Momentum: How Companies Become Unstoppable Market Forces [Hardcover]

Ron Ricci (Author), John Volkmann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 22, 2002

When it comes to new products and services, what moves customers to buy? Why do they choose one product over another? What makes them bank on a company's future? These are the billion-dollar questions facing all companies competing in highly connected markets - and today's answers will determine tomorrow's market leaders. In this book, marketing and communications experts Ron Ricci and John Volkmann argue that the unique features of digital products - and of consumer goods that contain digital components - force customers to consider the viability of the company behind the solution to their problems. Picking a losing company could mean getting stuck with products that can't be upgraded or services that can't be extended. So customers buy from the company that they believe will be the long-term - indeed, the inevitable - winner.They buy from the company that has what the authors call momentum. More than sheer motion, momentum is mass, speed, and direction, combined in a value proposition so compelling that all constituents in a given marketplace believe it - and want to go with it. Ricci and Volkmann provide a practical formula - borrowed from the world of physics and proven in the marketplace - for how companies build and sustain momentum. Drawing upon their intensive study of 20,000 consumer and corporate buyers, the authors also reveal the "six forces of digital differentiation" that characterize "inevitable" market winners in the customer's mind.Ricci and Volkmann introduce a "momentum index" that will enable senior management, product marketers, and marketing communication strategists to: measure a brand's momentum against that of its competitors; diagnose a company's strengths and weaknesses as a market contender; develop an action plan for sustaining or strengthening a competitive position; and, apply momentum strategies to the digital features of traditional offerings. For anyone responsible for managing or communicating about a company and its brands, this book shows how companies can ride momentum to industry dominance. Ron Ricci is Vice President of Marketing for Cisco Systems. John Volkmann is Vice President of Strategic Communications at Advanced Micro Devices.

Editorial Reviews

Review

". . . Through their momentum formula, they create clarity where before there was only a blur." -- Geoffrey Moore, author, Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado, and Living on the Fault Line

"Momentum does a great job of capturing the mind-set of digital customers. It will help any company . . ." -- John Chambers, CEO, Cisco Systems

"Momentum is something every executive wants -- the issue is how to create and sustain it." -- Hector Ruiz, President and CEO. Advanced Micro Devices

"Ricci and Volkmann have written a savvy book with a fresh direction. Momentum is based on strong empirical research . . ." -- Don Tapscott, author, Digital Capital, and President, New Paradigm Learning Corporation

"Ricci and Volkmann lucidly explain how to build a business strategy that exploits brand momentum, a key to success . . ." -- Erik Brynjolfsson, Schussel Professor of Management, MIT Sloan School

"Ricci and Volkmann not only help you understand what it takes, but also help you build your own momentum strategy." -- Emanuel Rosen, author, The Anatomy of Buzz

From the Inside Flap

"All business is becoming digital, and digital business is inherently dynamic. Customers care not only about where you are today, but also about where you and your business partners will be tomorrow. Ricci and Volkmann lucidly explain how to build a business strategy that exploits brand momentum, a key to success in the digital world." —Erik Brynjolfsson, Schussel Professor of Management, MIT Sloan School

"For almost a decade, the Internet has changed the way companies strategically position themselves and compete for customers. Momentum does a great job of capturing the mind-set of digital customers. It will help any company looking for actionable ideas to gain and maintain customers." —John Chambers, CEO, Cisco Systems

"Ricci and Volkmann tackle one of the great unsolved mysteries of marketing digital products—how to reconcile what we know about brand from consumer marketing with the actual performance of technology-based markets. Through their momentum formula, they create clarity where before there was only a blur." —Geoffrey Moore, author, Crossing the Chasm, Inside the Tornado, and Living on the Fault Line

"What does it really take for customers to see a company as an unstoppable force in the marketplace? This brilliant book provides a way of thinking about this abstract question in concrete terms. Ricci and Volkmann not only help you understand what it takes, but also help you build your own momentum strategy. A must-read for anyone interested in strategic positioning." —Emanuel Rosen, author, The Anatomy of Buzz

"Momentum is something every executive wants—the issue is how to create and sustain it. This book starts to put a tangible framework around something very elusive—and very powerful." —Hector Ruiz, President and CEO, Advanced Micro Devices

"Ricci and Volkmann have written a savvy book with a fresh direction. Momentum is based on strong empirical research, yet reads like a story. I couldn't put the book down—and that's a rare thing these days." —Don Tapscott, author, Digital Capital, and President, New Paradigm Learning Corporation

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press (October 22, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 157851522X
• ISBN-13: 978-1578515226
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 6.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,441,547 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sound advice for digital product producers and sellers, November 10, 2002

By 

Harold McFarland (Florida) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Momentum: How Companies Become Unstoppable Market Forces (Hardcover)

"Momentum: How Companies Become Unstoppable Market Forces" focuses on the most important questions in marketing:
What motivates a purchaser to actually buy?
When competing products appear similar how do they decide which to purchase?

