Strategic Marketing for High Technology Products

An Integrated Approach

Thomas Fotiadis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351363808
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

In order for High Technology (HT) companies to tackle contemporary demanding market challenges, they frequently deploy time-reduction strategies with respect to product launch. Marketing of technology related products – and especially cutting edge ones – involves a complex and multidimensional bundle of specific and unique characteristics, such as the complexity of products, the intensity of the competition, confusion and/ or fear of adoption among consumers, fast pacing changes in the external environment. The very nature of the interrelations that evolve as part of the dynamic process of strategy formulation contributes further to the formulation of a very challenging environment which is described as tumultuous, volatile and turbulent. These specific features, qualities and characteristics constitute the core of the innate need for an integrated approach that requires and depends on the cooperation and coordination of specific functional competencies. This book employs a systemic approach that accommodates the integration of specialized departmental capabilities as a fundamental prerequisite and a cornerstone for the successful navigation of high-tech organizations in their extremely competitive environments.

It provides a solid and extant context of compact and consistent cognitive background that is specific to the HT strategic marketing field, and a strategic tool that utilizes, relies and is built on the turbulent environment of HT rather than just overlooking, avoiding or ignoring it, and that assumes a proactive point of view, capitalizing on characteristics specific to this field, through the provision of a strategic managerial and marketing model that is overlaid onto a reliably assessed foundation of dynamic qualities, with a long-term orientation and scope, albeit one that would be easy to apply and which will generate immediate results.

1 The environment

1.1 High Technology: definitions, characteristics, environment, importance

Before somebody can venture into the specific cognitive subject of High Technology (HT), it is deemed purposeful and useful for them to satisfactorily familiarize themselves with the wider framework within which HT is incorporated and from which it follows – the notion of technology.

Technology is derived from the Greek word τέχνη, meaning “art”. Its connection to its root implies a set of techniques or methods which may be employed in order to manufacture, produce, or “build” something. Should one expand the meaning of the word, then what it, essentially, means is “that which men use to control their environment” or, otherwise, “the way by which men dominate their natural environment”.

Depending on the adopted viewpoint, there is a multitude of approaches utilized in order to conceptually define the word technology:

• In case the approach takes place under the light of the dimension offered by Economic Sciences, then Technology is indissolubly intertwined with the efficiency that may be attained by adopting it. It essentially is a toolbox focused approach to the relationship between men and technology, whose value and contribution are assessed based on the economic benefit that may ensue from the application of technology toward the improvement of the efficiency of the productive process. Consequently, it is regarded not only as a founding stone and vital support of economic development but also as a necessary ingredient of personal economic prosperity, because of its fundamental influence on living standards.
• Despite the fact that the economic orientation for delimiting technology is the most common one, it is not, however, the only one; neither is it axiomatically the most important one. An integrated approach toward the concept emphatically dictates the consideration of other dimensions as well, dimensions which, in most cases, do not cancel one another but function complementarily in order to facilitate a multidimensional understanding of the concept.

In this context, one must not forget that the “economic science” employed in order to outline the term earlier, is a subset of the sociological framework wherein (economically active) individuals, structures and the relations amongst them subsist. Through this framework the needs and demands of individuals, as well as of the economy itself, emerge and are satisfied. It suffices for someone to consider the economic and social framework as inextricable constituent parts of a directly inter-affected dynamic system, each element of which feeding and being fed by the other (even if with some time lag), in order to apprehend the “greater” picture: From a sociological viewpoint, technology is an interrelated system of knowledge, processes, methods and apperceptions which stands as the necessary and sufficient convention in order to make the satisfaction of human needs feasible, an integral part of which are also social ones.

Finally, a common constituent of the approaches, from a philosophical standpoint, is to treat technology as a basic pillar from the evolution of the known civilization. The subject of controversial criticism, technology is at times considered as the catalyst for integration and self-realization while, at other times, as a contributing factor for the alienation and maladjustment of people.

Whichever viewpoint one has adopted and whatever cognitive subject filter is employed as an interpretative tool, it is important to approach technology in the context of the role it plays with respect to the satisfaction of human needs in their entirety.

It is also important to underline that technology is a human activity, the subject of which is the well-being and comfort of people.

