Hi! Thanks for the question.
Wikipedia provides an extensive list of commercial and technological
failures in the past. I will provide here some of them which really
had a great impact on their particular industry today based on my
assessment.
Since this is a highly subjective list, I will also point you out to
the list by Wikipedia itself so that you can see other notable entries
there. To see the other entries check out the links in the sources
section immediately following the list.
Here is the list of commercial failures that had an impact on history.
The Edsel ? ?The Edsel is most famous for being a marketing disaster.
Indeed, the name "Edsel" came to be synonymous with commercial
failure, and similar ill-fated products, such as the Betamax tape
format, have often been colloquially referred to as "Edsels." Since it
was such a debacle, it provided a case study for marketers on how not
to market a product. The main reason why the Edsel's failure is so
famous was that it flopped despite Ford?s investment of $400,000,000
into its development.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsel
---------------------
New Coke ? ?Public reaction to the change was devastating, and the new
cola quickly entered the pantheon of major marketing flops. However,
the subsequent reintroduction of Coke's original formula led to a
significant gain in sales, which some theorize was the original
purpose all along.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke
---------------------
Betamax ? ?The VHS format's defeat of the Betamax format became a
classic marketing case study, now identified with the verbal phrase
"to Betamax", wherein a proprietary technology format is overwhelmed
in the market by a format allowing multiple, competing, licensed
manufacturers, as in: "Apple Betamaxed themselves out of the PC
market." Sony's confidence in its ability to dictate the industry
standard backfired when JVC made the tactical decision to engage in
open sharing of its VHS technology. JVC sacrificed substantial
potential earnings by going the open sharing route, but that decision
ultimately won the standards war.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betamax
---------------------
Titanic ? ?The sinking resulted in the deaths of more than 1,500
people, ranking it as one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters in
history and by far the most famous. Titanic's design used some of the
most advanced technology available at the time and the ship was
popularly believed to be "unsinkable".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Titanic
---------------------
Apple Newton ? ?The Apple Newton, or simply Newton, was an early line
of personal digital assistants developed, manufactured and marketed by
Apple Computer from 1993 to 1998.?
?Although the Apple Newton was produced for six years, it was never as
successful in the marketplace as Apple had hoped. This has been
attributed to two primary reasons: the Newton's high price (which went
up to $1000 when models 2000 and 2100 were introduced), and its large
size (it failed the "pocket test" by not fitting in an average coat,
shirt, or trouser pocket). Critics also panned its handwriting
recognition. These initial problems marred Newton's reputation in the
eyes of the public, and PDAs would remain a niche product until Palm,
Inc.'s Palm Pilot, which emerged shortly before the Newton was
discontinued.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Newton
----------------------
Apple Lisa ? ?The Apple Lisa, created in 1980, turned out to be a
commercial failure for Apple, the largest since the Apple III disaster
of 1980. The intended business computing customers balked at Lisa's
high price and largely opted to run less expensive IBM PCs, which were
already beginning to dominate business desktop computing.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Lisa
----------------------
Apple III ? ?For a variety of reasons, the Apple III was a commercial
failure. With a starting price of about US$3,500, it was more
expensive than many of the CP/M-based business computers that were
available at the time.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_III
-----------------------
Microsoft Bob ? ?But there is at least one Microsoft product that
just, well, never quite caught on. In fact, it bombed famously. I am
speaking of none other than Microsoft BOB. In this review we take a
look at a product that sold so poorly it was actually cancelled after
just one version, 1.0.?
http://www.bentuser.com/article.aspx?ID=327
------------------------
Webvan ? ?Webvan was an online "credit and delivery" grocery business
that went bankrupt in 2001. It is often considered one of the clearest
examples of misapplying Internet technology to an existing form of
business. It is also considered a classic example of a company trapped
by sudden demands from venture capitalists for short-term
profitability, instead of growth and market share.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webvan
-------------------------
Pets.com ? ?The company subscribed to the dot-com philosophy that
making a brand name known was as or more important than profitability.
Pets.com actually succeeded wildly in making its brand name known.?
?However, despite their incredible web traffic and well known brand
name, sales of pet products through the site were nowhere near
profitable - their strategy had been based around conquering the
market on pet supplies without adequate research on how many pet
owners would genuinely use the service.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pets.com
-------------------------
Europa rocket ? Failed to launch five times. It never had a successful launch.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_rocket
-------------------------
Spruce Goose ? An aircraft commissioned by the US to be built by
Howard Hughes. It wasn?t used by the military and Congress killed it
the project after spending government funds on it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spruce_Goose
-------------------------
N1 Rocket ? ?N1 or N-1 was the Soviet rocket intended to send Soviet
cosmonauts to the Moon, preferably ahead of the Americans.?
?As a result of its technical difficulties, in turn due to lack of
funding for full-up testing, the N1 never successfully completed a
test flight. All four unmanned launches out of 12 planned test
launches ended in failure, even before first-stage separation.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N1_rocket
--------------------------
Tacoma Narrow Bridge ? ?The final destruction of the bridge was
recorded on film. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge Collapse (1940) is
preserved in the U.S. National Film Registry, and is still shown to
engineering, architecture, and physics students as a cautionary tale.?
?The bridge?s spectacular self-destruction is often used as an object
lesson in the necessity to consider both aerodynamics and resonance
effects in structural and civil engineering.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacoma_Narrows_Bridge
-------------------------
Supersonic Transport ? ?High fuel costs and low passenger capacity
(due to the aerodynamic requirement for a narrow fuselage) have
combined to make SSTs an expensive form of transportation compared
with the cost of subsonic flight.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supersonic_transport
-------------------------
Heaven?s Gate ? ?Heaven's Gate (1980) is a big-budget western movie,
depicting a fictionalized account of the Johnson County War between
land barons and European immigrants in 1890s Wyoming. The biggest
Hollywood flop of the 1980s, Heaven's Gate became synonymous with
troubled and overbudget film disasters.?
?The movie's unprecedented US$40 million cost sent United Artists into
bankruptcy and eventually led to its purchase by MGM.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heaven%27s_Gate_%28movie%29
---------------------
Cutthroat Island ? ?Made the same year as Waterworld, Cutthroat Island
was actually a much bigger financial failure. The budget approached
100 million dollars and the total US gross was approximately 10
million dollars.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutthroat_Island
---------------------
Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within - ?It was released on July 11, 2001
in the United States and was the first animated feature to seriously
attempt photorealistic CGI humans. It is also one of the biggest box
office bombs in film history, with losses of over $120 million,
effectively bankrupting Square Pictures.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Fantasy:_The_Spirits_Within
---------------------
The Adventures of Pluto Nash - ?The film was a tremendous flop: the
film's budget was estimated at $100 million, the marketing cost was
$20 million and the domestic box office (of which the studio typically
receives about 50%) was $4,420,080 (U.S.) and $2,683,893 (overseas)
for a total worldwide gross of $7,103,973.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Pluto_Nash
----------------------
DIVX ? ?The DIVX rental system was created in 1998 in time for the
holiday season and was discontinued on June 16, 1999, exactly 1 year
later, due to the costs of introducing the format, as well as its very
limited acceptance by the general public.?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIVX
----------------------
Sources:
?List of famous failures in science and engineering?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_famous_failures_in_science_and_engineering
?List of commercial failures?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_commercial_failures
?List of films generating losses?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_generating_losses
Search terms used:
Historical commercial business product failures flops
I hope these links would help you in your research. Before rating this
answer, please ask for a clarification if you have a question or if
you would need further information.
Regards,
Easterangel-ga
Google Answers Researcher |
