When the Segway Human Transporter was introduced in 2002, many people expected the product to be a phenomenal success. While the Segway is still on the market, it has never been the success so many expected. A recent Wall Street Journal article suggested that the Segway, while brilliant technologically, seemed impractical to most people since it could not be used to replace their current method of transportation. In other words, the Segway had problems with:

compatibility

Explanation:

In marketing, compatibility refers to how well a product or service matches the markets' values, expectations and needs. Will customers accept the new product or service and use it, or they will not.

A great example of lack of compatibility is the tablet sold by Microsoft in year 2000. It was a financial disaster and really few people even know that the product was offered and even less people actually ever bought it. Customers had no use for tablets in year 2000, but magically Steve Jobs sold millions a few years later. One might think that Apple products are superlative compared to Microsoft's products, but that isn't enough to explain such a failure.

Steve Jobs believed that customers didn't know what they needed, and if you offered a good enough product, they would like it, buy it and use it. Of course, the product that you are selling must be able to satisfy your customers' needs, even if they didn't realize it at first.

But Microsoft struggled to show their customers (in year 2000 Microsoft was the largest company in the world) that they could actually use their tablets to satisfy some type of need. If a company's customers do not realize that a product will satisfy some type of need, they are not going to buy it.

The same happened here. The segway was supposed to be a great innovation, and if the company had done things correctly it probably could have been. The problem with the segway is that it was meant to replace walking, and for short distances really. It was based on the same logic as a remote control for a TV, only that customers never realized it that way.