1.1.2 Technology

Technology is a transformation force. It is something much wider than a system set of tools which probe or are extensions of our bodily movements. It not only constitutes a sturdy and reliable material for technical achievements and economic accomplishments but also functions as a vehicle for the manifestation of perceptions subsumed to the sphere of social and cultural intricacies. It is a human cognitive intervention which pervades, grows, jaunts and outflows to and from the world surrounding us; shapes it; but is also shaped by it. It would amount to no hyperbole for someone to suggest that Technology is closely interrelated with almost any form of human activity – that is it essentially constitutes an intrinsic variable thereof. Moreover, to possess it, even on a rudimentary level, is nowadays an elementary condition for someone to be harmoniously and functionally included in the social, economic, cultural and working processes.

Technology and humans have a bidirectional so close that one could define it as one, particularly resistant to time, system, while the substance of its parts is in a direct and dynamic interrelation. The double identity borne by each constituent part of this system – namely, its simultaneous identity as a subject and the object of the shaping influences from and toward the other part – largely defines the entirety of the expressions not only of each fold related to humans but also of the “imprint”, the mark humans leave.

Technology emerged as the most effective approach by a rational and creative being in order to function as the vehicle that would allow this being to shape the coordinates defining its existence. As the medium for the satisfaction of man’s multidimensional needs, technology depends on humans. On the other hand, humans depend on technology, since technology – via its penetration and diffusion – constitutes the basic pillar/carrier for the satisfaction of human needs.

What is cited earlier only serves to accentuate what Pythagoras proclaimed, namely, that humans are, throughout the eons, the measure for all things. The skeptics of the utility or even the purposefulness of the existence of this relation, where humans are the measure, the creators as well as the subjects of the influence of technology, advocate that the artificial extension of their capabilities frequently fashions a false picture of personal happiness and self-fulfillment. They criticize technology on the basis that beyond its contribution to the survival of our species, it, ultimately, became the measure of its progress. That it frequently becomes an end in itself and the field of its own evolution, leading humans to something alien to their nature.

The expansive discourse that has been developed throughout the ages and the literally countless dimensions via which one can approach the concept of technology are the main reasons for the existence of many – and frequently ragtag – definitions. One, be the person a disputant or apologist of a greater or lesser emphasis on viewpoints stressing the anthropocentric hue, or driven by a background oriented/influenced by a philosophical, or sociological or economic basis may adopt some other, different approach as the most firmly grounded.

Fischer and Pry (1971) emphasize the role and contribution of Technology in catering for needs, as such, are defined and delimited by the overall value system on each occasion. It grants power to those who control it and control its applications. It includes our efforts to shape, control, morph and ever impose our will on our environment, via the involvement of technology on the use and exploitation of resources.

Technology is connected to the effectiveness of the application of our skill to “do” things.

The aforementioned, as the statement of a definition, could be further particularized – and, correspondingly, be subjected to the entailed limitations of a more specific approach – should Technology be defined as a toolbox – a set of methods, processes, structured approaches and techniques which operates catalytically, systemically and collaboratively with the other productive factors, assisting them toward the objectives posed in the context of the productive process (Papageorgiou, 1990).

A similarly oriented (with respect to the productive process) approach attempts to signify that an integral part with an almost universal participation in the quiver of Technology is the knowledge that is applicable to the productive process. It may take the form of technical information relating to aspects or the whole of the production process, or the products, or it may be expressed in the context of the transformation of the production factors to tangible products or services. It may even include the cognitive background of Managerial science which participates both horizontally and vertically in the organization, management, planning and control of the productive process.

In its more expanded version, the definition of technology shall cover both specific technological systems, as well as the economic-production system, but also manifestations of social structures and practices (Vakalios, 2002).

In the context of a broader delimitation of the term, Technology could be viewed as a unified and complex system of material elements and processes that are necessary for the integration of some functional action. A founding stone in this set of heterogeneous elements (machinery; design, calculation and control methodologies, processes and techniques) are also the thinking and theory schema that set and document the aforementioned system.

