A Product Guy

I've been a big fan of Quora since its launch. Q&A site is difficult to get right and to a large extend Quora has been able to innovate in this space and also become a very important place for getting quality answers to your questions. Recently they added the credits feature which is a great way to build the groundwork for monetization. And today I came across the promote feature

Very interesting. Have started seeing more people use credits to ask questions and will be very curious to see how the adoption for this new feature ramps up. Its an "Ad" and a great way to promote your expertise. Is personal analytics coming next?

There are few differences and some similarities. 

In a typical software product firm, the product manager is accountable to deliver a product which leverages the firms distinctive competency and serves a large identfied market. 

You start with identifying a market problem, doing technology and competitive benchmarking, creating MRDs, PRD, working with engineering teams to build the product and then work with your sales and marketing team to launch and sell the product. Depending on the size of the market, breadth of the solution, your own experience in product management, and the role of product management in the company, the product manager drives the 'internal' buildout, roadmapping and is responsible for the 'product' and the sales guy carries the 'number'. Few orgs have the PM responsible for P&L (in my experience very few are structured this way though). You might also have other PMs or Analysts that you might manage.

In an eCommerce company, you typically have product management which is aligned to the various critical functions of the eCommerce lifecycle. 
PM's are aligned to specific feature sets like Search, Navigation, Content, Cart and Checkout, Shipping, Social, SEO, API, Mobile etc. Each PM is responsible for their area. For example, the Search PM is accountable for internal search on the site, optimizing both the feature function and resulting revenue. In my experience (having been a PM in classical software product firm and eCommerce PM) a classical software PM typically is optimizing product feature function for market fit, while the eCommerce PM optimizes for increased conversion and customer satisfaction. In most eCommerce product management organization, I have seen product management to be more 'business' focussed metric driven versus software product managers have stronger bias for 'product'. In most parts, activities like problem identification, requirements definition, roadmapping are similar. But you will not see much of persona build outs, win-loss analysis, channel training, sales training etc. 

Also in some organizations, non-technical PM roles tend to be slotted into vertical businesses such as shoes, automotive etc (where it has more merchandising flavor)

Over the past few weeks I've seen a flury of posts around Amazon vs. Brick & Mortar stores. 

This was accentuated because of Amazon's price comparison app offer (they offered 5$ off if you scanned a product instore, reported the price and bought it from Amazon)

I've seen many posts around this topic on Quora. 

Showrooming is the new word in this age of Smartphones and Instant price comparison apps. Showrooming is when shoppers come into a store to see a product in person, only to buy it from a rival online, frequently at a lower price.

So here are some of my thoughts etched down after the flurry of posts online and on quora 

Online/Mobile price comparison is a challenge that is prevalent for both small and large retailers. The key strategies that one can use to mitigate price comparisons and resulting downward pricing pressures are -

And now a piece on WSJ - Showdown Over 'Showrooming' more or less validates what my post on Quora called out.

Amazon is powering ahead with its Ad business and are one of the top destinations to put Product Ads

But today I noticed a new Display Ad format on Amazon's home page. This was a display ad which incorporated "Add to Cart" call to action within the display ad. IAB has their standard ad units and a new 'rising star' ad unit specs, but most of these cater to the 'content publisher' world and really does not translate well into good formats to use in ecommerce advertising. Few companies such as Walmart, Newegg, Sears and others have ecommerce advertising business but none have dived in like Amazon to innovate and deliver new formats. The space will be an exciting space to watch given the traffic, purchase intent and brand awareness these sites drive. My bet is that Amazon will continue to out innovate in this space, creating new formats and delivering permium value to its advertisers

Companies tend to leverage strong brand awareness by extending it to product variants in the same product line (e.g.:- a different size, flavor or color) or different product categories, as long as the essence of the brand you are leveraging fits the new product.

So when adding new products to your portfolio of offerings, you will need to consider both the fit of the product and the brand. The brand extension should be logical from a customer perspective

In technology products you will need to consider that the promise of quality carries over to your brand extension. You might want to consider how brand extensions work with other products in the portfolio or other products marketed by the company.

The product’s brand is not established before the first purchase of the new product.Thus the brand concept extended well can provide immediate customer attention, help associate existing brand strengths to the new product and eventually help the new product to be sold briskly, & thus gaining market share.

There are certain risks associated with brand extensions. The new product may be perceived significantly different from the original product and would eventually cause confusion in the market place. If the new product fails, there could be negative impact on to the core brand.

So before you develop a brand extension, you might want to consider how far a brand can be extended before it dilutes its identity with customers. What market segment are you targeting the brand extension to? You might want to consider a flanker branding strategy instead. If there are significantly different value propositions, you might want to use a separate branding.

Growing up in India back in the 80’s and 90’s saw many international brands create a new market in India and establish their identities in the minds of millions of consumers. In India, brand affinity is so strong that many consumer brands have become synonyms such as Xerox for photocopy, Pepsi for cola, Cadbury for milk chocolate and Maggi for noodles!

On my recent visit to the local Indian grocery store, I picked up my favorite Maggi noodles and Maggi Hot and Sweet sauce.

(download)

Click here to download:

brand-marketing-catch-them-young-maggi-celebrates-25-yrs-in-india-ubCDnoHykEtqfGzIGJbv.zip (65 KB)

Was delighted to see that Maggi is celebrating 25 years in the Indian market

It brought back great memories and stories from the past. I remember being in 2^nd grade when Maggi was introduced in the country. Back then when there was no Facebook or YouTube or Internet or for that matter even TV was not common in many households, how did Maggi establish their presence?

Maggi marketing team went to many schools and distributed free Maggi samples for kids to eat, and also gave everyone in school couple of packets to take home and try it out. It was a great viral marketing campaign. They caught them young! Soon kids were taking their free Maggi packets home and asking Mom to prepare it for them, for all it took was just 2 minutes. It was such a hit, that even today most of my generation has a distinct love for the product unlike any other food product. We have grown up on it.  It was someone’s lunch one day and someone’s snack some other,  kids loved it and so did the Mom’s for it took them just couple of minutes.

Maggi over the years has created some great iconic advertisements. You can watch them on their website here.

An incredible interview of Steve Jobs and John Lasseter (Pixar) 

Some great points by Steve Jobs on how business is a team sport and also around what Pixar really was versus why he had bought into it initally 

Pixar invented incredible technologies in the computer animation space and has been a leading edge innovator, but Pixar succeeded because it saw itself as an entertainment company and not a technology company. Technology itself was a tool and not the core which was storytelling. 

http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/5885

A talented product manager would be 

1. Someone who sees consistent patterns in the market which otherwise might not be obvious and ability to relate this into a solution that addresses this opportunity
2. A person who has great passion for building a product (defining the overall experience and not just components of it)
3. He has the tenacity to execute to the product vision over multiple iterations
4. Understands what would constitute a true success
5. Knows what is ahead 3-4 steps, can identify a win or a failure  and knows how to pivot from an unsuccessful position
6. Can communicate succinctly.

There are many more qualities, but some of the above are the ones that you would consistently see in top quality pm's

Pls see my answer to this question on Quora

See my answers to other questions