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horsawlarway

Back up even farther, though - SO MANY PRODUCTS are literally indistinguishable outside of marketing.

I think the issue is much deeper than "don't let marketing make product decisions".

Browse through any app store - click a category, and it's a sea of apps that provide essentially the same capabilities.

Just like your grocery store has a sea of jars filled with slightly varying salsa.

So take the diagram in the article:

Customers asked for it: Check.

Customers would benefit from it: Check.

We built/tested/shipped it: Check.

What's the missing step? Did ANYONE fucking buy it?!?!

And it turns out none of the other steps actually matter compared to the last one, if the goal is to remain a functioning company.

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> Customers asked for it: Check.

> Customers would benefit from it: Check.

The key is in what the word "it" means. The answers are positive if by "it" you mean "this category of product". They may very well be negative if by "it" you mean "our particular product".

The customers want a jar of salsa. They don't want, and never asked for, your particular variation of a jar of salsa, essentially identical to 10 other variations except for a differently designed label.

Another tricky bit is in the "asked for" part. For most products on the planet, customers don't really ask for anything. The market isn't structured this way. Products are just dumped on the market, and those that sell survive. This is wasteful, but has some benefits. It would just be better if marketing wasn't there to meddle with things, artificially sustaining more variations of a product than needed.

Customers didnt ask for an iPad but they sure bought the hell out of it

They asked for PADD from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and iPad was the closest the market could give them.

I'm gonna use one of those examples that irks me personally. Do we really need 19 different formulations of fabric softener available in another 15 different scents from 12 different manufacturers?

I'd say it's a solved problem. Make - dunno - 3 different formulations (normal, sensitive, extra soft?), and provide the scents as small and separate ampules, and let the user mix and match the apple and cinnamon, and make the place smell of a bloody apple pie after a load of laundry for all you care. People are usually already familiar with those, and have their preferences, plus it would even be fun to experiment, and make one's own blends.

Anyway.... What I wanted to say is that I hate having too much choice (especially artifical one), and I specifically hate choice paralysis.

And I'm writing this as an European. Finding myself in search of a cereal, and ending up in a typical USican giant isle consisting just of a cereals is my idea of an nightmare. I thank the FSM for Lidl existence.

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