ABSTRACT
Specifiers may become aware of new products via a variety of routes: through the marketing activities of manufacturers, through information passed to them by colleagues in their office or by attempts by those outside the immediate design team to influence their choice of components. But those that are of most concern to us here are the methods used by manufacturers in marketing their products. Clearly, it is important to both manufacturers and specifiers that these channels be used effectively; manufacturers want to sell their products and specifiers want the information to be at hand when it is needed in design. Thus, the effectiveness of these channels of communication needs to be considered from the point of view of both. Manufacturers may wish that specifiers behaved in ways that would make better use of their marketing material than they do at present, but this is unlikely. Their behaviour is constrained by the circumstances of their design tasks, by the management of the offices in which they work and by the limits of their education. In this relationship they are the customers whose needs have to be met and it is the task of the manufacturers to adapt their marketing strategies to these needs and behaviour patterns. The purpose of this chapter is to consider how that might best be done.
