Chapter 3. Product Footprint vs. Product Category

As mentioned earlier, a product’s footprint is the set of working features contained in it. It should be a subset of a Product Category, but sometimes a product will have a feature that does not belong to its Product Category. For example, Pontiac released a sedan some years ago with a single, continuous rear light across the entire rear of the vehicle. It was funky looking and had no discernible function. No one copied it. An ideal product’s footprint matches the area of the Product Category to which it belongs exactly. Let me illustrate this.

Figure 5 – the feature area covered by a Product Category

Just as it is hard to imagine a country without any people, a Product Category cannot exist without products.

The image in Figure 5 represents the entire set of potential features that a mature Product Category covers. In a mature Product Category, where by definition the required feature set is well understood, a successful product covers a substantial portion of that area.

• Once a Product Category has reached the Mature Stage, only incremental changes to the Product Category footprint should occur.

Figure 6 – The footprint of a high Function product in its Product Category.

The light gray area of the image in Figure 6 represents the product footprint of a successful product within its Product Category. This is not to say that the product dominates the market, or that it is a quality product necessarily. It does mean, however, that the product probably looks superior to others in the Product Category that do not cover as much of the Product Category, such as the one illustrated in Figure 7, below. The product in Figure 7 might be a masterpiece of quality, but scarcely covers 50% of the Product Category. A smart product management team grows their product’s footprint as fast as it is safe to do so, but not so fast that they add functionality outside the product category.

Style over substance

A poor quality product can look superb on the surface. It may have a lot of functionality but little quality to back it up. When the customer has had some experience with it, they realize just how faulty it is, by which time they have invested too much in it to switch. Still, by the time the market discovers that fact, it may be too late for competitors to catch up, and the vendor in question may have cleaned up their act. Where product switching is difficult for a customer, securing a good customer base early has an added urgency to it.

An example of where product switching is difficult: desktop operating systems; lots of folks might talk about their next laptop being an Apple instead of a Windows-PC, but it is a difficult switch to make considering the investment many of us have made in our original Windows purchase.

An example of where product switching is easy: moving from Starbucks cafes to Tully’s cafés; a simple change in the weather, or a new café opening up closer to my house, and I can switch loyalties at no cost.

Figure 7 – A product footprint covering approx 50% of its Product Category.

Figure 8 – a product footprint covering a fraction of its Product Category

Early in the evolution of a Product Category, it is more difficult to know what to add to the product. After all, no one knows yet exactly where the perimeters of the Product Category lie, and an aggressive investment in product development might be wasted on improvements that will never provide a return. You can always ask your customers what they would like added to your product, but you must be careful that your customers do not drive your product development directly. Not knowing the perimeters of a Product Category that does not yet exist, the visionary Product Manager will balance customer requirements with strategic needs, technology opportunities and an instinct for where roughly those perimeters might lie in the future. Sometimes that means making changes to the product in a way your existing customer might not have suggested, but are required to satisfy the needs of a maturing Product Category.

Chapter exercise

1. How many significant product releases/versions has your product experienced since it began? __________
2. How many more versions/releases that are significant do you expect to see in the remaining life of your product? __________ (Please write down your best guess even if you find the question difficult to answer.)
3. List all the possible features that your product could have in its ultimate, final version, even if that is in the distant future: __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________. (Continue on a separate piece of paper if needed.)
4. List features of competitors’ products that one of your prospects showed interest in: __________ __________ __________ __________ __________ __________