Commercial paradox, what is the real trend in marketing?
When we talk about marketing we can find as many options as customers, it is important to achieve the objectives is the satisfaction, loyalty and return to reconquer each of them and do so profitably at different levels, not only economic. It is also true that when we learn something, or obtain commercial knowledge about strategies that work, or concrete actions that produce certain results, we always tend to generalize.
However, if we look carefully marketer world can see that quite disparate and radically opposed strategies among competing firms and in the same markets can achieve success in each of those used, similarly to copy the verbatim strategies remains one of our competitors can cause a resounding failure in our company. Therefore there are many commercial or marketing paradoxes, I will focus on one that has always amazed me how to live and how they enact each of the parties.
If we take the fashion world, this sector’s strategy is to create trend is that the more people consume and wear the same clothes, as a commodity. Everything is aimed at generating mass with the same products, are important economies of scale, experience curves and production is the priority, not enough function. For this claim to go to fashion is used, and these is to go as millions and millions more like you are. However it seems paradoxical that we move through this world of marketing in other areas, we proclaim the continuing need for customization, 1 to 1, to offer specific solutions per customer, where the marketing function has priority over other, ie as opposed to fully discussed in the previous case.
The great paradox is that while in some sectors, markets, or companies commercial proposal is to generate mass consumption, where standardization is the queen, others try to offer products or individualized service and achieve profitability through also the number of customer obviously but each with a different product or a different service.
Indeed, in the background there is no paradox, it is different customers, different business models, different purposes. While what they pursue standardization and increased indiscriminate mass of customers looking for people interested in issues related to price, people interested in having what others have, to belong to the same social group, or hide in the crowd, or just what they can afford, others look brand differences with the rest of the population through customization, to buy something different from the rest, being different through what you possess. Therefore, we are not talking both commercial paradoxes, but from different customers have different priorities purchase, and this is ultimately what determines the actions, strategies and company policies.
And I think I’ve said in other post, there are people for everything they have to have for all companies and therefore as diverse as customer strategies. In marketing you can not speak of a paradox when we see conflicting business strategies in the same market, including competitors, we just announced that it will target different customers. In many of my classes I do emphasis on marketing that unless there are no absolute truths that give customers what they expect, the rest is open. You can even doubt many axioms that we as flatly true, axioms that are true in all scenarios, I think there are very few of those. We must quarantine everything seems understanding when to generalize what they learned to other business scenarios, as the same is not applicable or effective, in this new scenario. To be commercially successful confluence of many variables, but almost all start from the same source determining the customer. Well we tried the great paradox, which has proved not to be.
