts can be categorised as conditions if the breach of the terms of the contract significantly or materially affects the performance of a contract and, therefore, becomes unenforceab le to the innocent party’s favour (Smith and Atiyah, 2006).  Ã‚     Another example of categorizing contracts terms as conditions or warranties was best articulated in the case of British Crane vs. Ipswich Plant Hire (1974) in which both companies were engaged in contracting out earth-moving equipment. In this case the plaintiffs provided the defendants with the equipment over the phone contract promptly without articulating the contract terms. However, the claimants later sent their conditions to the defendants but before signing them.

Essey Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 4000 words

Essey - Essay Example Management is the dynamic, life-giving element in every business. Without it the resources of production remain resources and never become production." (Sharma, 2004 11) This definition emphasizes that the managers achieve organizational objectives getting things done through the employees. Human resource Management is very essential for successful running of an enterprise. It ensures proper use of physical and human resources by deriving the best results. It leads to efficient performance and higher productivity. Human Resource Management is very essential for every organization to make productive use of human physical and financial resources or the achievement of the organizational goals. It helps in determination of objectives. No organization can succeed in tits mission unless its objectives an identified and well denied. Management helps in achieving these objectives by the efficient use of resources. The entry of multinationals has also brought in fundamental changes in the work culture, work ethics and remunerating patterns in many countries, all of which have a clear bearing on the career growth path of individuals. Added to this are the rapid changes taking place on the technological front, flattening hierarchies and making people come together more than ever before. Amidst all this change, the high ethical standards of an individual, be it a workman on the shop floor or the Chief Executive Officer, matter more now than ever. The dual ethical standards often maintained by people front-often the exact opposite when it comes of the way they conduct business are counterproductive in the long run. The new authority is emerging and organizations are member led, officer driven, customer focused; a team environment where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts; a flat management structure where employees and managers are learning rather than blame; a clear since of direction and purpose. A firm commitment to delivering high quality public services through a combination of direct-provision and effective partnerships. 2. ROLE OF HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT Human Resource Management plays a very important role in managing the mode in business organizations, which are complex and complicated. The role of management is summarized below. 1. Role in success. Human Resource Management plays a very important role the success of an organization. It helps in achieving group goals. Human Resource Management assembles and organizes the available recourses for the accomplishment of the goals of enterprise. It adds effectiveness to the efforts of group persons organized to achieve the given objectives. 2. Role in efficiency. Human Resource Management utilizes the available physical and human resources productively. It eliminates all types of wastage and leads to efficiency in all business operations. Thus it results in effective running of business activities. To secure efficiency of operations, management is concerned with reducing the cost of production and increasing the output. Through better planning, organizing and control, and the use of various cost-reduction techniques, efficient management leads to reduced costs and increased output. (Sharma, 2004 13) 3. Role in soundness of organization. Human Resource Management lays down a pattern of authority- responsibility relationship. The structure so formed

Assignment (Continued De Stijl) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words

Assignment (Continued De Stijl) - Essay Example I am designing architecture of a small house deriving from the features of the surface. The reduction of pure form is a figurative translation of cultural ideals for the practitioners of De Stijl (Helfand). The design adheres to the principles of De Stijl in a sense that it includes the use of straight horizontal and vertical lines to create a universal form of design. I am using three primary colors in the project’s design, which include blue, red, and green along with a non-color, which is Gray. I am trying to accomplish the essence of a real De Stijl art through creating a masterpiece, which should adhere to the principles of De Stijl. The concept behind the artwork is that a house is never small or big according to its structural design; rather the design or model of the house makes it look small or big. Therefore, I am designing a small house in a way that it should reflect a true art instead of its area. I am using Blob Brush tool to draw the vectors and oil paints to pa int the areas. The basic idea behind development of this project is to demonstrate the applicability of De Stijl principles in designing attractive painting and other artworks. Works Cited Helfand, Jessica. â€Å"De Stijl, New Media, and the Lessons of Geometry.† Typotheque.com, n.d. Web. 08 May 2011. .

Quality Assessment Essay Example for Free

Quality Assessment Essay â€Å"Assessment practises have a powerful impact on learning and teaching† (Curriculum Council of Western Australia, 2004, p. 37). For teachers the focus is on the use of assessment results; how they use those results to inform instructional decision making and whether they provide results that verify students have indeed met the learning targets originally set. Thus, judgements are made about the quality of assessments after the students’ performance. ‘High-quality’ assessments encompass a number of criteria’s and involve a great deal more than simply measuring knowledge (McMillan, 2011) and are outlined below in seven key areas. 1. Clear Purpose – The first decision is clarify the purpose for the assessment. Why is the assessment taking place? What is to be gained from it? Will the teacher be using formative techniques to monitor student progress or will the teacher use summative techniques to establish grades (Chappuis, Chappuis, Stiggins, 2009)? â€Å"Knowing the reason for the assessment is crucial because this will determine what the assessment should look like, how it is administered and scored, and how the results will be used (McMillan, 2011, p.10)†. 2. Defined Learning Targets –Are they reasonable and do they ‘align’ with the state standards, student characteristics and overall goals (McMillan, 2011)? Learning targets need to be clear and understandable to everyone (Chappuis, Chappuis, Stiggins, 2009). Learning targets are important as they define expectations. 3. Assessment Methods – The assessment methods, using either selected or constructed responses, need to align with the chosen learning targets (McMillan, 2011). â€Å"Selecting an assessment method that is incapable of reflecting the intended learning will compromise the accuracy of the results† (Chappuis, Chappuis, Stiggins, 2009). These also need to practical and efficient so as not to be too time consuming on lessons. 4. Fairness – Fair assessments are unbiased without the influence of discrimination or subjective factors (McMillan, 2011). â€Å"All students should have an equal opportunity to demonstrate their achievement† (Curriculum Council of Western Australia, 2004, p. 38). 5.Validity Reliability – Judgements should be based on all information and multiple measures that authenticate the conclusion (Curriculum Council of Western Australia, 2004). The assessment is useless unless the inference is appropriate, useful, reasonable and consistent (McMillan, 2011). 6. Criteria – Outlining criteria contributes to students’ learning by making clear the outcomes or goals they are striving for (Curriculum Council of Western Australia, 2004). â€Å"The issue of how student responses will be evaluated lies at the heart of any type of assessment† (McMillan, 2011, p.35). 7. Feedback – Feedback should be clear and constructive. Feedback by both by the teacher and self-assessment allows students to take responsibility for their learning and helps students â€Å"identify how they can improve their learning† (Killen, 2005, p. 98) and ensure motivation is high through positive consequences. By ensuring the lessons have a clear purpose, are well planned and allow all students’ to demonstrate their achievements through a fair, valid and reliable process, learning and teaching is improved and achievement is enhanced. â€Å"High quality assessments have consequences that will be positive for both students and yourself† (McMillan, 2011, p. 86). References Chappuis, S. , Chappuis, J. , Stiggins, R. (2009). The Quest for Quality. Multiple Measures , 67 (3), 14-19. Curriculum Council of Western Australia. (2004). Curriculum Framework. Osborne Park: W. A. Killen, R. (2005). Programming and assessment for quality teaching and learning. South Thompson: Cengage. McMillan, J. H. (2011). Classroom Assessment: Principles and Practice for Effective Standards Based Instruction (Fifth ed. ). Boston: Pearson.

