I’m ridiculed (on a regular basis by our team!) for using highfalutin vocabulary. I cannot help it! Sister Paulanne’s daily vocabulary tests during sixth grade English class at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Glenview, IL, drilled some of those words into me (my favorite may be “lagniappe”). Fancy words get the reader’s attention and make her think!
Now, the word of the day today is “Taxonomy,” the practice and science of classification of things or concepts. It’s mostly used in biology to classify flora and fauna, but it has a lot of currency in tech, too. I remember an interview with Bill Gates where he discussed the importance of taxonomies in defining application scopes for software platforms. And “Taxonomy” makes me think of one of my all-time favorite market gurus, Al Ries, whose classic book, Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind, focuses on creating new categories of product and positioning brands within the handful of mental slots available for each category. The bottom line is the human brain requires organization and structure in order to process information and make decisions. So, complicated marketplaces need to be broken down by interrelated categories to be understood.
Such is the world of technology for the home. It used to be all about home electronics – AV, security, and networks. Today, it’s about so much more. That’s why we developed the TecHome product taxonomy. It helps tech vendors and builder buyers know what category and/or sub-category of product they are discussing within the context of a whole system. It also can be used with tech-savvy homebuyers as a way of organizing their shopping of home tech products, just like the directory next to the escalator in a department store helps buyers shop AND BUY a wide variety of consumer goods.
We created a set of sales discovery questions around the TecHome Builder Taxonomy that you can use to intake homebuyer interest in tech options and upgrades (see below). It’s part of a comprehensive set of tech merchandising and marketing tools we collected in our Guide to Developing a Home Tech Merchandising & Marketing Plan .
So now you have a treatise on your word for the day, taxonomy, and something more useful or, to use the fancier word, more pragmatic.
ENJOY!
John Galante
President
AE Ventures
Excerpt from Guide to Developing Tech Merchandising & Marketing Plan
TecHome Builder -Taxonomy Discovery QuestionsHover mouse on the bottom left of pdf to access page navigation
