RE: Marketing Plan -- draft

["John Williams" <JWilliams business otago ac nz>]

> * After a longer IRC discussion with somebody in the gnome-de 
> channel, I
>    was pointed to a missing definition of what marketing is. This was
>    very helpful, since it may reduce misunderstandings. 
> 
>    Maybe it's helpful to note that there's are two versions, broadly
>    speaking:
>    1.) The classic version is the four P's: Price, Product, Place, and
>         Promotion.
>         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing
> 
>    2.) Another version is basically marketing management:
>         http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marketing_management

After studying marketing at university for nearly 20 years, I have a
couple of words to add.  Firstly, the material on those pages looks like
it was copied from a first year textbook.  That's fine, except you must
realise that all that material is basically a (mental) framework for
organising _planning_ and is not really a conceptual model or
theoretical base, or description, of marketing per se.

My definition of marketing is:

"Find out what people want, then give it to them (if that's what you
want)".

This is distinct from _selling_, or promotion, which is:

"OK, we've got this stuff.  How do we make people buy it?"

So far on the marketing list we have been discussing (mainly) promotion.
My point (forgive me, I'm an academic.  We need half an hour of intro
before we get to the point) is that perhaps we need to think more about:

"What is frustrating to users about using computers; and how can we
(given our resources and personal goals) remove those frustrations and
otherwise enhance that experience?"

As an aside, I think the philosophical reasons are often downplayed (the
creation of the term Open Source as opposed to Free comes to mind).  In
general, people like to share, and like to help each other.  The fact
that Stallman, Raymond, Perens, ...  live in the USA is probably skewing
their view of resistance to promoting GNOME and GNU/Linux on this point.
You must never forget that the USA is, to the rest of the world,
insanely materialistic and conservative.  Most businesses that I
interact with would be completely relaxed about  Stallman's more "rabid"
positions.  (With the exception of businesses who sell software, of
course.)

Ah, the coffee-fuelled morning rant.  There's nothing else like it to
start the day.

Greetings to all,

John