In the area of digital products there are additional questions that rise out of basic characteristics of the industry itself. For example, digital products come and go so quickly that the consumer must make a decision as to which companies they believe will exist in the next few years. After all, a five-year warranty is of no value if the company folds in two. Will the company be around and supporting their product in three years when technology has changed?

This is the focus of the book, in the area of digital products what produces the momentum that makes consumers purchase the particular vendor's product? The authors conclude that what makes consumers purchase and companies survive in this industry is momentum. And momentum is a function of Mass, Speed, and Direction. A digital company must create mass, develop speed, and set direction.

Customers buy from a company that is perceived to have momentum because they have a fear of ending up with a product that is no longer supported or completely orphaned as a competitor establishes itself as the industry standard. Part of the problem is the conception that digital products are never finished. There is always an update, patch, add-on or newer version of almost any software or hardware that has any sort of digital component. So, how do you develop and use momentum so that the consumer believes they can confidently purchase your product without fear?

The evaluation of a digital product for most consumers is evaluated differently from non-digital products. For non-digital products the consumer has traditionally focused on the features of the product. For digital products the consumer typically evaluates a product not by the features but by how it will make their life easier, more productive, or more entertaining.

The major part of the book discusses the six forces of differentiation and the effect they have on the purchasing decision. For each one of them the authors show how to create them and use them to create momentum. An excellent book on the unique marketing factors of digital products it is a highly recommended read for anyone manufacturing or selling digital products of any kind.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Reality Divided by Logic Always Leaves a Remainder, January 9, 2003

By 

Richard Loveless (Vermont) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Momentum: How Companies Become Unstoppable Market Forces (Hardcover)

The authors deal openly with a tough topic- technology & network products (and for this reason 5 stars). I found a great deal of usable information, and recommend it for its overview on issues related to defending, supporting, or defeating the dominant position in a product category. By specifically addressing the issue of predictability and what can be known about future sales, it directs the business persons' attention to key aspects of their own business that would be useful to research and change.

The title indicates that it might have some useful "business cookbook" step-by-step recipes. Thankfully, it does not (and where it gets a little precriptive it isn't too much). It wasn't clear to me whether the authors were comfortable with this- experts like being prescriptive. However, with all of us now looking at uncertain futures, predictive tools and ideas on improving likely outcomes are so much more useful and believable than prescriptive methods. It is always that remainder which is left when reality is divided by logic that keeps me awake thinking.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Momentum Resonates, Agility is the Point, January 8, 2003

By 

Alan Kelly "Playmaker" (Potomac, Maryland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Momentum: How Companies Become Unstoppable Market Forces (Hardcover)

I approached this book with a wary eye. Similar books have been all too late to explain the bruising landscape for tech marketers. But I was hooked by the early reference to Larry Ellison and both the Media Server and NC programs. Little has been written about these campaigns, to some extent because Oracle is a such an enigma, or an "inevitable" enigma as Ricci and Volkmann point out. Their analysis does a good job of cracking the Oracle marketing code and explaining why it's been an important and effective company.

To their credit, they drive the point that technology is renewable; we've heard too much that tech has "matured," so thanks to the authors for re-teaching us that tech is constantly refreshing. While the book might appear to boast the "bubble" companies, it explains why tech companies will again amass their power and seize the agenda.

I can't deny that "momentum" resonates, but it's confusing to any high school physics student insofar as momentum is typically defined as the product of an object's mass and velocity -- not mass, velocity "and" direction. Despite that, the discussions of agility were the most interesting and where I hope more discussion develops. A company's ability to manage news windows, develop industry discussions and control competitive rhetoric are crucial to its (dare I say it) brand momentum. It's a new plan every day in tech, with or without the bubble, and new ideas and initiatives must be controlled, toward or away from a company, without fail.

Whether Ricci's/Volkmann's ideas become part of the vocabulary remains to be seen, but the book's well written and should bend the agenda in marketing.