Momentum: How Companies Become Unstoppable Market Forces - Hardcover

When it comes to new products and services, what moves customers to buy? Why do they choose one product over another? What makes them bank on a company’s future? These are the billion-dollar questions facing all companies competing in highly connected markets—and today’s answers will determine tomorrow’s market leaders.

In this book, marketing and communications experts Ron Ricci and John Volkmann argue that the unique features of digital products—and of consumer goods that contain digital components—force customers to consider the viability of the company behind the solution to their problems. Picking a losing company could mean getting stuck with products that can’t be upgraded or services that can’t be extended. So customers buy from the company that they believe will be the long-term—indeed, the inevitable—winner. They buy from the company that has what the authors call momentum.

More than sheer motion, momentum is mass, speed, and direction, combined in a value proposition so compelling that all constituents in a given marketplace believe it—and want to go with it. Ricci and Volkmann provide a practical formula—borrowed from the world of physics and proven in the marketplace—for how companies build and sustain momentum. Drawing upon their intensive study of 20,000 consumer and corporate buyers, the authors also reveal the “six forces of digital differentiation” that characterize “inevitable” market winners in the customer’s mind.

Ricci and Volkmann introduce a “momentum index” that will enable senior management, product marketers, and marketing communication strategists to:

- Measure a brand’s momentum against that of its competitors
Diagnose a company’s strengths and weaknesses as a market contender
- Develop an action plan for sustaining or strengthening a competitive position
- Apply momentum strategies to the digital features of traditional offerings

For anyone responsible for managing or communicating about a company and its brands, this book shows how companies can ride momentum to industry dominance.

Ron Ricci is Vice President of Marketing for Cisco Systems. John Volkmann is Vice President of Strategic Communications at Advanced Micro Devices.

Ron Ricci is Vice President, Market Positioning at Cisco Systems, Inc. Reporting to CEO John Chambers, Ricci is responsible for the strategic positioning of the Cisco brand and for helping to maintain Cisco's thought leadership in the Internet economy. An expert in positioning technology companies for market leadership, Ricci's responsibilities include managing Cisco's executive communications function and the Cisco Thought Leadership Network. Prior to coming to Cisco, he was a brand positioning consultant and principal at Citigate Cunningham, working with companies such as IBM, Motorola, Hewlett Packard, and Adobe on their strategic market positions. Ricci serves as a member of the Child Abuse Prevention Center Board of Directors, a non-profit agency that works to prevent child abuse in the Bay Area. He earned his Master's Degree in journalism from the University of North Carolina and a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics from Fairfield University in Connecticut. He lives with his wife and two children in Los Gatos, California.