I think marketing (and branding) is the antithesis of classical economics and the primary reason reality diverges from theory. Marketing is extremely effective (despite everyone saying they are immune) at de-commodifying commodity products and detaching demand from price (or at least minimizing price's importance)
Take auto insurance... probably the biggest TV advertiser in the US. Highly regulated product, nothing tangible, it's all the same. But the gecko and Flo and Jake from State Farm are there every commercial break to pound your head in to differentiate their product from alternatives. Doesn't hurt that price discovery is painful in this industry, they know it is unlikely you'll compare more than 2, mayyyyybe 3, companies.
Meanwhile there's essentially zero marketing for health insurance in USA, because people have no choices, the employer chooses for you.
Marketing is part of the product design. The decisions on what to do and what not to do when coding or designing a feature should be a result of a marketing interrogation because you're building the product to be used in some set of ways by some set of people.
Once you stop thinking about what they actually care about, you're drifting away from a successful execution.
This is from copy to code. From price to presentation to features and flow.
It's not a nice to have or something that's tacked on, it is the soul of the product in the prospects mind - the driving force for the whole effort from the first keystroke to the last signoff from QA, your product lives or dies by your market models and theories and how focused your execution of them were.
Doing this right is the difference between Creative Zen, Apple iPod and Sandisk Sansa or FirefoxOS, Android and MeeGo.
Technical competency is a necessary ingredient but it doesn't get you there alone.
If you want to build something that doesn't bomb, you need to study marketing, significantly and heavily.
Take auto insurance... probably the biggest TV advertiser in the US. Highly regulated product, nothing tangible, it's all the same. But the gecko and Flo and Jake from State Farm are there every commercial break to pound your head in to differentiate their product from alternatives. Doesn't hurt that price discovery is painful in this industry, they know it is unlikely you'll compare more than 2, mayyyyybe 3, companies.
Meanwhile there's essentially zero marketing for health insurance in USA, because people have no choices, the employer chooses for you.