Segway the right way

Ginger was the code name given to a secret device that many corporate celebrities announced would change the world. Steven Jobs and John Doerr both said it.

I’ve ridden one, now called a Segway, and I agree with the corporate celebrities. It is a wonderful and highly useful device.

But Segway is about to go out of business. What went wrong?

One large thing went wrong. Engineering.

No, not the engineering of the Segway device. The engineering mentality of the creator, Dean Kamen and his friends. The best, most useful, brilliant device in the world can be put on the market and it may not be a successful product just because it is available. Great engineering won’t make a product successful.

The core of marketing is It is hard, nearly impossible, to change human behavior. That is why we have written a book about how to do marketing the right way …. not by advertising.

Yes, people will buy a better mousetrap. That is because their behavior doesn’t have to change ... they are already using mousetraps.

Chapter 7 in Marketing Without Advertising is about educating your customers. We don’t deal with a particular education problem: No business can afford to educate customers about a product no one has ever used before.

Kamen was a very logical engineer. He offered the Segway at a good price on Amazon, no distributors to waste time with, and got some serious organizations like the US Post Office and several police departments to try out the Segway. He also hired lobbyists to get every major city to permit Segways on sidewalks. (Perverse San Francisco did the opposite and banned them on sidewalks.)

Kaman and Segway have failed, or nearly failed. Someone will buy the company and re-introduce a variation of the product..

Using Marketing Without Advertising this is what we would have done to make the Segway a success.

Forget hype. The market you want discounts hype 100%.

Distribute the first few hundred machines to athletic groups, like college polo teams or soccer teams and pay them to develop games with the device.

Offer a few hundred more, around the country, to some bicycle clubs, skate boarders, extreme sports stars and surfers. Let the young, adventurous people in our society, who are not behavior bound, find new, useful and most importantly, fun, roles for the Segway.

Once some useful, fun roles and models are visible, then we would set up a distribution network that parallels the new Segway usage patterns. If snowboarders are the first people to love the Segway and use it, then use the snowboard distribution channels.

Hypothetically you would go to snowboard shops set up retail outlets, and in the same location, create rental companies so people can try out the Segway before they buy. Definitely create repair shops, in the same location, so people know that the device can be repaired quickly and locally.

With this marketing plan, Segway would succeed very rapidly. No engineering mind, just an open commercial mind.

Comments

[Matt Hall]

I just found this post, and, as an MBA student with a business plan for a multimedia map based 3D environment virtual tour company with innovative ideas as to how products such as the ones we create should be produced and marketed. We have venture capital funding, and though our website is woefully undeveloped, we have a complete business plan. We are interested in doing exactly what is talked about in this article, namely, getting hard-core, expensive, neat new technology into the hands of the people who are not behavior bound in their thinking of how to use technology. Segway is a part of that plan. . .but so are lots of other interesting technologies, hardware, and software. Examples include QTVR, GIS, Spheron Scanning Spherocam Cameras, HD DV video cameras attached to flying devices (helicopters, planes (both r/c and full-scale). If anyone is interested in learning more, and/or discussing implementation plans of the concepts discussed in this post, please email me.

Thanks,
Matt Hall
Executive Director - 3DVR Inc.

[Joe]

The simple greatest reason for the apparent failure of Segway to catch on is price. Period.

All these other "reasons" mean nothing until the price of the Segway is addressed.

[Ryan]

The Segway is push technology. That's why it had to be marketed so "cleverly".

That and the $price$, which this article seems to say is reasonable.

[craig cook]

Yes we have the best mouse trap on the market today. I get people driving beat up vw's to Mercedes, asking how do i get a job like that. It is comments like this that insure we Do have the best mouse trap.

[Anastasiya]

Marketing aside, the HIGH PRICES is what makes it less popular. I'm gonna try to get one, but I already know that I'm gonna have to save up for a whole year!!!!!

[Marketing Student]

High prices are expected. That's how almost every new product is released. The problem, when it all boils down, is that the Segway is not ideal in terms of surroundings. What is Segway but a glorified wheelchair or a car without AC and a seat? People are looking for ways to sit on their butts, not stand and lean on a pole with two handles and some wheels. You can lower the price to something ideal like a second-hand car with its breaks busted, and people will buy it, and then the Segway will lose its lustre. The Segway, creative and unique as it is, is scrap. There's better things that research and inventing can go into, like a car that isn't a total failure and doesn't use up precious fossil fuels.

[Shay Reynolds]

Segways are awesome reliable transportation. I have owned Segways for nearly 7 years now.
Check us out when in Austin http://www.glidingrevolution.com

[George Scene]

As others have pointed out, the Segway was overpriced, buy a huge amount. It wasn't just a little overpriced. It won't sell at those prices. No marketing in the world will change that.

re: changing human behavior, see Apple. Two years ago nobody ever heard of a computing tablet, much less wanted or needed one. Now, millions of people are clamoring to spend 500 dollars for a device nobody really needs, but everybody wants.

If the Segway was 500 dollars, they'd sell countless millions of them. And make a profit.

[Hassan]

I am interested to introduce Segway in Africa, but the high price made me relactand to do so, but I have decidede to make use of used Segways to start with but still availability and the price is still not right. Still looking for used Segways of 13 in No.

[email protected]

[custom essays]

Yes, the main problem in implementing Segway in any region is it's high price. But if you can introduce and advertise your product to the target audience I think it will make sense.