My book "Marketing of Information Technology" is published

McGraw-Hill has said that they will be getting it to stores in a week. However, the listing on sites such as Amazon will need a few more weeks, they said. The Indian edition is priced at Rs.350/- (publisher's prerogative), am not sure how much will they price in other currencies. The book's ISBN is 9780070248724

Browsers and redefining market segmentation...

Google Chrome is the biggest news item these days... Why is it so? Why should anyone talk so much about yet another browser?

Google Chrome is basically not a browser. It is a desktop application gateway to Google's services and in this gateway the browsing facility is only incidental, to communicate in HTTP. In these days when everyone wants to transact every type of information using a browser, it is very natural for Google to launch Chrome to build an end-to-end Google story.

Is Google trying to blur the segmentation between a desktop and a browser? Google probably wants to message that the Desktop is irrelevant and everything is efficient on server, especially on Google servers. It is difficult to predict whether the centralizing of desktop applications (on servers) will succeed.

IT and recycling...

Recycling is profusely professed in IT industry but rarely practised. Electronic junk - IT industry has a buzzword for that as well viz., e-junk is growing problem - silent in the first world and not so elsewhere... "Most of the IT products that companies have marketed worldwide are not eco-friendly" is an understatement. IT marketers adversely impact environment more than of other industries because of high obsolescence of its products and expediency.

In reality, recycling is not eco-friendly in many industries. So more than recycling, creating products that can biodegrade (after multiple reuse) is the really ec0-friendly way out. Something for IT marketers to think...

Social responsibility of marketers

A particular sight today left me a little disturbed...

I saw a labourer, in torn shabby dress and without footwear, loading sand on to a tractor. This sight is not uncommon, for I live in India. However, what disturbed me most was that he had plugged earphones and listening music from a portable digital music player. It is also very common to see vegetable vendors on the pavements using mobile phones and auto-rickshaw drivers with such devices listening to the music while driving on the streets. So where's the concern and why get disturbed?

It is good that the technology is able to percolate to the economically lower strata of societies, due to lower cost of production and commoditization. Technology is still more expensive than basic necessities such as food, safe drinking water and sanitation facilities.

As a technology marketer, it is hard for me to accept the fact that technology companies succeed with their aspirational products in societies where social priorities should have been elsewhere - food, water supply, healthcare and other bare necessities of life. This is true of non-technology companies too, but the impact is higher in technology markets because of fast obsolescence.

It is incorrect for any government restrict people from buying goods that they want. Controlled economies like in pre-liberalized India (pre-nineties) have shown that controlling the supply side hinders economic growth. The economic globalization has contributed to world-wide aggressive marketing, while governments in many countries have failed to improve living conditions in the meantime. Two decades ago politicians in India promised food, water, electricity in their election manifestos. Not much of these promises have been kept. What is more interesting is the politicians are now promising televisions and mobile phones. WiMax may make their way to the manifestos soon!

If societies give higher priorities to aspirational goods and services ignoring basic necessities, there definitely is some problem. This will accelerate consumerism and the poorer become poorer. Accelerated consumerism is inherently bad for any society because it can only be fuelled by credit. Retail credit can lead to large scale misery, as the US sub-prime mortgage crisis has shown with its world-wide impact...

There is a social cost to marketing...
K Venkatesh