The Outsiders Movie Review Essay

The Outsiders Movie Review Essay The Outsiders movie is based on a book written by S.E Hinton. The story takes place in Oklahoma in the 1960s. It is about two gangs or social classes named the greasers and the socs. The greasers are the poor ones who live on the east side of town and the socs are the rich ones living on the west side of town. The socs enjoy going to the east side to beat up greasers. The main character is Ponyboy Curtis, an orphan living with his two older brothers. One night, after a fight at home Ponyboy and his friend Johnny Cade who also has problems at home, run away. Rising action of the movie is when the two boys spend the night at the park and get in a fight with some of the socs. The socs wanted to teach the boys a lesson because earlier that night they allowed themselves to go out with two soc girls. One of them was Sherry Valance goes to the same school as Ponyboy and is Bob Sheldons girlfriend. Johnny stabs Bob to death as he was trying to drown Ponyboy in a fountain. They run away and h ide in an old church away from town. Climax of the story is when the church sets on fire during a school visit and some children become trapped inside. Ponyboy, Johnny and Dallas Winston (Dally), a friend who came visit the two boys, run into the church to save the children. They in turn become heroes with their pictures spread all over the newspapers. Falling action of the story involves Johnny staying in the hospital because of his broken spine and severe burns. Also, after juvenile trials Ponyboy and Johnny are declared as not guilty of the crime and Ponyboy is allowed to stay in custody of his oldest brother Darry Curtis. However, the two gangs didnt want to let their arguments rest until they fought a fair fight. So they arranged for a rumble which the greasers won. In the denouement, Ponyboy and Dally go to the hospital to inform Johnny of the good news. Apparently Johnny dies during the visit. Out of anger and grief Dally robs a store and forces the police to shoot him down w hen he refuses to turn himself in. Ponyboy finds a note that Johnny wrote him before his death. The most obvious conflict in The Outsiders is the conflict between the two different social groups, a class versus class conflict. Greasers are poor and many of them have to drop out of school to help financing their families. Whereas the socs are rich kids with expensive cars and receive education with no worries. The gap between the two classes makes the socs look at the greasers as trash of the society. The class versus class conflict gives rise to a physical conflict between the socs and the greasers. Throughout the story there are physical fights between the two groups. Socs mainly do it for fun and also to prove to themselves that they are better and stronger than the greasers. There are two other conflicts in the story both in which Ponyboy is involved. Ponyboy appears to be in conflict with himself. At the beginning of the story Ponyboy is on his way home from the movies. He is spotted by a group of socs who chase him and beat him up. Ponyboy is well aware of the conflicts be tween the greasers and the socs and knows the danger of walking home on his own, but he still does so because he struggling to accept the hard life he is forced to live. He thinks it is unfair that he has to worry about simple things like going home from the movie when the socs can live their life the way they want to without any restrictions or worries. Moreover, Ponyboy likes literature and nature which is odd for a normal greaser. He struggles to reveal himself in front of others, because he knows they wouldnt understand him. The other conflict would be Ponyboy versus life or circumstances. Ponyboys parents passed away in a car crash. Since then he has been in custody of his oldest brother Darry. He always compared Darrys actions with those of his parents. He thought if his parents were alive he would be better off with them because Darry was too strict. Ponyboy also interpreted Darrys strictness as hate. He felt it was unfair for him to have a brother who only yells at him and tells him what to do. He also felt life was unfair towards his other brother Sodapop who had dropped out of school to work at a gas station in order to help financing their family. The Outsiders discusses a variety of themes. The first and major theme is the gap between the different social classes, particularly the gap between the rich and the poor. The story shows that the rich take advantage of their authority. They look down to greasers and see no value in them. They look at themselves as the better part of the society, hence they allow themselves to do whatever they want. But greasers have limitations. They can only defend themselves, they could never allow themselves to start a fight with the socs because they would not get away with it like the socs do. When Ponyboy and Johnny were having a walk with Sherry and her friend, Bob and his friend Randy show up and demand that the girls leave with them instantly. Sherry asks Ponyboy not to take it personal if she does not say hello at school. This incident, on the other hand, implies that socs may also have restricted actions due to the large gap between them and the greasers. Sherry fears of losing respect of other socs if she talks to a greaser at school. The restriction or limitation that the gap has placed on Sherry might appear not be as significant as the one placed on the greasers. Still, it is of great matter because it shows that problems between the socs and the greasers have an effect on both groups. The second theme is about bravery. The Outsiders makes a valued point with this theme, which is that bravery is not about what class you belong to. Bravery is more about individualism. After the fire, when Ponyboy was in the ambulance car and told the teacher accompanying him to the hospital that he was a greaser, the man was surprised and wouldnt really believe him. This emphasizes that the society judges the greasers and views them as uncivilized people. The society would have never expected such brave action from a greaser. Another vey important theme would be the appreciation of family. Before the death of Bob, there was not much harmony between Ponyboy and his brothers. Darry was nearly always giving Ponyboy orders or shouting at him, which upset Ponyboy. Sodapop was torn between the two sides. When Ponyboy ran away with Johnny, the brothers learned to appreciate each other, especially Darry and Ponyboy. Ponyboy finally understood that Darry loves him and Darry learned that he should just change the way he treats Ponyboy so they could have a better life. The last theme would be the changes one undergoes during adolescence. Ponyboy matured throughout the story becoming more wise, understanding and less judging. After recollecting his conversation with Sherry and her actions, Bobs death and a conversation with Randy, Ponyboy realizes that socs have different sides too. They could be good people too. Ponyboy is the narrator and the main character of the story. He is a dynamic character and develops in a number of ways. Ponyboy is a greaser like his brothers and his friends, but also differs from them in many ways. Ponyboy is dreamy and innocent when compared to most greasers. He is not as tough and experienced as the others. Despite the fact that he is poor and the environment he lives in is quite uncivilized, Ponyboy is a good student and also interested in literature, nature and movies. Ponyboy knows that this isnt normal for a greaser, so he keeps his thoughts mainly to himself. Sometimes however he shares them with his brother Sodapop because he does not judge him and tries to be understanding of Ponyboys different side. When Ponyboy ran away with Johnny to hide at the church, he used to read to Johnny Gone with the wind. Also, once while watching a sunrise with Johnny, Ponyboy cited a few lines from the poem Nothing Gold can stay by Robert Frost. Johnny was amazed by the lin es and Ponyboy learned that Johnny had a different side too. He could understand literature and was appreciative of the beauty of nature like Ponyboy was. This encouraged him to open up and reveal himself to Johnny. Throughout the story Ponyboy becomes more experienced, mature and understanding. He learns too look at the full picture and not take things only from his point of view. When Dallas went to visit Ponyboy and Johnny in the church, his brothers send him a note telling him how much they miss him and that they want him back home. It is then when Ponyboy realizes that Darrys strictness comes out of love. He learns to understand that Darry loves him and that he fears that through any mistakes or misbehavior Ponyboy is might taken away from him and put into boys home. Ponyboy learns also not to be one-sided and not to judge people by what group they belong to. When Ponyboy goes back to town, he gets in a conversation with Randy. Randy tells him that he thinks his actions are brave and heroic and that he wouldnt have saved the children in the burning church. Ponyboy also gets to know from Randy that he grieves over Bobs death and that he regrets what happened, and that he is tired of the on-g oing conflict between socs and greasers. For the fist time Ponyboy looks at Randy as a normal guy and not as a soc. Ponyboy realizes that socs are not just sophisticated and materialistic people, they too have problems in their lives that seem almost perfect. When Sherri testified in the trials saying that Bob was the one looking for a fight with Ponyboy and Johnny, and decided work as a spy for the greasers bringing them information about the socs plans for the rumble, Ponyboy comes to understand that not all socs are the same, not all socs are for injustice. Ponyboy also realizes, with the help of Johnny, that he has other options than the rest of the greasers. Johnny left Ponyboy a note, in which he told him to stay gold, like in Robert Frosts poem. Johnny wanted Ponyboy to realize that there is much more to life than just the conflict between the greasers and the socs. By telling Ponyboy to stay gold, Johnny wanted Ponyboy to stay innocent and pure, and not let the problems with the socs make him tough, aggressive, and careless like most of the greasers. This made Ponyboy accept himself and the fact that he is different from others. To conclude, the story of The Outsiders has good content, even though it is an older one. I think its themes and conflicts are highly valuable as they still address many of the issues in todays world. It would be a good movie for the young people to watch because there are definitely things they could learn from the movie.

