[swombat]

The only thing that matters to a company of any size is its product and customer experience.

That's a load of crap. What is true for a small start-up is not necessarily true for a huge behemoth.

There are many other components to the mechanisms for making money (which is what businesses are - human machines to make money), and although product development and customer services are very important in the early stages of a company, the focus shifts, later, to other areas (like sales or value chain optimisation). Those can make a much larger difference to the company's profits, once it is at scale, and so they deservedly get more attention at those scales.

This article represents a very narrow-minded, naive view of business. Perhaps you should work in a wider variety of companies before making such grand statements. Maybe read a book or two about corporations. I recommend "Management" by Peter Drucker as a (heavy, but excellent) starter.

[dcurtis]

Of course those things matter, and they're part of the customer experience. Your marketing and sales strategy should be of the same quality as your product. Don't think of them separately. You're providing value with the product and convincing people to buy it with the sales and marketing strategy. Sure, the budget allocations shift back and forth, but both should always be above some minimum threshold of quality.

If you think of your entire company as providing a "customer experience," then you only have one threshold, and everything is held to that standard.

The companies I am angry at are the ones sacrificing product quality and value for sales and marketing. (And also companies that just ignorantly release crappy products and ignore their customers/employees.)

[sanj]

But if crappy products sell and don't sell any worse than better (and more expensive) products, then it is a mistake to invest effort into making them better.

customer experience != maximizing value to shareholders

I wish it were. I really do. But it isn't.

[dcurtis]

Can you provide a real world example of where this is the case in a healthy market? I do not think this is true except in very poor market conditions like with monopolies or odd social situations.

[jnorthrop]

My brother was the brand manager for a dying food brand (well known national brand). The first thing he did when he was hired to improve the brand was to improve the quality of the food (better cuts of meat, fresher veggies, lower sodium, etc.). You know what happened? The customer complaint line was jammed with pissed people. He did a complete 180 and removed the higher quality items (the healthy stuff like vegetables), increased the quantity and sales started to climb.

That is a clear case of people wanting crap... in fact demanding it instead of the better quality product.

Note: Sorry for being vague about the brand but he is still there and might not want the full story public.

[michael_dorfman]

The key point of your story is that your brother's definition of "higher quality" didn't mesh with the customer's. That's a problem.

If people were satisfied with the product, changing the ingredients is definitely going to add risk. I worked for a food manufacturer, once upon a time, and we did extensive triangle testing even when sourcing ingredients from a new vendor.

People want quality. That doesn't mean their taste is the same as yours...

[jnorthrop]

The point I was trying to make is that the customer didn't want "better," they wanted the "same" even though it was crappy. The post I responded to seemed to want an example of that.

On your points, I agree mostly but in this case people didn't want better quality. They liked the taste of the lower quality product.

[joshu]

Triangle testing?

[ahoyhere]

You say they got angry calls, but you didn't talk about the difference in sales.

How did they brand the change?

Did they reposition the food items in the store?

Did they redesign the packaging?

Did they market the better food in the same way as the crappy old food?

How long did they give it the stuff to see if it would sell?

If you've been previously selling to misers with no taste, and you want to expand (misers with no taste are not loyal but they are loud), you have to not just change the product but the ecosystem.

Of course people bitch. People will bitch your ear off for any change. Every good manager knows this.

The question is: does it sell? And if it doesn't, are you doing all you can do to help it sell?

Just adding more is a local optimization. If you want to change the bigger picture, in a situation like that, you have to upgrade your customers... to people who will pay more. Which means your existing customers are likely, yes, to bitch. But, as you said, the brand was already dying so maybe its current customers aren't the right ones.

You can't switch Alpo with Finest Steak and expect to charge dog owners more money. Doesn't work.

[jnorthrop]

Those are all excellent questions. Unfortunately I don't have all of the answers. I know he test marketed the changes and that it failed -- it never made it to a full national roll-out. The way he tells the story is that he tried improving the quality of the food and promoted it on the package but kept all other variables equal (most notably price) and it was met with disgruntled customers and sales suffered. I guess I can say that this was a prepared meal product -- Ultimately what worked was sticking with the low quality ingredients, including more of them and ditching the veggies. In the end he did turn the brand around with this strategy.

[whatusername]

User Experience / Price / Design / Exclusivity / existing infrastructure / external pressure (see legal reqs, etc)

A product / service can create value in all of those areas.. some are either mutually exclusive or at least practically so.

To even use Apple as an example.. Great Operating system - unless you want a netbook. Or want to play games. Or create blu-ray disks.

Put it this way - I'm sure you can make a better hamburger than mcdonalds. But I'm sure Ray Croc made a whole lot more money than most of the people on HN ever will.

[randomtask]

Supermarket own brand products are often of a much lower quality than branded versions, but sell well because they are cheaper. There is a quality/price trade off with a lot of products and a demand for those on both ends of the spectrum.

[ahoyhere]

Um, everything I've read says that supermarket brand foods are often name brand excess sold under private label. Yes/no?

[anamax]

You're both correct/wrong. (Except that the premium store brands are not "excess" - they're planned that way.)

Some store brand products are premium equivs while some aren't. (Some stores even have two brands so they can compete with the premium with the same quality at a slightly lower price and at lesser quality at a significantly lower price.)

There was a big Harvard Biz Review article about store brand strategies several years ago.

[chollida1]

> Can you provide a real world example of where this is the case in a healthy market?

McDonalds hamburgers.

They have arguably the worst tasting hamburger of any restaurant chain and yet they sell more than anyone else.

[swombat]

Enterprise sales. Though of course you'll argue it's not a healthy market.

[auston]

Wal-Mart: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=653051

[auston]

perfect example of a company that doesnt give a crap about their customer experience but cares deeply about efficient processes: Wal-Mart

try asking someone at a walmart in a metro area where you can find car tarps or universal remotes...