Customer Reviews

The New Law of Demand and Supply: The Revolutionary New Demand Strategy for Faster Growth and Higher Profits

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Okay, this should not be revolutionary to anyone. Companies should concentrate on demand and customers? Uh, thanks. Try to differentiate your product to get higher returns. Uh, thanks again. Proper resource allocation is essential. No, really?

Kash makes some good suggestions on how companies should develop, market, research and produce in order to meet demand, instead of concentrating all efforts into the supply side. These suggestions, which are very sound, are just plain common sense. It's not revolutionary in any terms. He develops six principles on which to do this and devotes chapters to it, ranging from researching to resource allocation. I would provide the list here, but then that would mean Kash's book would be entirely useless.

What's more insulting than the "revolutionary" in the title are the complements on the back of the book. Such people as the head of McDonalds, EMC, and Gillete have gave great reviews for this book. Of course, if you read the book, you'll see that Kash has actually praised those executives countless times. If someone wrote a book about me, and praised me - heck, I'd consider it a literary masterpiece.

This book just basically is a list of principles wrapped around tons of success stories and a complete lack of humility. Avoid it.

As a strategy executive at a Fortune 50 company, I am constantly reading the business press for practical, new ways to take good business concepts to the bottom line. Rick Kash has them.

In "The New Law of Demand and Supply," Kash presents a proven approach for making businesses larger and more profitable by putting demand ahead of supply. In practice, this means that companies must expend more effort understanding demand in the marketplace before they start developing new products, streamlining supply chains, or incenting sales reps. Unless these activities are targeted at the right sets of customers, they may actually end-up destroying rather than creating value.

As some reviewers have noted (disparagingly), the approach is based on basic business truisms. But rather than highlighting a weakness, this observation is a comfortable reminder that the recommendations reflect the day-to-day business world and are not merely interesting academic ideas. In the business world, success comes less from blazing insight than from effective execution. "The New Law of Demand and Supply" presents a clear step-by-step methodology for companies to grow their businesses around their most profitable and valuable customers.

Most companies have large, entrenched organizations that effectively work against focusing on their most profitable customers. Sales, manufacturing, and engineering/product development organizations simply want more volume to keep commissions, plant utilizations, and employee curiosity high. It takes strong leadership to stand-up and say," We do not know more about our customers than our competitors do," or "Our products are not highly valued by our customers." But "The New Law of Demand and Supply" persuasively makes the case that the alternative is an inevitable decline in market position and financial viability.

Many once dominant U.S. industries and companies have been humbled by their lack of true understanding of demand or of institutional will to act on it. Rick Kash is telling others how to avoid their fate.

The central argument Mr Kash makes is dead on: After decades of building businesses based on what a company can make, companies have to build their businesses on what consumers demand. A simple principle but, as the author makes clear, one that is hard to execute as it is so contrary to how most business people have been trained to plan. I've worked on a project once with the Cambridge Group, Mr Kash's firm, and this book summarizes the philosophy that has made this firm one of the best marketing strategy firms in the country: Get past the old thinking of selling what you think the consumer will buy. You have to do the hard work of analyzing the consumer market from understanding their true needs and then building your business to deliver on those needs.

A must read for every marketer who wants to lead their businesses overall strategy.

Okay, this should not be revolutionary to anyone. Companies should concentrate on demand and customers? Uh, thanks. Try to differentiate your product to get higher returns. Uh, thanks again. Proper resource allocation is essential. No, really?

Kash makes some good suggestions on how companies should develop, market, research and produce in order to meet demand, instead of concentrating all efforts into the supply side. These suggestions, which are very sound, are just plain common sense. It's not revolutionary in any terms. He develops six principles on which to do this and devotes chapters to it, ranging from researching to resource allocation. I would provide the list here, but then that would mean Kash's book would be entirely useless.

What's more insulting than the "revolutionary" in the title are the complements on the back of the book. Such people as the head of McDonalds, EMC, and Gillete have gave great reviews for this book. Of course, if you read the book, you'll see that Kash has actually praised those executives countless times. If someone wrote a book about me, and praised me - heck, I'd consider it a literary masterpiece.