History and Global Impact Vibrio Cholerae and Cholera :: Diarrhea Bacteria Disease

Vibrio Cholerae and Cholera - The History and Global Impact Abstract Cholera is a diarrhea disease caused by the bacteria, Vibrio Cholera. For centuries, cholera has terrorized the world. There have been seven pandemics since 1817 and many lives have been lost. Even to this day, cholera runs rampant in many areas of the world. The impact cholera has had on the world is enormous. Cholera has caused immense amount of human suffering and economic/social loss since its beginning. But, as time goes on, discoveries are made and ideas are created on treatments that save many lives and some places are now cholera free. In those regions, Cholera is a thing of the past; while in other parts of the world, it is very much still a threatening disease of the present and future. ______________________________________________________________________________ Cholera, the massive watery diarrhea disease, has struck the earth with its angry fists since the beginnings of civilization. From the start, Vibrio cholerea has infested the world and Cholera has especially terrorized the world in a series of pandemics. Without a doubt, Cholera has traveled throughout the whole world, stopping to pillage multitudes of cities of many of its inhabitants. It knows no boundaries. The only place it hasn’t ruthlessly invaded is the barren ice desert of Antarctica. Even to this day, cholera still robs places of lives. The first Cholera pandemic broke out in 1817. Cholera outbreaks continued to spread across Europe, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Africa until 1823 (Barua Pg.8). Where the pandemic began is controversial, but cholera was definitely present in multiple places prior to and during 1817. India was an area that was affected by cholera in 1822. The fatality rates among the native and English troops in India were 21 for every 100 for the natives and 10 per 100 for the English (Barua Pg.8). Six years after the first Cholera pandemic, another pandemic sprang up. The second pandemic flew through Asia, Europe, the Middle East, some parts of Africa and the United States from 1829 to 1851. There were many â€Å"violent epidemics† sprinkled throughout the pandemic. One particularly violent epidemic took place on a pilgrimage to Mecca, where many died, including the Mecca and Jeddah governors and the Pasha (Barua Pg.9). Another outbreak that took place near Mecca was in 1846 where 15,000 people died (Barua Pg.10). However, as more cases of cholera appeared more new ideas for treatments did too. History and Global Impact Vibrio Cholerae and Cholera :: Diarrhea Bacteria Disease Vibrio Cholerae and Cholera - The History and Global Impact Abstract Cholera is a diarrhea disease caused by the bacteria, Vibrio Cholera. For centuries, cholera has terrorized the world. There have been seven pandemics since 1817 and many lives have been lost. Even to this day, cholera runs rampant in many areas of the world. The impact cholera has had on the world is enormous. Cholera has caused immense amount of human suffering and economic/social loss since its beginning. But, as time goes on, discoveries are made and ideas are created on treatments that save many lives and some places are now cholera free. In those regions, Cholera is a thing of the past; while in other parts of the world, it is very much still a threatening disease of the present and future. ______________________________________________________________________________ Cholera, the massive watery diarrhea disease, has struck the earth with its angry fists since the beginnings of civilization. From the start, Vibrio cholerea has infested the world and Cholera has especially terrorized the world in a series of pandemics. Without a doubt, Cholera has traveled throughout the whole world, stopping to pillage multitudes of cities of many of its inhabitants. It knows no boundaries. The only place it hasn’t ruthlessly invaded is the barren ice desert of Antarctica. Even to this day, cholera still robs places of lives. The first Cholera pandemic broke out in 1817. Cholera outbreaks continued to spread across Europe, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Africa until 1823 (Barua Pg.8). Where the pandemic began is controversial, but cholera was definitely present in multiple places prior to and during 1817. India was an area that was affected by cholera in 1822. The fatality rates among the native and English troops in India were 21 for every 100 for the natives and 10 per 100 for the English (Barua Pg.8). Six years after the first Cholera pandemic, another pandemic sprang up. The second pandemic flew through Asia, Europe, the Middle East, some parts of Africa and the United States from 1829 to 1851. There were many â€Å"violent epidemics† sprinkled throughout the pandemic. One particularly violent epidemic took place on a pilgrimage to Mecca, where many died, including the Mecca and Jeddah governors and the Pasha (Barua Pg.9). Another outbreak that took place near Mecca was in 1846 where 15,000 people died (Barua Pg.10). However, as more cases of cholera appeared more new ideas for treatments did too.

