

How do you develop a marketing strategy around a latent customer need? - bmahmood

Been thinking of this for sometime, but how do you develop a marketing strategy around a product for which there is no proxy for demand? I think about companies like Foursquare- for which I believe there was no similar service before, and largely exploited a latent rather than active customer need.  Any thoughts?
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byoung2
_I think about companies like Foursquare- for which there was no similar
service before_

Foursquare wasn't completely unique. There were social networks, and there
were mobile apps. If you examine the markets of each of those components, you
can make educated guesses about a new product that combines them. I'd imagine
Apple did the same sort of study before releasing the iPad...there is a market
who enjoys the power of laptops/netbooks, and there is a market who enjoys the
portability of mobile phones. Introducing a tablet is basically combining the
best of both, and you can draw certain conclusions about how much of a market
exists in the middle.

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bmahmood
Thanks for the response. Didn't consider that, and as such helps to think of
products in new markets as simply the combination of facets in tangent
markets.

