Communicating the potential of new technologies: Technology marketing by target-group adapted physical technology demonstrators

The development of new Technologies is generally a time-consuming and cost-intensive task. Therefore, the future exploitation of a new technology has to be considered in the early stages of the development of said technology with the aim of managing the development-path in relation to market potential. In particular technology driven /-developing companies and applied research institutes aspire to a commercialization of potential new technologies which have been identified also sometimes within future-fields outside of their core businesses. Unfortunately, new technologies come with an increased complexity and thus also with an increasing need for explanation of their functionality and capabilities. The way to communicate technological advantages to a potential target group is today primarily focused on single applications by the use of specific prototypes or other concepts of demonstration related to an explicit product. But even the development of application specific prototypes in each future field is very cost intensive and not practicable in all industries. This paper introduces an approach to convey the functional profile of the new technology into potential target groups across different application fields by the focus on customer delight. The aim is to draw attention to a particular function of the technology by highlighting of a set of relevant attributes which lead to customer satisfaction. Using a case study, the development of a target group specific, function orientated and physically perceptible technology demonstrator will be discussed, and the approach on how to communicate technological advantages without any industry specific pre-product focus will be demonstrated.