Marketing Is Everything

HER JANUARY-FEBRUARY 1991 Marketing Is Everything by Regis McKenna he 1990s will belong to the customer. And that is great news for the marketer. Technology is transforming choice, and choice is transforming the marketplace. As a result, we are witnessing the emergence of a new marketing paradigm – not a â€Å"do more† marketing that simply turns up the volume on the sales spiels of the past but a knowledge- and experience-based marketing that represents tbe once-and-for-all death of the salesman. Marketing's transformation is driven by tbe enormous power and ubiquitous spread of tecbnology.So pervasive is technology today tbat it is virtually meaningless to make distinctions between technology and nontecbnology businesses and industries: tbere arc only tecbnology companies. Tecbnology has moved into products, the workplace, and the marketplace with astonishing speed and thorougbness. Seventy years after tbey were invented, fractional borsepower motors are in some IS to 20 bousebold products in tbe average American home today. In less than 20 years, the microprocessor has achieved a similar penetration. TWenty years ago, there Regis McKenna is chairman of Regis McKenna Inc. a Palo Alto-headquartered marketing consulting firm that advises some of America's leading high-tech companies. He is also a general partner of Kleiner Perkins Caufield &) Byers, a technology venture-capital company. He is the author of Who's Afraid of Big Blue? (Addison-Wesley, 1989) and The Regis Touch (Addison-Wesley, 1985]. DRAWING BY TIMOTHY BLECK T 65 MARKETING IS EVERYTHING were fewer than 50,000 computers in use,- today more than . 50,000 computers are purchased every day. The defining characteristic of this new technological push is programmahility.In a computer chip, programmability means the capability to alter a command, so that one chip can perform a variety of prescribed functions and produce a variety of prescribed outcomes. On the factory floor, programmability transforms the production operation, enabling one machine to produce a wide variety of models and products. More broadly, programmability is the new corporate capability to produce more and more varieties and choices for customers – even to offer each individual customer the chance to design and implement the â€Å"program† that will yield the precise product, service, or variety that is right for him or her.The technological promise of programmahility has exploded into the reality of almost unlimited choice. Take the world of drugstores and supermarkets. According to Gorman's New Product News, which tracks new product introductions in these two eonsumer-products arenas, between 1985 and 1989 the number of new products grew by an astonishing 60% to an all-time annual high of 12,055. As venerable a brand as Tide illustrates this multiplication of brand variety. In 1946, Procter & Gamble introduced the laundry detergent, the first ever. For 38 years, one version of Tide served the entire market.Then, in the mid-1980s, Procter & Gamble began to bring out a succession of new Tides: Unscented Tide and Liquid Tide in 1984, Tide with Bleach in 1988, and the concentrated Ultra Tide in 1990. To some marketers, the creation of almost unlimited customer choice represents a threat – particularly when choice is accompanied by new competitors. TVenty years ago, IBM had only 20 competitors,- today it faces more than 5,000, when you count any company that is in the â€Å"computer† business. Twenty years ago, there were fewer than 90 semiconductor companies; today there are almost 300 in the United States alone.And not only are the competitors new, bringing with them new products and new strategies, but the customers also are new: 90% of the people who used a computer in 1990 were not using one in 1980. These new customers don't know ahout the old rules, the old understandings, or the old ways of doing business – and they don't care. What the y do care about is a company that is willing to adapt its products or services to fit their strategies. This represents the evolution of marketing to the market-driven company. Several decades ago, there were sales-driven companies.These organizations focused their energies on changing customers' minds to fit the product – praeticing the â€Å"any color as long as it's black† school of marketing. As teehnology developed and competition increased, some companies shifted their approach and became eustomer driven. These companies expressed a new willingness to change their product to fit customers' requests – practicing the â€Å"tell us what color you want† school of marketing. In the 1990s, successful companies are becoming market driven, adapting their products to fit their customers' strategies.These companies will practice â€Å"let's figure out together whether and how color matters to your larger goal† marketing. It is marketing that is oriente d toward creating rather than controlling a market; it is 66 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW January-February 1991 based on developmental education, incicmcntul improvement, and ongoing process rather than on simple market-share tactics, raw sales, and one-time events. Most important, it draws on the base of knowledge and experience that exists in the organization. T ese two fundamentals, knowledge-based and experiencebased marketing, will increasingly define the capabilities of a successful marketing organization. They will supplant the old approach to marketing and new product development. The old approach – getting an idea, conducting traditional market research, developing a product, testing the market, and finally going to market – is slow, unresponsive, and turf-ridden. Moreover, given the fast-changing marketplace, there is less and less reason to believe that this traditional approach can keep up with real customer wishes and demands or with the rigors of competition.C onsider the mueh-publieized 1988 lawsuit that Beecham, the international consumer products group, filed against advertising giant Saatchi ; Saatchi. The suit, which sought more than $24 million in damages, argued that Yankelovich Clancy Shulman, at that time Saatchi's U. S. market-research subsidiary, had â€Å"vastly overstated† the projected market share of a new detergent that Beecham launched. Yankelovich forecast that Beecham's product, Delicare, a cold-water detergent, would win between 45. 4% and 52. 3% of the U. S. arket if Beecham backed it with $18 million of advertising. According to Beeeham, however, Delicare's highest market share was 25%; the product generally achieved a market share of between 15% and 20%. The lawsuit was settled out of court, with no clear winner or loser. Regardless of the outcome, however, the issue it illustrates is widespread and fundamental: forecasts, by their very nature, must be unreliable, particularly with technology, competitors, cu stomers, and markets all shifting ground so often, so rapidly, and so radically.The alternative to this old approach is know ledge-based and experience-based marketing. Knowledge-based marketing requires a company to master a scale of knowledge: of the technology in which it competes; of its competition; of its customers; of new sources of technology that can alter its competitive environment; and of its own organization, capabilities, plans, and way of doing business.Armed with this mastery, companies can put knowledge-based marketing to work in three essential ways: integrating tbe customer into tbe design process to guarantee a product tbat is tailored not only to the customers' needs and desires but also to the customers' strategies; generating nicbe thinking to use tbe company's knowledge of cbannels and markets to identify segments of tbe market tbe company can own; and developing the infrastructure of suppliers, vendors, partners, and users wbose relationships will help susta in and support tbe company's reputation and technological edge.The otber balf of this new marketing paradigm is experiencebased marketing, wbicb empbasizes interactivity, connectivity, and creativity. With tbis approacb, companies spend time with tbeir customers, constantly monitor tbeir competitors, and develop a feedback-analysis system tbat turns this information about the market and the competition into important new product intelligence. At the same time, tbese companies botb evaluate their own )anuary February 1991 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW 67 MARKETING IS EVERYTHING echnology to assess its currency and cooperate with other companies to create mutually advantageous systems and solutions. These close encounters – with customers, competitors, and internal and external technologies – give companies the firsthand experience they need to invest in market development and to take intelligent, calculated risks. In a time of exploding choice and unpredictable change, market ing – the new marketing – is the answer. With so much choice for customers, companies face the end of loyalty.To combat that threat, they can add sales and marketing people, throwing costly resources at the market as a way to retain customers. But the real solution, of course, is not more marketing but better marketing. And that means marketing that finds a way to integrate the customer into the company, to create and sustain a relationship between the company and the customer. The marketer must he the integrator, both internally – synthesizing technological capability with market needs – and externally bringing the customer into the company as a participant in the development and adaptation of goods and services.It is a fundamental shift in the role and purpose of marketing: from manipulation of the customer to genuine customer involvement; from telling and selling to communicating and