ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses product and promotion strategy issues that are particularly important to high-tech firms. They include co-alignment of technology-based product concept with segmentation, issues concerning design and standards, diffusion of innovations, branding innovations, marketing of technologies, open innovation, and platform strategy. Technology plays a central differentiating role in product strategy, and product benefits need to be co-aligned with technology for successful segmentation, targeting, and positioning strategies. A firm with dominant design can lock out its competitors and set back future generations of products in the category. A strategic view of promotion in high-tech firms suggests that promotion is a necessary complement to innovation and an important instrument of modern marketing strategy. The chapter argues that the strategic view of promotion as complementary to R&D investment-whose returns are spread over the life of a product-holds for all high-tech products, albeit in a different form, depending on the unique characteristics of the consumers, the nature of technology and competitive conditions.
