Crossing the chasm : marketing and selling high-tech products to mainstream customers

Crossing the Chasm (1991; rev. 1999) demonstrates the existence of distinct marketing challenges for each market segment in the life cycle of new technology-based products. A significant gulf -- the "chasm" -- exists between the market made up of early adopters and the markets of more pragmatic buyers. To cross the chasm, a product team must identify the needs of pragmatic buyers and deliver a "whole product" that more than meets those needs. This landmark book, part of the HarperBusiness Essentials series, shows just how to do that. This work offers ideas for marketing new high-technology products. It suggests fresh marketing strategies to help with selling innovative new products so that the not untypical situation of new items being received well by the few but not by the public at large can be avoided. There is a line from a song in the musical A Chorus Line: '"If Troy Donahue can be a movie star, then I can be a movie star."