sharing knowledge; from last-in-line function to corporate-credibilit y champion. Playing the integrator requires the marketer to command credibility. In a marketplace characterized by rapid change and potentially paralyzing choice, credibility becomes the company's sustaining value.The character of its management, the strength of its financials, the quality of its innovations, the congeniality of its customer references, the capabilities of its alliances – these are the measures of a company's credibility. They are measures that, in turn, directly affect its capacity to attract quality people, generate new ideas, and form quality relationships. The relationships are the key, the hasis of customer choice and company adaptation. After all, what is a successful brand hut a special relationship?And who hetter than a company's marketing people to create, sustain, and interpret the relationship between the company, its suppliers, and its customers? That is why, as the demands on the company have shifted from controlling costs to competing on product s to serving customers, the center of gravity in the company has shifted from finance to engineering-and now to marketing. In the 1990s, marketing will do more than sell. It will define the way a company does business. The old notion of marketing -was epitomized hy Marketing Is Everythins, and Everything T A/T / +' IS IViarKCting he ritual phone call from the CEO to the corporate headhunter saying, â€Å"Find me a good marketing per- ^†Ã¢â‚¬Ëœ^ ^† ‘^†^ ^^ marketing operation! † What the Q^Q wanted, of course, was someone who could take on a discrete set of textbook functions that were generally associated with run-of-the-mill marketing. That person would immediately go to Madison Avenue to hire an advertising agency, change the ad campaign, redesign the company logo, redo the brochures, train the sales force, retain a high-powered public relations firm, and alter or otherwise reposition the company's image.HARVARD BUSINESS REVTEW lanuary-February 1991 68 Behind the CEO's call for â€Å"a good marketing person† were a number of assumptions and attitudes about marketing: that it is a distinct function in the company, separate from and usually subordinate to the core functions; that its job is to identify groups of potential customers and find ways to convince them to buy the company's product or service; and that at the heart of it is image making – creating and projecting a false sense of the company and its offerings to lure the customer into the company's grasp.If those assumptions ever were warranted in the past, however, all three are totally unsupportable and obsolete today. Marketing today is not a function; it is a way of doing business. Marketing is not a new ad campaign or this month's promotion. Marketing has to be all-pervasive, part of everyone's job description, from the receptionists to the board of directors. Its job is neither to fool the customer nor to falsify the company's image. It is to integrate the customer into the design of the product and to design a ystematic process for interaction that will create substance in the relationship. To understand the difference between the old and tbe new marketing, compare how two bigb-tech medical instrument companies recently bandied similar customer telepbone calls requesting tbe repair and replacement of their equipment. Tbe first eompany – call it Gluco – delivered tbe replacement instrument to tbe customer witbin 24 hours of tbe request, no questions asked. Tbe box in wbich it arrived contained instructions for sending back tbe broken instrument, a mailing label, and even tape to reseal tbe box.Tbe pbone call and tbe excbange of instruments were handled conveniently, professionally, and witb maximum consideration for and minimum disruption to tbe customer. The second company – call it Pumpco – bandied tbings quite differently. Tbe person wbo took the customer's telepbone call bad never been asked about repairing a piece of equipment; sbe tbougbtlessly sent tbe customer into tbe limbo of bold. Finally, sbe came back on the line to say tbat tbe customer would have to pay for tbe equipment repair and tbat a temporary replacement would cost an additional $ 15.Several days later, tbe customer received tbe replacement witb no instructions, no information, no directions. Several weeks after the customer returned tbe broken equipment, it reappeared, repaired but witb no instructions concerning tbe temporary replacement. Finally, tbe customer got a demand letter from Pumpco, indicating tbat someone at Pumpco bad made the mistake of not sending tbe equipment C. O. D. To Pumpco, marketing means selling tbings and collecting money; to Gluco, marketing means building relationsbips witb its custotners.The way tbe two eompanies bandied two simple eustomer requests refleets tbe questions tbat customers increasingly ask in interactions witb all kinds of businesses, from airlines to software makers : Wbicb company is competent, responsive, and well organized? Wbicb company do I trust to get it rigbt- Wbicb company would I ratber do business witb? Successful companies realize tbat marketing is like quality integral to tbe organization. Like quality, marketing is an intangible tbat tbe customer must experience to appreciate.And like quality – wbicb in tbe United States bas developed from early ideas like HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW )anuary-February 1991 69 MARKETING IS EVERYTHING planned obsolescence and inspecting quality in to more ambitious concepts like the systemization of quality in every aspect of tbe organization – marketing bas been evolutionary. Marketing bas shifted from tricking tbe customer to blaming the customer to satisfying the customer – and now to integrating tbe customer systematically.As its next move, marketing must permanently shed its reputation for hucksterism and image making and create an award for marketing much like tbe Malcolm Baldr ige National Quality Award. In fact, companies tbat continue to see marketing as a bag of tricks will lose out in sbort order to companies tbat stress substance and real performance. Marketing's ultimate assignment is to serve customers' real needs and to communicate tbe substance of tbe company – not to introduce tbe kinds of cosmetics tbat used to typify tbe auto industry's annual model cbanges.And because marketing in tbe 1990s is an expression of tbe company's cbaracter, it necessarily is a responsibility tbat belongs to the whole company. The Goal ofMarketing Is to Own the Market, Not fust U. S. companies typically make two kinds of mistakes. Some get caught up in the excitement and drive of making things, particularly new creto Sell the ations. Others become absorbed in the competiPwduct ^^^^  °^ selling things, particularly to increase their market share in a given product line. Both approaches could prove fatal to a business.Tbe problem witb tbe first is tbat it lea ds to an internal focus. Companies can become so fixated on pursuing tbeir R&D agendas that they forget about tbe customer, tbe market, tbe competition. They end up winning recognition as R&D pioneers but lack the more important capability – sustaining their performance and, sometimes, maintaining their independence. Genentech, for example, clearly emerged as the R&D pioneer in biotechnology, only to be acquired by Rocbe. Tbe problem with the second approach is that it leads to a market-sbare mentality, which inevitably translates into undershooting the market.A market-share mentality leads a company to think of its customers as â€Å"share points† and to use gimmicks, spiffs, and promotions to eke out a percentage-point gain. It pusbes a company to look for incremental, sometimes even minuscule, growtb out of existing products or to spend lavishly to launch a new product in a market where competitors enjoy a fat, dominant position. It turns marketing into an expensive fight over crumbs rather than a smart effort to own the whole pie. Tbe real goal of marketing is to own the market – not just to make or sell products. Smart marketing means defining what wbole pie is yours.It means thinking of your company, your technology, your product in a fresh way, a way that begins by defining what you can lead. Because in marketing, what you lead, you own. Leadership is ownership. When you own the market, you do different things and you do tbings differently, as do your suppliers and your customers. When you own tbe market, you develop your products to serve tbat market specifically; you define tbe standards in that market; you bring into your camp third parties who want to develop their own compatible products or offer you new features or add-ons to aug- 70 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW January-February 19yi ent your product; you get the first look at new ideas that others are testing in that market; you attract the most talented people because of your ack nowledged leadership position. Owning a market can become a self-reinforcing spiral. Beeause you own the market, you become the dominant force in the field; beeause you dominate the field, you deepen your ownership of the market. Ultimately, you deepen your relationship with your customers as well, as they attribute more and more leadership qualities to a company that exhibits such an integrated performance. To own the market, a eompany starts by thinking of a new way to define a market.Take, for instance, the case of Convex Computer. In 1984, Convex was looking to put a new computer on the market. Because of tbe existing market segmentation. Convex could have seen its only choice as competing for market sbare in the predefined markets: in supercomputers where Cray dominated or in minicomputers where Digital led. Determined to define a market it could