There have been many "great lies" in the history of computing. These are my
favorites:
"There will be a world market for five computers." —an IBM market study
in the 1940s.
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home." —Ken
Olsen, founder of minicomputer maker Digital Equipment, in 1977.
"640k [of main memory] ought to be enough for anyone." —Bill Gates, 1981.
As I write this—in my home, on one of the world's hundreds of millions of computers,
using 80 times as much memory as Mr. Gates foresaw—it seems that much of today's
accepted thinking is as silly as my historical favorites. The biggest "liars"
may be companies that say: We'll wait because our customers aren't ready to do much
commerce on the Web. What companies mean is that they're not ready.
Some examples:
- Tupperware won't sell over the Web. It insists that customers need, among other things,
to hear the burp when a container is opened, to understand how airtight the seal is. Avon
will let its salespeople put materials on the Web but not take orders. It argues that
customers need to see and feel its products. The Girl Scouts discourage Web-based sales of
its cookies. The reason has nothing to do with customers. It's that Tupperware, Avon, and
the Girl Scouts don't have a clue how to deal with their at-home sales forces if customers
move on-line. In fact, competitors or renegade salespeople (those Girl Scouts are tough)
will eventually force the organizations to move much of their sales onto the Internet,
because the products are so familiar they don't need to be sold face-to-face.
- Barnes & Noble used to say it wouldn't sell books over the Web because customers
needed to have a nonfat double latte before buying. Music retailers made similar claims.
The real story: Barnes & Noble and the music sellers had invested so much in bricks
and mortar that they feared a catalog-like approach to selling. Now, of course, Amazon.com
has shown that people can have their gourmet coffee at home while ordering books. Music
sales are exploding over the Internet—it's even getting easier to hear samples of the
music at home, meaning you don't have to wear those big headphones and look goofy in a
store while singing to yourself.
- Sak's says its customers won't buy clothes over the Web. What really happened is that it
tried the Web, found the situation complicated, and gave up. In fact, people's willingness
to buy through catalogs means on-line sales will happen, albeit after some tinkering with
initial approaches.
- A brewing company said its customers weren't interested in using the Internet. But a
consultant friend of mine found that 10,000 Web pages mentioned the brewer prominently,
and a dozen sites listed themselves as the company's official home page. (The company
wanted to sue for trademark infringement but eventually settled down once it realized the
infringers were its friends.)
Look, dealing with the Internet is hard. For years, I/T organizations have had trouble
just providing their companies' employees with enough service. Now, entire companies are
having to go to the next level and use technology to deal with real customers. That's
incredibly messy. Customers want what they want, when they want it. They won't accept that
they need to wait while you figure out your Web site, or your customer service, or your
sales training. But pretending that customers aren't moving to the Internet to buy things
and find information or service won't make the problem go away.
Paul Carroll is the editor-in-chief of Context.
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