Who is going to buy the darn thing? [marketing]

Why do some new products take off, while others do not sell at all? Marketing is a process of ascertaining needs which customers are willing to spend money to satisfy, thus guiding engineering to design the right products. How much shall we invest in marketing to enable commercial success, and when? The paper discusses a new metric which has been developed to answer these questions, the marketing/engineering investment ratio. This model separates marketing from the functions of promotion and selling. Formulating a ratio of marketing to engineering installs marketing concurrently with engineering, and sizes the marketing budget with a readily identified number (engineering investment).<>