Anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.
Quality in a product or service is not what the supplier puts in. It is what the customer gets out and is willing to pay for. A product is not quality because it is hard to make and costs a lot of money, as manufacturers typically believe. This is incompetence. Customers pay only for what is of use to them and gives them value. Nothing else constitutes quality.
Good design is innovative Gives a product utility Is aesthetic Makes a product easy to understand Is unobtrusive Is honest Is long-lived Is consistent down to the smallest detail Protects the environment Good design is as little design as possible.
What the customer buys and considers value is never a product. It is always utility, that is, what a product or a service does for the customer.
What we sell are not products... that customers are going to put in a closet and forget.
Every day in America, about 25,000 people buy a quarter-inch drill. But nobody in America wants a quarter-inch drill. What they want are holes.
We all have jobs in our lives that we must get done. We reach out and bring products into our lives to get these jobs done. Marketing is all about asking, 'What job is the customer trying to accomplish?'
If an article is attractive, or useful, or inexpensive, they'll stop making it tomorrow; if it's all three, they stopped making it yesterday.
People buy products, and they want to understand what those things are and how they are applicable to their life.