own. Convex created the â€Å"mini-supercomputer† market by offering a product with a priee/performance ratio between Cray's $ 5 million to $15 million supercomputers and Digital's $300,000 to $750,000 minieomputers.Convex's product, priced between $500,000 and $800,000, offered teehnological performance less than that of a full supercomputer and more than that of a minicomputer. Within this new market. Convex established itself as the leader. Intel did the same thing with its microprocessor. The company defined its early products and market more as computers than semiconductors. Intel offered, in essence, a computer on a chip, creating a new category of products that it could own and lead. Sometimes owning a market means broadening it; other times, narrowing it. Apple has managed to do both in efforts to create and own a market.Apple first broadened the category of small computers to achieve a leadership position. The market definition started out as hobby computers and had many small players. The next step was the home computer – a market that was also crowded and limiting. Tb own a market, Apple i dentified the personal computer, which expanded the market concept and made Apple the undeniable market leader. In a later move, Apple did the opposite, redefining a market by narrowing its definition. Unquestionably, IBM owned the business market; for Apple, a market-share mentality in that arena would have been pointless.Instead, with technology alliances and marketing eorreetly defined, Apple created – and owned – a whole new market: desktop publishing. Once inside the corporate world with desktop publishing, Apple could deepen and broaden its relationships with the business customer. Paradoxically, two important outcomes of owning a market are substantial earnings, which can replenish the company's R&D coffers, and a powerful market position, a beachhead from wbich a company can grow additional market share by expanding both its teehnological capabilities and its definition of the market.The greatest praetitioners of this marketing approach are Japanese companies i n industries like autos, commercial electronics, semiconductors, and computers and communications. Their primary goal is ownership of certain target markets. The keiretsv industrial! structure allows them to use all of the market's infrastructure to achieve HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW January-February 1991 * r ^ MARKETING IS EVERYTHING this; relationships in technology, information, politics, and distribution help tbe company assert its leadership. Tbe Japanese strategy is consistent.Tbese companies begin by using basic research from tbe United States to jump-start new product development. From 1950 to 1978, for example, Japanese companies entered into 32,000 licensing arrangements to acquire foreign technology at an estimated cost of $9 billion. But the United States spent at least 50 times tbat much to do the original R&D. Next, these Japanese companies pusb out a variety of products to engage the market and to learn and then focus on dominating tbe market to force foreign competitors to retreat – leaving them to barvest substantial returns.Tbese buge profits are recycled into a new spiral of R&J3, innovation, market creation, and market dominance. Tbat model of competing, which links R&D, technology, innovation, production, and finance – integrated through marketing's drive to own a market – is the approacb tbat all competitors will take to succeed in the 1990s. In a world of mass manufacturing, the counterpart was mass marketing. In a world of flexible Technolo2V n^^nufacturing, the counterpart is flexible market7-. 7 ine. The technology comes first, the ability to marJZ VUI Vt^Ci j^gj follows.The tecbnology embodies adaptability, programmability, and customizability; now comes marketing that delivers on those qualities. Today tecbnology has created tbe promise of â€Å"any thing, any way, any time. † Customers can have their own version of virtually any product, including one that appeals to mass identification rather than individu ality, if tbey so desire. Think of a product or an industry where customization is not predominant. The telephone? Originally, Bell Telephone's goal was to place a simple, all-black pbone in every home. Today there are more than 1,000 permutations and combinations available, ith options running the gamut from different colors and portahility to answering machines and programmability – as well as services. Tbere is the further promise of optical fiber and the convergence of computers and communications into a unified industry with even greater technological choice. How about a venerable product like the bicycle, which appeared originally as a sketch in Leonardo da Vinci's notebooks? According to a recent article in the Washington Post, tbe National Bicycle Industrial Company in Kokubu, Japan builds made-to-order bicycles on an assembly line.The bicycles, fitted to each customer's measurements, are delivered within two weeks of the order – and the company offers 11,231,8 62 variations on its models, at prices only 10% higher than ready-made models. Even newspapers tbat report on this technology-led move to customization are themselves increasingly customized. Faced witb stagnant circulation, the urban daily newspapers have begun to customize their news, advertising, and even editorial and sports pages to appeal to local suburban readers. The Los Angeles Times, for example, has seven zoned editions targeting each of tbe city's surrounding communities.What is at work here is the predominant matbematical formula of today's marketing: variety plus service equals customization. For 72 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW January-February all of its handying about as a marketing buzzword, customization is a remarkably direct concept – it is the capacity to deal with a customer in a unique way. Technology makes it increasingly possible to do that, but interestingly, marketing's version of the laws of physics makes it increasingly difficult. According to quantum physics, things act differently at the micro level Light is the classic example.When subjected to certain kinds of tests, light behaves like a wave, moving in much the way an ocean wave moves. But in other tests, light behaves more like a particle, moving as a single ball. So, scientists ask, is it a wave or a particle? And when is it which? Markets and customers operate like light and energy. In fact, like light, the customer is more than one thing at the same time. Sometimes consumers behave as part of a group, fitting neatly into social and psychographic classifications. Other times, the consumer breaks loose and is iconoclastic.Customers make and break patterns: the senior citizen market is filled with older people who intensely wish to act youthful, and the upscale market must contend with wealthy people who hide their money behind the most utilitarian purchases. Markets are subject to laws similar to those of quantum physics. Different markets have different levels of consumer energy, stages in the market's development where a product surges, is absorbed, dissipates, and dies. A fad, after all, is nothing more than a wave that dissipates and then becomes a particle.Take the much-discussed Yuppie market and its association with certain branded consumer products, like BMWs. After a stage of bigh customer energy and close identification, the wave has broken. Having been saturated and absorbed by the marketplace, the Yuppie association has faded, just as energy does in the physical world. Sensing the change, BMW no longer sells to the Yuppie lifestyle but now focuses on the technological capabilities of its machines. And Yuppies are no longer the wave they once were; as a market, they are more like particles as they look for more individualistic and personal expressions of their consumer energy.Of course, since particles can also behave like waves again, it is likely that smart marketers will tap some new energy source, such as values, to recoalesce the youn g, affluent market into a wave. And technology gives marketers the tools they need, such as database marketing, to discern waves and particles and even to design programs that combine enough particles to form a powerful wave. The lesson for marketers is much the same as that voiced by Buckminster Fuller for scientists: â€Å"Don't fight forces,- use them. Marketers who follow and use technology, rather than oppose it, will discover that it creates and leads directly to new market forms and opportunities. Take audiocassettes, tapes, and compact discs. For years, record and tape companies jealously guarded their property. Knowing that home hackers pirated tapes and created their own composite cassettes, the music companies steadfastly resisted the forces of technology – until the Personics System realized that technology was making a legitimate market for authorized, high-quality customized composite cassettes and CDs.Rather than treating the customer as a criminal, Personics saw a market. Today consumers can design personalized music tapes from the Personics System, a rewed-up jukebox with a library of HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW (anuary R-bmary 1991 73 MARKETING IS EVERYTHING over 5,000 songs. For $1. 