Trade-Off: Why Some Things Catch On, and Others Don't

Kevin Maney

Sep 2009 · Sold by Crown Currency

About this ebook

A Fresh and Important New Way to Understand Why We Buy

Why did the RAZR ultimately ruin Motorola? Why does Wal-Mart dominate rural and suburban areas but falter in large cities? Why did Starbucks stumble just when it seemed unstoppable?

The answer lies in the ever-present tension between fidelity (the quality of a consumer’s experience) and convenience (the ease of getting and paying for a product). In Trade-Off, Kevin Maney shows how these conflicting forces determine the success, or failure, of new products and services in the marketplace. He shows that almost every decision we make as consumers involves a trade-off between fidelity and convenience–between the products we love and the products we need. Rock stars sell out concerts because the experience is high in fidelity-–it can’t be replicated in any other way, and because of that, we are willing to suffer inconvenience for the experience. In contrast, a downloaded MP3 of a song is low in fidelity, but consumers buy music online because it’s superconvenient. Products that are at one extreme or the other–those that are high in fidelity or high in convenience–-tend to be successful. The things that fall into the middle-–products or services that have moderate fidelity and convenience-–fail to win an enthusiastic audience. Using examples from Amazon and Disney to People Express and the invention of the ATM, Maney demonstrates that the most successful companies skew their offerings to either one extreme or the other-–fidelity or convenience-–in shaping products and building brands.

Ratings and reviews

Kevin Maney’s Trade-off is about the constant exchange of fidelity and convenience. The concept Kevin Maney lays out is insightful when loosely applied, but doesn’t hold up under a lot of scrutiny. Maney argues that the trade off between convenience, price + availability, and fidelity, aura+identity+experience, is a zero-sum trade. You can’t have more convenience without getting less fidelity and vice versa. Maney warns against chasing something he calls the fidelity mirage, which is both high fidelity and high convenience, but both are measured relative to the nearest competitor , which means achieving the fidelity mirage only adjusts the baseline for comparison. Google seems to be high fidelity and high convenience. It’s free, it’s on every internet enabled computer and my phone, while at the same time being much higher fidelity than other search engines. Is Google a fidelity mirage, or is there a flaw in how fidelity and convenience are being measured? Possibly, I’m being too critical. Trade-off provides a useful framework for how to position a product or a brand, some clues into the long-term viability of a company, and even a little enlightenment into experiences and products around us. Kevin Maney’s writing style is neat and clear. He does a great job of explaining a complex topic in a way that doesn’t make it seem overwhelming. Overall this a good book and well worth my time, but I don’t think it’s my first recommendation to anyone.

About the author

KEVIN MANEY, the author of Megamedia Shakeout and The Maverick and His Machine, has been a contributing editor to Condé Nast Portfolio and a contributor to The Atlantic, Wired, NPR, and ABC News NOW. He covered the technology industry for USA Today for almost two decades. He lives outside of Washington, D.C.

Visit the author at his website, www.kevinmaney.com.