Page 144 - DLIS402_INFORMATION_ANALYSIS_AND_REPACKAGING

Unit 7: Marketing of Information

Notes
Fix it, improve
it, make changes

Ask customers Sell the
if they like the improved
new product product

Assess
progress
(is it selling?)

Constructive criticism helps marketers adapt offerings to meet changing customer needs.
Product → Solution
Price → Value
Place → Access
Promotion → Information
If any of the 4Ps were problematic or were not in the marketing factor of the business, the business
could be in trouble and so other companies may appear in the surroundings of the company, so the
consumer demand on its products will decrease.
Some qualifications or caveats for customer focus exist. They do not invalidate or contradict the
principle of customer focus; rather, they simply add extra dimensions of awareness and caution to it.
The work of Christensen and colleagues on disruptive technology has produced a theoretical
framework that explains the failure of firms not because they were technologically inept (often
quite the opposite), but because the value networks in which they profitably operated included
customers who could not value a disruptive innovation at the time and capability state of its
emergence and thus actively dissuaded the firms from developing it.
Taking customer focus with a grain of salt, treating it as only a subset of one’s corporate strategy
rather than the sole driving factor. This means looking beyond current-state customer focus to predict
what customers will be demanding some years in the future, even if they themselves discount the
prediction.
Pursuing new markets (thus new value networks) when they are still in a commercially inferior or
unattractive state, simply because their potential to grow and intersect with established markets
and value networks looks like a likely bet. This may involve buying stakes in the stock of smaller
firms, acquiring them outright, or incubating small, financially distinct units within one’s
organization to compete against them.

Caution

The extent to which what customers say they want does not match their purchasing decisions. Thus
surveys of customers might claim that 70% of a restaurant’s customers want healthier choices on the
menu, but only 10% of them actually buy the new items once they are offered. This might be acceptable
except for the extent to which those items are money-losing propositions for the business, bleeding
red ink. A lesson from this type of situation is to be smarter about the true test validity of instruments
like surveys. A corollary argument is that “truly understanding customers sometimes means
understanding them better than they understand themselves.” Thus one could argue that the principle
of customer focus, or being close to the customers, is not violated here—just expanded upon.

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