Jeff Nolan
02-07-2010, 10:13 PM
I was reading the recent thread on laser guides and miter saws, the universal consensus is that they are a waste of money. This led me to think about the phenomena of group think in product design for mature products.
I can imagine this conversation taking place at Dewalt:
"hey Milwaukee just added a laser guides to their miter saws, we gotta do that!"
then someone at Makita chimes in:
"hey Milwaukee and Dewalt are adding laser guides to their miter saws... how come we don't have laser guides yet?"
over at Porter Cable:
"jeez if we don't get on this laser guide trend we are toast" which leads the folks over at sister company Delta to say "hey the boys at PC are onto something with this laser guide thing, let's put 'em on our drill presses!"
Finally, an actual consumer is in the local tool emporium and finds that everyone is offering laser guides for $40 extra, which they are offering a promotional discount for because they bought a boatload of laser guides and need to meet their number so with the net price of the same tool in 2 different configurations being the same well of course the consumer picks the one with more stuff.
Back at Tool Mfg Inc. the product guys are patting themselves on the backs because laser guides are a big hit, when offered as an option on the same tool consumers always go for the laser guide fitted model. Case closed, consumers love laser guides so everyone doubles down and puts in orders for more laser guides.
Meanwhile over in forums like this, when the subject comes up it is panned as an option that requires too much fiddling to make work right and doesn't beat the plain 'ol sight up the cut mark and pull the trigger.
The moral of the story is something called the bullwhip effect, a company offers an incremental product enhancement and in order to meet forecasts they manipulate the distribution channels which gives them a false positive which then reinforces the perceived demand and causes an expansion of the original product enhancement, irrespective of whether or not customers actually find it having value.
Manufacturers should spend less time evaluating what competitors are doing and more time looking at actual consumers and prosumers. This is what Festool is doing, perhaps if we had more companies making their own course we wouldn't have to pay Festool prices to enjoy those benefits.
I can imagine this conversation taking place at Dewalt:
"hey Milwaukee just added a laser guides to their miter saws, we gotta do that!"
then someone at Makita chimes in:
"hey Milwaukee and Dewalt are adding laser guides to their miter saws... how come we don't have laser guides yet?"
over at Porter Cable:
"jeez if we don't get on this laser guide trend we are toast" which leads the folks over at sister company Delta to say "hey the boys at PC are onto something with this laser guide thing, let's put 'em on our drill presses!"
Finally, an actual consumer is in the local tool emporium and finds that everyone is offering laser guides for $40 extra, which they are offering a promotional discount for because they bought a boatload of laser guides and need to meet their number so with the net price of the same tool in 2 different configurations being the same well of course the consumer picks the one with more stuff.
Back at Tool Mfg Inc. the product guys are patting themselves on the backs because laser guides are a big hit, when offered as an option on the same tool consumers always go for the laser guide fitted model. Case closed, consumers love laser guides so everyone doubles down and puts in orders for more laser guides.
Meanwhile over in forums like this, when the subject comes up it is panned as an option that requires too much fiddling to make work right and doesn't beat the plain 'ol sight up the cut mark and pull the trigger.
The moral of the story is something called the bullwhip effect, a company offers an incremental product enhancement and in order to meet forecasts they manipulate the distribution channels which gives them a false positive which then reinforces the perceived demand and causes an expansion of the original product enhancement, irrespective of whether or not customers actually find it having value.
Manufacturers should spend less time evaluating what competitors are doing and more time looking at actual consumers and prosumers. This is what Festool is doing, perhaps if we had more companies making their own course we wouldn't have to pay Festool prices to enjoy those benefits.