1) What was the general theme or argument of the book?
Chris Andreson describes how we no longer look for 'Smash Hits' or 'Best Sellers' because the society now has so many options to chose from, that they want particular niches to fulfill their specific necessities. This book argues that we no longer look for what everyone has, but we look for what we truly look for. What is "truly"? Everyone has their own necessities and desires, and we can go up to Amazon's 11th page to look for it. As an audiophile (someone who enjoys the pure, high-quality richness of music) I try to look for the perfect speaker that I want before I buy it. I compare many different speakers and then discard the speakers that I don't exactly desire until I finally end up with the speaker I admire. We don't look for the "speaker everyone has and is the best", we want our own specific speaker almost made for us. This book explains how society is shifting from mass culture to small niche's.
2) How did the book, in your opinion, connect with and enhance what you are learning in ENT 3003?
As we look for opportunities we think "everyone loves our ugly baby" but that statement is FALSE. We need to look for that small niche that is googling our ugly baby and we need to infiltrate the small market to give something small groups of people want, and are willing and able to buy our products. For example, in the World Cup, I already had that small niche of people that enjoy collectible albums, but since the World Cup is so huge and moves billions of dollars in only 3-4 months, I had the advantage that my small niche was going to open for millions of people in a small period of time. On the other hand, the Bohemian Artisans consists of a VERY small niche and to acquire the customer base, there is a heavy market research that needs to be researched in order to deliver my "not so ugly baby" to the people that follow bohemian trends.
3) If you had to design an exercise for this class, based on the book you read, what would that exercise involve?
Dr. Prior has made 100 exercises of finding a niche market. To be honest, it is not easy to find these niches, but as you practice more and more, you will get better and better.
4) What was your biggest surprise or 'aha' moment when reading the book? In other words, what did you learn that differed most from your expectations?
I already knew that people like niches but this book is not redundant and carefully explains how we shifter from listening to scarce bands such as Queen, Pink Floyd, Rolling Stones in the 70s and 80s and then more and more artists began to appear in the 90s and now there are 4 million songs on Spotify with at least 500,000 artists to chose from. The music we listen to today niche and we try to keep it to ourselves. Very nice book, opened my eyes.
Hey Sebastian! This book brings up a very true point. As we have moved far away from being a manufacturing country and with the new helpfulness of technology, we now have large amounts of time to all be entrepreneurs. We see this with just the sheer volume of products available online and in stores. Though this could be helpful for someone like you who benefits from having different speakers to choose from, for me it's overwhelming as I don't require many specific details in my products.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree that these days, most markets are very saturated with products giving consumers more and more options to choose from. I can see how this causes society to develop from mass culture where everyone has one things to small niche's where everyone looks for things that satisfy all their needs. I believe this is good for businesses, as it allows them to set themselves apart from their competition.
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