High quality product is not always best selling product

One of my friends in one major electronics appliance company told me his company is not energetic at this moment. Yes, we had the 3.11, yes, we had a very strong yen hitting our export business.

But the reason why many Japanese electronics companies not performing well is the mindset of the companies in Japan i.e. " if you make a high quality product( often smaller or with more functions) people buy( want) it.".

Not correct.

These companies need to produce a good product( not always highest quality) and "make" people want to buy. Like Apple, the quality is not really high from my experience. It broke down and the Apple shop could not really fix it and I needed to go there over and over. But people want it. Why? Because the company is good at making people want it. Human beings are said to have 16 basic desires e.g. acceptance, social status [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivation#Intrinsic_motivation_and_the_16_basic_desires_theory ] to motivate themselves to take a particular action.  Apple is good at sending out the information stimulating some of these desires of the people strongly.

Once Japan has had many products which people wanted, which were not expensive and had better quality than others in the market. That time there was not many companies good at the above point. That time was when these "other" companies tried hard to make people want to buy, even though the quality not good as Japanese ones, strengthening the expertise in what we call "marketing".

Strong in quality, "strong in marketing" and not expensive, is what Japanese companies now ought to aspire to be.



昨日もこのような記事がありました： http://zasshi.news.yahoo.co.jp/article?a=20120228-00000000-toyo-bus_all 　この会社の友人は会社に元気が無いといってました。　質のいいもの＝うれるもの　ではないんですよね。ほしいもの＝うれるもの　なんですよね。ここが弱い職人気質の会社が大変な目にあってます。高くても、質の悪いものでも、ひとの人のもついくつかの欲望を刺激するものは売れます。