Book Review

Crossing the Chasm

by Geoffrey A. Moore
HarperBusiness (1991), 
New York, NY

Reviewed by John Falsetto

Marketing is a challenging field, to say the least. The future of a company can hinge on the ability of its marketing department to plan and execute a product release. The volatile nature of high-tech marketing perhaps best exemplifies the challenges. Geoffrey A. Moore heavily reinforces this point in Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers. Moore warns of the issues to be faced and, although the high-tech industry has evolved substantially since the book's release (1991), the information is still useful today.

Moore begins by defining a commonly accepted high-tech marketing model — a Technology Adoption Life Cycle. The model has five divisions, each representing a group of buyers to whom a product is sold during its life cycle: Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards.

Innovators are technology enthusiasts. They are keen to be the first to try out a new technology, but they represent just a sliver of the model.

Early Adopters, also known as visionaries, are somewhat keen to try out new technologies. They appreciate a product's potential to give their organization a competitive advantage. They represent a larger slice of the market, and they tend to have much more influence in an organization than do Innovators.

The Early Majority, sometimes called pragmatists, represent the bulk of the market. They tend to buy in to new technologies only after they perceive solid references and safety measures that guard against potential failures. Securing the pragmatist buyer is the most important marketing challenge.

The Late Majority, or conservatives, are also a very large portion of the market. They are extremely cautious when buying into a new technology. They want to see proof of results before they will accept a product's usefulness.

Laggards are skeptics who would prefer to avoid new technologies altogether. They will buy only if they really must.

When a new product is released, it should move from left to right in the Technology Adoption Life Cycle, until its useful life is expired. Although products are not guaranteed to follow this logical path, most naturally will.

Moore believes that small breaks exist between each division in the Technology Adoption Life Cycle, representing lulls in the market. However, Moore posits that the break that divides the Early Adopters from the Early Majority is actually a chasm. As the title of Moore's book implies, this chasm is significant enough to warrant a full-scale effort to pass a product across. Moore argues that many companies get so caught up in early market success that they don't anticipate the chasm, and their products then fail owing to an inability to traverse the gap.

Exceptions to every rule certainly exist, but, by and large, every new high-tech product must find a way to leap the chasm, so that the organization can benefit from the rewards that await at the other side.

The difficulty comes because the Early Majority, by their very nature, need good references before buying into a new technology, and Early Adopters do not make good references. The chasm then becomes a treacherous hazard indeed.

Moore proposes a four-stage approach to crossing the chasm. He calls it the D-Day strategy, a reference to the Allied invasion of Normandy in World War II. The idea is to:

• target the point of attack,
• assemble the invasion force,
• define the battle, and
• launch the invasion.

These four steps allow an organization to successfully attract pragmatist buyers, and to build a significant market share for their new product.

Target the Point of Attack

Targeting the point of attack refers to defining the target market. During this stage, organizations should develop a library of customer profiles. They should then define and rate each customer's compelling reason to buy, based on a must-have value proposition. The key to winning over pragmatist buyers is to provide a product that they truly feel they need. Marketing to a group that has no use for a product is pointless. The ratings for the library of customers will help in the development of potential market segments. The market segments can then be prioritized for the planned attack.

Assemble the Invasion Force

Assembling the invasion force means preparing the new product as a "whole product;" that is, a product that delivers everything promised to a customer. A "whole product" may include supporting services and ancillary products. To carry out this stage, companies need partners and allies to assist them in defining and delivering the whole product. Nevertheless, it is important to keep things simple and to develop relationships with partners slowly and carefully. The potential for fraud or industrial espionage must be kept in mind.

Define the Battle

The key to defining the battle, and to successfully marketing a high-tech product, is to create the product's competition. As odd as this sounds, Moore believes that a pragmatist buyer is more interested in a product that is positioned among other, competing alternatives. A supposedly new and exciting innovation may suffer in a market by itself. Creating the competition simply means that an organization should plan to position its product among similar product offerings to the same customers. When positioning a product, don't artificially exclude a reasonable competitor, as this strategy could backfire and alienate the target buyer.

Launch the Invasion

When launching a marketing campaign, organizations must obtain access to a customer-oriented distribution channel, one that is most likely to attract the pragmatist buyer. The product should be priced to reflect the fact that the product will be a market leader. Leadership pricing does not mean that the product should be cheaper than its competition. Rather, it should be comparably priced. As a product is accepted into the mainstream, margins become higher and the price of the product can begin to drop to reflect the lower cost of sales. The more attractive pricing will eventually draw the more conservative and hesitant buyers.

Moore is quick to admit that his methods, as described in Crossing the Chasm, are by no means foolproof. Too many unknowns make the industry unpredictable and not amenable to easy solutions. The high-tech industry is also a relative newcomer. It not only represents a particular challenge, but it is also less understood because less statistical information is available on which to base decisions and strategies.

Moore states that the methods detailed in Crossing the Chasm are the best that he knows of. Speaking from his position as a high-tech marketing consultant, Moore can certainly claim to be a voice of authority.

Crossing the Chasm can be a useful tool for a company developing a mainstream marketing strategy. I've received many positive comments when discussing the book. Although written with the high-tech industry in mind, Crossing the Chasm offers concepts and ideas that can certainly be applied to other industries.

John Falsetto is responsible for marketing products and services for DocuCenter Corporation.