New products and services are inherently risky and there is no guarantee of success, even for well established and historically successful businesses. But the picture is not totally bleak. In most of these cases, the success can be attributed to the ability of the entrepreneur to understand the perspective the customer brings to the transaction. A successful marketing effort requires a market offering that creates value for the customers. This is where understanding the wants, needs and perceptions of your customers is critical.
Customers buy to increase their well being.
The best way to appreciate this is to imagine the thought processes of a customer considering a purchase. Customers considering a particular product or service will compare the want and need satisfaction potential of the market offering to the want and need satisfaction potential of other uses of their money. Accordingly, to get the sale, you must convince them that you can better meet their needs. This is called your competitive advantage. A competitive advantage is some aspect of your market offering that makes it different from those of competitors, and identifies the superior value that it contains.