This book just basically is a list of principles wrapped around tons of success stories and a complete lack of humility. Avoid it.

Rick Kash has captured vital insights into the question "What has happen to our businesses?" Kash demonstrates how listening carefully to the customer and doing careful demand-side research can save companies that have in the past just built capacity, priced aggressively and used their balance sheets as staying power. His message is that management will need to focus on fewer products and fewer features; focus only on those products and features that are strongly confirmed by buyers as being "value."

We have excessively complex financial services and financial products today that will cause significant losses for their providers if they don't pay careful attention to this demand strategy concept. Businesses cannot afford to be even slightly off the mark today,and Kash shows them the solution. Expert listening is perhaps the best business tool ever!

There's a new law of supply and demand, the author breathlessly informs his readers, and then bombards them with such gems as "satisfy your customer!, "analyze the factors affecting your business!" and, one imagines, "buy low and sell high!"

There's nothing at all of substance here. The rules of economics are the same as they've always been, and the number of snake oil salesmen, as deomonstated by this book, continues to increase.

Save your money.

I found this book to be well-written and through-provoking. It gave me a new way of structuring business thinking, and was invaluable to my career development....

What a cheat! Get a catchy title for your book so that people are attracted and your book sales increase and then fill it with all the basic knowledge of economics, marketing and what not and call it a revolution. I just wonder what kind of companies get advice from writers like those? If you are slightly familiar with basic (very basic) marketing, economics and strategy, then I can assure you that you will find nothing that you did not know already.

What is this? Create paper castles and tear them down and claim you have developed a revolutionary methodology. Pathethic! The guy attacks all economists by taking Samuelson's introduction to his economics textbook whereby he says that economics is about WHAT to produce, HOW to produce and FOR WHOM to produce. Then, Eureka. Mr Kash suddenly discovers that the sequence is wrong! and that you should not start with the question of WHAT but instead you should start with the question of FOR WHOM. And he calls this a "revolutionary new demand theory since Adam Smith". What a discovery! Nobody ever thought of this before! The disciplines of economics and strategy are grateful to you Mr. Kash!

Dear Mr. Kash, economics is not about Prof. Samelson's introductory chapter to his textbook. There are many more good economists like Samuelson who have already and in a much more refined way elaborated on the concept of demand. Also, there are many very good strategists who not only tackled the issues of demand creation and micro-segmentation but detailed out workable methodologies which are, unlike yours, very usable. See, for example, Adrian Slywotzky's various books, also Don Peppers' 1t01 concept, or for that matter any Strategy 101 or good Marketing 101 book.

This book is just bla bla. No serious scholar can take this piece of scrabbling seriously. So, avoid it an go read something worth spending your time on.

I'm a pre-med in college, and I only read this book because my roommate (majoring in a Business Administration degree) kept talking about it. Though I've never even taken a Business course, I was surprised by how easy it was to read. I even recognized most of the companies (CDW, Pepsi, Sears, etc.) that Rick Kash writes about, though I've never heard of some of them (EMC?).

Most of the book was common sense, know what's happening in your business, differentiate your business, etc. It was really the 2nd principle about picking specific kinds of customers that was new to me. I used to play Aerobiz, this ridiculous SEGA game about running an airline. Anyways, it always came down to prices and market share. It was really about selling to everyone. So, it was new to me that businesses would target certain customers, and not think about market share.

For a novice, this is a great book--even as a general introduction to the ways that big companies sell their products. I couldn't tell you what an experienced businessman would think, but as a college kid, I think that it's worth a quick skim at least.

Rick Kash presents an essential thesis for developing a profitable business in today's volatile marketplace. He clearly explains why developing profitable customers is the only realistic future for any business. The book is easy to read. The first three chapters explain the Law of Demand and the remaining chapters provide the backup and proof. I have been a marketing consultant for over 25 years and this is one of the most practical and significant books I have read.