Besides, however, of the system via which needs are satisfied, minimized or staved, Galbraith introduces another dimension of technology, by involving science and underlining in parallel the role of scientific-organized knowledge: by technology one also refers to the systematic application of scientific or other structured knowledge, in order to facilitate practical purposes.

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO’s) Dictionary of Social Sciences (Gould and Kolb, 1964) attempts to include and incorporate the principal points of the preceding approaches: Technology is considered the whole or an organized part of the knowledge that exists and regards science, the discoveries that have taken place, the productive processes of the present as well as those of the past, the energy resources and reserves, but also circulation and information, that are associated with the improvement of the production of tangible and intangible products. The same source approaches the concept from a socio-anthropological background (thus limiting the scope of the approach) and cites that technology is defined as the sum of available knowledge for the production of tools and all kinds of artifacts which are aimed at the exercise of technical and manual activities and extraction and collection of materials.

Independently from the origins of thought, or the predispositions of any kind which shape the orientation of perception and the interpretative framework, or even the temporal circumstances or cognitive background, the following may be considered as the less contested and more objective pylons for delimiting the concept of technology:

• Technology is a mighty force of transformation bringing a reformational force of leverage not only on the economic, social, political, cultural and anthropological level but also one that is evidently and almost axiomatically involved in every manifestation of human activity and/or of the results thereof.
• Technology influences and frequently forms perception, apperceptions, the bio-theory, and the system of values of the “initiated”, but at the same time it is being affected by, formed, shaped and evolves because of their existence and in parallel to these. It constitutes a complex, multileveled and dynamic system (an integral ingredient of which are humans), the constituents of which are at a continuous dialectic interrelation and exchange of influences.
• Technology is composed, grows together, is produced, expressed, produces and requires a broad set of elements, material and immaterial, of an intellectual or not process and substance, the degree of participation and involvement of which is ever changing.
• Since its birth, the objective aim of Technology has always been to facilitate humans. More specifically, the probing and expansion of humans’ abilities (physical strength, skills and dexterities, senses, communication, cognitive skills, thinking, science, creativity, etc.) and the acquirement of new ones in order to improve living quality.
• Its almost universal participation in human activities constitutes the principal reason for this extraordinary breadth of inter-temporally possible and different approaches. The different viewpoints may rest on heterogeneous bases with ambiguous and possibly contrasting orientations, correspondingly producing heterogeneous (and perhaps even mutually exclusive) conclusions with respect to the delimitation and the sign of the participation of this concept to the welfare of man.

1.1.3 Technology and science

There are very close ties between Technology and Science, but this should not lead one to the misconception that they are two absolutely overlapping or synonymous concepts. And while the average Joe considers technology to be the applied implementation and practical application of steadfast, commonly accepted and documented scientific knowledge, however, the array of influences exchanged between technology and science is bidirectional in nature and governed by complexity.

In reality, technology has historically appeared several hundred years before science, since its first recoded emergence of the latter dates back some four centuries. Furthermore, across the entire spectrum of their historical common course, Technology has been to a large extend ahead of Science, given that the forcefulness that drives technological changes precedes the full, documented and structured understanding of the “asocial” systematic and detailed scientific knowledge and interpretation.

And while science is a body of systematically structured and organized knowledge, which is composed systematically from parts of organized material (Karvounis, 1995), Technology is a body of knowledge pertaining to specific activities, processes, methods and techniques, which produce specific and practical results, act in specified manners and produce specific effects (even if the “fastidious” science has not yet been able to decode their causes).

It would be extremely shortsighted and limiting to adopt the viewpoint of causality, directed from science to technology. As Fischer and Pry (1971) observe, approaching the concept of technology solely as an excipient of applied science, which is just a subset of the breadth of connections between Science and Technology. If Technology were limited only to the spectrum of what can be scientifically explained, then the human race would have followed a very different course. The definition of Technology offered by Fischer as the set of ways envisioned by men to improve their lives, implies, on one hand, the existence of purposefulness which is manifested in a positivist manner. Of course, Technology makes frequent use of scientific knowledge in order to be further developed. Consequently, when one refers to the development of new technology, there are two variables functioning as its pillars: existing technology and existing sc...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• 1 The environment
• 2 Business culture and High Tech enterprises
• 3 Integration
• 4 The model
• Bibliography
• Index