RE: Anyone willing to respond to this CNet posting
Ray -- I dont really think it is productive to get into debate of this kind in this kind of forum.
I do however think that your last posting which implies that we dont take responsibility for any issues and dont work hard to resolve them is simply at variance with the facts.
I also want to make it clear that we dont have a problem with upfront and honest criticism from real users! We do however have a problem when competitors, masquerading as users, WHO HAVE NOT EVEN USED Alpha Five, use visible sites such as download.com, where we are sponsoring awareness of Alpha Five, to attempt to sabotage our efforts.
I would like to diverge a little bit from this topic onto another somewhat related topic to illustrate our concern.
Many many years ago, I worked for an MIT spin off market research firm, that used to charge substantial consulting fees to Fortune 500 companies to run "simulated test markets" to help decide go/no-go decisions on new product launches. As it turns out one of the key reasons this consulting firm was successful is that these Fortune 500 companies found that if they ran conventional test markets, their competitors would go into test market cities and actively work to distort the results rendering convetional test marketing unreliable. An example of this distortion or maninpulation might be - buying up boat-loads of the product being tested with the objective of fooling the company testng the product into thinking they had a winner (when they really had a loser) and therefore blowing "big bucks" on a national launch (when in fact the product should have been rethought)!! Can you believe someone would do such a thing??:)
Ray -- I dont really think it is productive to get into debate of this kind in this kind of forum.
I do however think that your last posting which implies that we dont take responsibility for any issues and dont work hard to resolve them is simply at variance with the facts.
I also want to make it clear that we dont have a problem with upfront and honest criticism from real users! We do however have a problem when competitors, masquerading as users, WHO HAVE NOT EVEN USED Alpha Five, use visible sites such as download.com, where we are sponsoring awareness of Alpha Five, to attempt to sabotage our efforts.
I would like to diverge a little bit from this topic onto another somewhat related topic to illustrate our concern.
Many many years ago, I worked for an MIT spin off market research firm, that used to charge substantial consulting fees to Fortune 500 companies to run "simulated test markets" to help decide go/no-go decisions on new product launches. As it turns out one of the key reasons this consulting firm was successful is that these Fortune 500 companies found that if they ran conventional test markets, their competitors would go into test market cities and actively work to distort the results rendering convetional test marketing unreliable. An example of this distortion or maninpulation might be - buying up boat-loads of the product being tested with the objective of fooling the company testng the product into thinking they had a winner (when they really had a loser) and therefore blowing "big bucks" on a national launch (when in fact the product should have been rethought)!! Can you believe someone would do such a thing??:)
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