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Strategic
Issues
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FINDING
YOUR 8008 — LISTENING TO THE CUSTOMER FOR SUCCESSFUL MARKETING
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Well-managed
companies do not wait for their businesses to become
sick and develop symptoms before they listen to the
customers. They have regular programs of listening
and learning from the market — like periodic U&A (Usage
& Attitude) studies, customer satisfaction surveys,
customer panel audits and so on.
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When
world-class tennis gets played at Wimbledon, the ‘best
practice’ runs so deep in the veins of the players and
becomes so much their second nature that they follow
it unconsciously. Similarly, a successful marketer is
one whose customer runs so deep in him that he not only
sees everything from his customer’s eyes but even begins
seeing things which his customer hasn’t yet begun thinking
about. Like, in 1972 Bill Gates was only sixteen when
he saw a ten-paragraph article on page 143 of the magazine,
Electronics, on Intel’s new chip 8008 and understood
how he would fulfill his destiny of putting a ‘a PC
on every desk’. Did he get this idea from any customer?
Directly, no. Indirectly, yes. And that’s the point.
Very few great marketing ideas have ever come straight
out of any market analysis or research. Nevertheless,
the fact is that virtually every market research, every
market exposure and every analysis does go into the
training of good marketing minds so that — if and when
— the equivalent of the 8008 chip comes their way; they
can recognise and grab it.
Then why are so many of our businesses today slipping
or failing in spite of spending time and money on market
analysis and research? To discuss this, we shall create
and use a hypothetical example. What most of us typically
do is this. The sale of our product, XYZ, is not meeting
our budget this quarter as well. The MD comments that
the product has been allowed to slip for far too long,
and it is high time something was done about it. We
call for market research that asks our competitor’s
customers to rate us vis-à-vis them. In the responses,
we look at where we are weaker than our competitors,
and that becomes our action plan. This standard ‘bread
and butter’ approach to listening to the customer does
produce quick and copious data. But it is difficult
to use. And almost certainly such a one-time exercise
will not produce a great idea for action.
For example, in the Indian CTV business, one of the
replies to why someone chose a brand is always ‘better
picture quality’. You think such a clear answer should
help improve a brand’s competitiveness? Actually no.
The reason is that the two main determinants of picture
quality — the signal resolution and the picture tube
— are not in the hands of the TV manufacturer at all.
The first is determined by the TV broadcaster and the
second is sourced externally. The only thing that any
manufacturer can do is merely marginal — in terms of
thecircuit — but ultimately, the settings by the dealer
salesmen at the point of sale vary so much that marketers
wonder whether it is indeed possible to build a marketing
plan based on the prime customer expectation of ‘better
picture quality’. Similarly, a typical customer satisfaction
survey done for washing machines may show that customers
expect a ‘better product efficiency’ but the R&D department
may find this input bewildering. Because, while R&D
can indeed improve the wash efficiency in at least a
dozen ways like improving motor power, changing impeller
design, giving more wash programs and so on, the data
provides no specific clues — it just declares smugly
that ‘the customer wants better product efficiency’.
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