Been thinking of this for sometime, but how do you develop a marketing strategy around a product for which there is no proxy for demand? I think about companies like Foursquare- for which I believe there was no similar service before, and largely exploited a latent rather than active customer need. Any thoughts?
<i>I think about companies like Foursquare- for which there was no similar service before</i><p>Foursquare wasn't completely unique. There were social networks, and there were mobile apps. If you examine the markets of each of those components, you can make educated guesses about a new product that combines them. I'd imagine Apple did the same sort of study before releasing the iPad...there is a market who enjoys the power of laptops/netbooks, and there is a market who enjoys the portability of mobile phones. Introducing a tablet is basically combining the best of both, and you can draw certain conclusions about how much of a market exists in the middle.