In our industry, we tend to focus on technical performance. It's impossible to overemphasize the importance of your company's image. Singer, the sewing machine company, was purchased out of bankruptcy for very little money several years back. It turns out that, in Eastern Bloc countries, Singer had a big reputation for reliable products, and people remembered. Singer now does a booming business capitalizing on its image in Eastern Europe and China, selling not only sewing machines but also household appliances like refrigerators and washing machines.
People buy intelligently.
That strategy is expensive, and it rarely succeeds if the product is inferior. It's far more efficient to respond to market pull, which you can think of as the natural inclination or flow of the customers' decision-making processes. You take advantage of this pull by understanding customers' needs and wants rather than focusing on what you want them to buy. Needs are easily understood by potential customers, so you educate and convince them that your product can serve their needs better than what is available. It's always easier to sell an improvement than a totally new anything.