10 per song, consumers tell tbe macbine wbat to record. In about ten minutes, tbe system makes a customized tape and prints out a laser-quality label of tbe selections, complete witb tbe customer's name and a personalized title for tbe tape. Launcbed in 1988, tbe system bas already spread to more tban 250 stores.Smart marketers bave, once again, allowed tecbnology to create the customizing relationship witb tbe customer. We are witnessing tbe obsoleseence of advertisg-1^ tbe old model of marketing, it made sense as oveS fTOm ^^^ wbole formula: you sell mass-produced tn lU Q 3 j^ygg market tbrougb mass media. Marketing's job was to use advertising to deliver a message to tbe consumer in a one-way communication: â€Å"Buy tbis! † Tbat message no longer w orks, and advertising is sbowing tbe effects. In 1989, newspaper advertising grew only 4%, compared witb 6% in 1988and9% in 1987.According to a study by Syracuse University's Jobn Pbilip Jones, ad spending in tbe major media bas been stalled at 1. 5% of GNP since 1984. Ad agency staffing, researcb, and profitability bave been affected. Three related factors explain tbe decline of advertising. First, advertising overkill bas started to ricocbet back on advertising itself. Tbe proliferation of products has yielded a proliferation of messages: U. S. customers are hit witb up to 3,000 marketing messages a day. In an effort to bombard the customer with yet one more advertisement, marketers are squeezing as many voices as they can into tbe space allotted to tbem.In 1988, for example, 38% of primetime and 47% of weekday daytime television commercials were only 15 seconds in duration; in 1984, those figures were 6% and 11 % respeetively. As a result of the shift to 15-second commercials, th e number of television commercials bas skyrocketed; between 1984 and 1988, prime-time commercials increased by 25%, weekday daytime by 24%. Predictably, bowever, a greater number of voices translates into a smaller impact. Customers simply are unable to remember wbich advertisement pitcbes wbich product, much less wbat qualities or attributes might differentiate one product from anotber.Very simply, it's a jumble out tbere. Take tbe enormously clever and critically acclaimed series of advertisements for Eveready batteries, featuring a tireless marching rabbit. Tbe ad was so successful tbat a survey conducted by Video Storyboard Tests Inc. named it one of tbe top commercials in 1990 for Duracell, Eveready's top competitor. In fact, a full 40% of tbose wbo selected tbe ad as an outstanding commercial attributed it to Duracell. Partly as a consequence of tbis confusion, reports indicate that Duracell's market share has grown, while Eveready's may have sbrunk sligbtly.Batteries are not the only market in whicb more advertising succeeds in spreading more confusion. The same thing bas happened in markets like athletic footwear and soda pop, where competing companies have signed up so many celebrity sponsors that consumers can no longer keep straight who is pitcbing wbat for whom. In 1989, for example. Coke, Diet Coke, Pepsi, and Diet Pepsi used nearly three dozen movie stars, athletes, musicians, and television personalities to tell consumers to buy more cola. But wben tbe 74 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW January-February 1991 moke and mirrors bad cleared, most consumers couldn't remember wbetber foe Montana and Don Jobnson drank Coke or Pepsi – or botb. Or wby it really mattered. Tbe second development in advertising's decline is an outgrowth of the first: as advertising has proliferated and become more obnoxiously insistent, consumers bave gotten fed up. Tbe more advertising seeks to intrude, tbe more people try to shut it out. Last year, Disney won the applause of commercial-weary customers when the company announced tbat it would not screen its films in tbeaters that showed commercials before the feature.A Disney executive was quoted as saying, â€Å"Movie theaters should he preserved as environments where consumers can escape from the pervasive onslaught of advertising. † Buttressing its position, tbe company cited survey data obtained from moviegoers, 90% of wbom said tbey did not want commercials sbown in movie tbeaters and 95% of wbom said tbey did want to see previews of coming attractions. More recently, after a number of failed attempts, the U. S. Congress responded to the growing concerns of parents and educators over the eommercial content of children's television.A new law limits tbe number of minutes of commercials and directs tbe Federal Communications Commission botb to examine â€Å"programlength commercials† – cartoon shows linked to commercial product lines – and to make each television station' s contribution to cbildren's educational needs a condition for license renewal. Tbis concern over advertising is mirrored in a variety of arenas from public outcry over cigarette marketing plans targeted at blacks and women to calls for more environmentally sensitive packaging and products.The underlying reason bebind botb of these factors is advertising's dirty little secret: it serves no useful purpose. In today's market, advertising simply misses the fundamental point of marketing – adaptability, flexibility, and responsiveness. Tbe new marketing requires a feedback loop; it is tbis element tbat is missing from tbe monologue of advertising but that is built into the dialogue of marketing. Tbe feedback loop, connecting company and customer, is central to tbe operating definition of a truly market-driven company: a company that adapts in a timely way to the changing needs of tbe customer.Apple is one such company. Its Macintosh computer is regarded as a machine that launched a revolution. At its birth in 1984, industry analysts received it with praise and acclaim. But in retrospect, the first Macintosh had many weaknesses: it had limited, nonexpandable memory, virtually no applications software, and a blackand-wbite screen. For all tbose deficiencies, bowever, tbe Mac bad two strengtbs tbat more than compensated: it was incredibly easy to use, and it bad a user group tbat was prepared to praise Mac publicly at its launeb and to advise Apple privately on bow to improve it.In other words, it had a feedback loop. It was tbis feedback loop tbat brougbt about change in tbe Mac, wbicb ultimately became an open, adaptable, and colorful computer. And it was changing the Mac that saved it. Months before launebing tbe Mac, Apple gave a sample of tbe product to 100 influential Americans to use and comment on. It signed up 100 tbird-party software suppliers wbo began to envision applications that could take advantage of the Mac's simplicity. It HARVARD BUSINESS RE VIEW (anuary-February 1991 75MARKETING IS EVERYTHING trained over 4,000 dealer salespeople and gave full-day, hands-on demonstrations of the Mac to industry insiders and analysts. Apple got two benefits from this network: educated Mac supporters who could legitimately praise the product to the press and invested consumers who could tell the company what the Mac needed. The dialogue witb customers cmd media praise were worth more than any notice advertising could buy. Apple's approach represents the new marketing model, a shift from monologue to dialogue.It is accomplished through experience-based marketing, where companies create opportunities for customers and potential customers to sample their products and then provide feedback. It is accomplished through beta sites, where a company can install a prelaunch product and study its use and needed refinements. Experienced-based marketing allows a company to work closely with a client to change a product, to adapt the technology â€⠀œ recognizing that no product is perfect wben it comes from engineering. This interaction was precisely the approach taken by Xerox in developing its recently announced Docutech System.Seven months before launeh, Xerox established 25 beta sites. From its prelaunch eustomers, Xerox learned what adjustments it should make, what service and support it should supply, and what enhancements and related new products it might next introduce. The goal is adaptive marketing, marketing that stresses sensitivity, flexibility, and resiliency. Sensitivity comes from having a variety of modes and channels through which companies can read the environment, from user groups that offer live feedback to sophisticated consumer scanners that provide data on customer choice in real time.Flexibility comes from creating an organizational structure and operating style that permits the company to take advantage of new opportunities presented by customer feedback. Resiliency comes from learning from mistakes – marketing that listens and responds. The line between products and services is fast Marketing a Product d Service Is Is iVl(irK6tll2g Q. 1 rOuUCt gj-jjj ]viotors makes more money from lending its eroding, what once appeared to be a rigid polarity ^^^ ^^^ become a hybrid: the servicization of prod^^^^ ^^^ ^^ productization of services. When Gen- ustomers money to buy its cars than it makes from manufacturing the cars, is it marketing its products or its services? When IBM announces to all the world that it is now in the systems-integration business – the customer can buy any box from any vendor and IBM will supply the systems know-how to make the whole thing work together – is it marketing its products or its services? In fact, the computer business today is 75% services; it consists overwhelmingly of applications knowledge, systems analysis, systems engineering, systems integration, networking solutions, security, and maintenance.The point applies just as well to less grandiose eompanies and to less expensive consumer products. Take the large corner drugstore that stocks thousands of products, from cosmetics to wristwatches. The products are for sale, but the store is actually marketing a service – the convenience of having so much variety collected and arrayed in one location. Or take any of the ordinary products found in the home, from boxes of cereal to table lamps to VCRs. All of 76 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW January-February 1991 hem come with some form of information designed to perform a service: nutritional information to indicate tbe actual