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Does consumer mind share influence business decisions?
Scott Hooks
Several years ago I convinced myself that one of the reasons for
Microsoft's success in the business software world was at least partly
due to its success in the consumer space. In other words, "everyone has
it at home, so they want it at work." This seemed particularly apparent
to me with Windows, Internet Explorer, and Outlook. You could argue
that Microsoft Office also benefits by being adopted in so many
academic institutions. This concept of consumer and academic adoption
driving business adoption also seems to have influenced the rise of business
instant messaging and business social networking over the past few years. It seems to me that
in the absence of some key risk or differentiator in a business
solution, the consumer solution has a substantial advantage in business
adoption rates.
I won't pretend that I have done extensive analysis on these ideas, and they may be flawed logic. However, as argued by this guy 4-5 months ago here, here, and here, and more recently embraced by the IBM Lotus Marketing team as discussed in this podcast (*cough* credit
*cough*), software adoption in the business world seems to have at
least some significant correlation with exposure to end users and
decision makers in the consumer space. That is one of the reasons why this consumer email market share update and this article on the battle for email mindshare at colleges and universities
concerned me a bit. With Microsoft owning the two largest consumer
"cloud-based" email services and Google owning the third spot, and IBM
nowhere to be seen, I can't help but wonder how much disadvantage those
of us trying to make the case for an IBM solution face not just in
selling it, but in facilitating successful end user adoption. Most of
my readers know that Lotus Notes is about far more than just email, but
consider this: If I am a key executive who uses Microsoft and Google
software as a consumer, who are the first two companies I'm going to
take a meeting with? Who has the inherent advantage? It's good to hear
that Lotus is targeting some advertising at these audiences, but I
also wonder if actually letting consumers get their hands on something branded as "Lotus" would amplify the effects. Thoughts?
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http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/hooks/entry/does_consumer_mind_share_influence_business_decisions1
Aug 15, 2009
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