Which comes first, the market or the product?

Check out this post from Association Inc. for a great thought of the day. Which boils down to:

Associations have a market. Not a product.

You have to read the post to see how Kevin gets there, but I would like to add that meetings also have a market, not a product (he puts meetings firmly in the category of products an association has to market). But I would say meetings, whether they're association or corporate, also have a market. It's thinking about them as products that keep so many planners stuck in a rut--it's classic Barbie, and everyone loves classic Barbie! But if you think about meetings as having markets, not just as products to sell (i.e., registration fees, trade shows, sponsorships), you start thinking about them in a whole new way. Or at least, I did.