food value of the cereal to tbe health-conscious consumer; a United Laboratories label on tbe lamp as an assurance of testing; an operating manual to belp tbe nontecbnical VCR customer rig up tbe new unit. Tbere is ample room to improve tbe quality of this information – to make it more useful, more convenient, or even more entertaining – hut in almost every case, the service information is a critical component of the product.On the other side of tbe hybrid, service providers are acknowledging tbe productization of services. Service providers, such as banks, insurance companies, consulting firms, even airlines and radio stations, are creating tangible events, repetitive and predictable exercises, standard and customizable packages tbat are product services. A frequent-flier or a frequent-listener club is a product service, as are regular audits performed by consulting firms or new loan packages assembled by banks to respond to cbanging economic conditions.As products and services merge, it is critical for marketers to understand clearly what marketing the new hybrid is not. Tbe serviee component is not satisfied by repairing a product if it breaks. Nor is it satisfied by an 800 number, a warranty, or a customer survey form. Wbat customers want most from a product is often qualitative and intangible; it is tbe service tbat is integral to the product. Ser vice is not an event; it is the process of creating a customer environment of information, assurance, and comfort. Consider an experienee that by now must have become commonplace for all of us as consumers.You go to an electronics store and buy an expensive piece of audio or video equipment, say, a CD player, a VCR, or a video camera. You take it bome, and a few days later, you accidentally drop it. It breaks. It won't work. Now, as a customer, you have a decision to make. When you take it back to the store, do you say it was broken wben you took it out of the box? Or do you tell the truth? The answer, honestly, depends on how you think the store will respond. But just as honestly, most customers appreciate a store that encourages them to tell the truth by making good on all customer problems.Service is, ultimately, an environment that encourages honesty. The company that adopts a â€Å"we'll make good on it, no questions asked† policy in the face of adversity may win a custo mer for life. Marketers who ignore the service component of their products focus on competitive differentiation and tools to penetrate markets. Marketers who appreciate the importance of the product-service hybrid focus on building loyal customer relationships. Technology and marketing once may bave Technology looked like opposites.The cold, impersonal sameness of technology and the high-touch, human Technology uniqueness of marketing seemed eternally at odds, Computers would only make marketing less personal; marketing could never leam to appreciate the look and feel of computers, datahases, and the rest of the high-tech paraphernalia. On the grounds of cost, a truce was eventually arranged. Very simply, marketers discovered that real savings could be gained hy KARVAKD BUSINESS REVIEW lanuary-February 1991 Markets 77 MARKETING IS EVERYTHING using technology to do what previously had required expensive, intensive, and often risky, people-directed field operations.For example, market ers learned that by matching a database with a marketing plan to simulate a new product launch on a computer, they could accomplish in 90 days and for $50,000 what otherwise would take as long as a year and cost at least several hundred thousand dollars. But having moved beyond the simple automation-for-cost-saving stage, technology and marketing have now not only fused but also begun to feed hack to each other. The result is the transformation of both technology and the product and the reshaping of both the customer and tbe company.Technology permits information to flow in both directions between the customer and the company. It creates the feedback loop that integrates the customer into the company, allows tbe company to own a market, permits customization, creates a dialogue, and turns a product into a service and a service into a product. T he direction in which Genentech has moved in its use of laptop and hand-held computers illustrates the transforming power of technology as i t merges with marketing. Originally, the biotechnology company planned to have salespeople use laptops on their sales calls as a way to automate the sales function.Sales reps, working solely out of their homes, would use laptops to get and send electronic mail, file reports on computerized â€Å"templates,† place orders, and receive company press releases and information updates. In addition, the laptops would enable sales reps to keep databases that would track customers' buying histories and company performance. That was the initial level of expectations – very low. In fact, the technology-marketing marriage has dramatically altered the customer-company relationship and the joh of the sales rep. Sales reps have emerged as marketing consultants.Armed with technical information generated and gathered by Genentech, sales reps can provide a valuable educational service to their customers, who are primarily pharmacists and physicians. For example, analysis of the largest study of children with a disease called short stature is available only through Genentech and its representatives. With this analysis, which is hased on clinical studies of 6,000 patients between the ages of one month and 30 years, and with the help of an on-line â€Å"growth calculator,† doctors can better judge when to use the growth hormone Protropin.Genentecb's system also includes a general educational component. Sales reps can use their laptops to access the latest articles or technical reports from medical conferences to help doctors keep up to date. The laptops also make it possible for doctors to use sales reps as research associates: Genentech has a staff of medical specialists who can answer highly technical questions posed through an on-line question-and-answer template.When sales reps enter a question on the template, the e-mail function immediately routes it to the appropriate specialist. For relatively simple questions, online answers come back to the sales rep within a day. In the 1990s, Genentech's laptop system – and the hundreds of similar applications that sprang up in tbe 1980s to automate sales, marketing, service, and distribution – will seem like a rather obviHARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW January-February 1991 78 ous and primitive way to meld tecbnology and marketing.The marketer will bave available not only existing tecbnologies but also tbeir converging capabilities: personal computers, databases, CD-ROMs, grapbic displays, multimedia, color terminals, computer-video tecbnology, networking, a custom processor tbat can be built into anytbing anywhere to create intelligence on a countertop or a dasbboard, seanners that read text, and networks tbat instantaneously create and distribute vast reacbes of information. As design and manufacturing tecbnologies advance into â€Å"real time† processes, marketing will move to eliminate tbe gap between production and consumption.Tbe result will be marketing workstations †“ the marketers' counterpart to CAD/CAM systems for engineers and product designers. Tbe marketing workstation will draw on grapbic, video, audio, and numeric information from a network of databases. The marketer will be able to look tbrougb windows on tbe workstation and manipulate data, simulate markets and products, bounce concepts off otbers in distant cities, write production orders for product designs and packaging concepts, and obtain costs, timetables, and distribution scbedules.Just as computer-comfortable cbildren today tbink notbing of manipulating figures and playing fantastic games on tbe same color screens, marketers will use the workstation to play botb designer and eonsumer. Tbe workstation will allow marketers to integrate data on historic sales and cost figures, competitive trends, and consumer patterns. At tbe same time, marketers will be able to create and test advertisements and promotions, evaluate media options, and analyze viewer and readersbip data. And fi nally, marketers will be able to obtain instant feedbaek on concepts and plans and to move marketing plans rapidly into production.Tbe marriage of technology and marketing should bring witb it a renaissance of marketing RikD – a new capability to explore new ideas, to test tbem against tbe reactions of real eustomers in real time, and to advance to experience-based leaps of faith. It should be the vehicle for bringing tbe customer inside the company and for putting marketing in tbe eenter of tbe company. In tbe 1990s, tbe critical dimensions of tbe company – including all of tbe attributes tbat togetber define how the company does business – are ultimately tbe functions of marketing.That is wby marketing is everyone's job, wby marketing is everytbing and everytbing is marketing. ^ Reprint 91108 HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW liinuary-February 1991 79 Harvard Business Review Notice of Use Restrictions, May 2009 Harvard Business Review and Harvard Business Publishing New sletter content on EBSCOhost is licensed for the private individual use of authorized EBSCOhost users. It is not intended for use as assigned course material in academic institutions nor as corporate learning or training materials in businesses.Academic licensees may not use this content in electronic reserves, electronic course packs, persistent linking from syllabi or by any other means of incorporating the content into course resources. 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