X-Message-Number: 1746
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 1993 23:56:34 +0100
From:  (David Stodolsky RUC DK)
Subject: CRYONICS: re MADison Avenue Meets Cryonics?

In #1734 - MADison Avenue Meets Cryonics? [K.Q.Brown] writes:
>If a *little* knowledge can be a dangerous thing, then I probably
>am dangerous now.  The book "Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind"

Product design is a well explored scientific area with solid
mathematical methods. It can be used to predict market impact of new
products accurately. 

For example, your company wishes to launch a new coffee brand, but a
market test in even a small city can cost millions of dollars. Your
solution is to fund a survey that tries to predict the consumer response
to a new coffee brand that is constructed to fit into a "hole" in the
market, relative to products already positioned there. The researcher
uses scaling methods to specify the taste, "image", etc, of the new
brand, and predict the market share that can be captured by it. 

A study like this was actually performed by V. Stefflre in the '70s. The
prediction was that there was room in the market for a new coffee. The
following market test was a great success. The new coffee actually
captured more of the market then expected. Unfortunately, the new coffee
captured so much of the business of the sponsoring company's other
coffee already established in the same market that launch of the new
brand was dropped.

Stefflre's "Possible future histories." _Futures_, June 1975, p. 230,
might make interesting reading and gives a starting point for
investigation of the literature in this area.


However, I really wonder if sophisticated marketing approaches do not
overlook the obvious. If someone knows that they are soon to be in a
condition for which current medical technology has no answer, then they
are more likely to try radical new methods. Cryonics, a possible method
to get to the better equipped hospital of the future, is one of these. 

One population of persons who have this knowledge, and in most cases
adequate time to make the preparations for suspension, are those with
HIV infection. Given that ALCOR already has several patients from this
group, this is hardly a novel observation. However, is this group being
made aware of the cryonics option through a directed marketing plan?
This group is very well organized in the USA and Europe and should be
reachable via low cost and often free media, that are operated
specifically for education of this group.

David Stodolsky, c/o Jens Hoff, Political Science Dept., Copenhagen 
Univ., Rosenborggade 15, DK-1130 Copenhagen K, Denmark. Internet:
 Tel.: +45 31959282. Fax: + 45 33122613

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