The Why of Marketing

Marketing suffers from many stereotypes, many of  them negative. It is perceived by most people to be easy and glamorous. Everyone has an opinion about how to market something. Not too much thought is given as to the why of marketing. Why is marketing needed? What purpose does it serve? What, if you will, is the philosophy of marketing?

Questions like these seem to serve no practical purpose. Nearly all marketing practitioners and theorists have a much more practical bent. They address the how of marketing as indeed they should. Since marketing is ultimately concerned with consumers and since consumers come with an infinite variety of opinions, thoughts, views, experiences etc. and these opinins, thoughts, views, experiences etc. also change with time and circumstance, just trying to answer the how of marketing poses many interesting and difficult questions and conundrums. The how of marketing is so interesting that the why of marketing seems largely irrelevant.

Neglecting the why of marketing however is fraught with peril. This questions concerns the legitimacy of marketing in the eyes of both consumers and practitioners. There is a tendency amongst the former to equate marketing with a form of coercion. The major concern here is that marketing creates false demand i.e. it creates a demand for goods and services that otherwise would not exist. All for the sake of a few more dollars. This obviously generates resistance amongst consumers to marketing's blandishments. Practitioners in turn try to overcome this resistance which only generates more resistance.

Another major area of concern is attempts by businesses to commercialize culture spaces and marketing's role in these attempts. It is in the inherent nature of capitalism to commercialize all aspects of private and social life. Marketing is often used as a tool in this regard. Since people tend to resist commercialization of treasured cultural spaces, marketing, being the most visible of the tools used to do so, becomes highly suspect and leads to greater resistance which of course needs to be overcome by practitioners.

If marketing is to continue being effective and not alienate its putative constituency, it needs to address the issues raised by the questions above. I will try to address some of these issues later but there needs to be a consistent effort to address them by all practitioners at their local level. These are not irrelevant, unnecessary questions. They go into the very heart of marketing. How these issues are debated and acted upon will determine the ultimate effectiveness of marketing.

Themes - II

Data mining is also one aspect of a broader area that marketers need to be aware of: the intelligent use of a spectrum of data, specifically the intelligent use of relevant marketing metrics to drive the decision making process. All too often, marketing is driven through gut instinct and feel. These are actually important in marketing. Sometimes the value of a product or a campaign cannot be captured through traditional marketing research methods. The IPod, IPhone and the IPad are all examples of products which would have almost certainly been rejected by traditional marketing research methods. In such cases, the instincts of the managers can prove invaluable. However, a situation like this does not arrive often and certainly does not negate the intelligent use of relevant marketing metrics. It is not often realized that marketing involves a large amount of creativity. In many respects, marketers are like artists. Unlike the latter however, marketers also need to be rigorous in their approach. A marketing campaign can be highly creative; it also needs to deliver results.

One of the first things that students of marketing learn is the Product Life-cycle Curve (PLC) which tells about the stages of demand that a product or service goes through over time assuming that it succeeds in the marketplace. The PLC tells marketers that over time, growth in demand for their product or service will flatten out and then start declining. Armed with this insight, we can ask what can be done to rejuvenate a product whose growth has started to flatten or even decline? The key to finding the answer lies in understanding the difference between needs and wants and applying that understanding in data mining to reveal hidden patterns of consumption that even consumers may not be aware of. The difference between needs and wants is also one of the first things taught to students of marketing. Unfortunately, most people then seem to promptly forget about this. The result is that all too frequently, marketing efforts are wasted simply because of a failure to understand what is a need, what is a want and what is the difference between the two.

It can be said that marketing is all about the consumer. Wrong! Marketing is all about the mind of the consumer. There is a difference. It is subtle but it is important. Almost all marketers fall victim to the better mousetrap fallacy even while acknowledging the existence of said fallacy and denying that they are affected by it. Products and services have always had to meet and maintain minimum standards of quality and performance in order to have a chance (not a guarantee mind you) of success in the market. Usually, these standards need to be considerably higher than the minimum. What is ignored is that objective quality is not very relevant. What is of far greater importance is the perception of quality. In other words, the mind of the consumer is more important. When we start talking about mindsets, we start delving into the realm of psychology. Thus marketers need to be aware of the basics of the science of psychology in order to be successful.

Themes

Marketing is a vast discipline but in my view it has definite themes. Marketing starts with the consumer. This however is a vague statement. What does it mean? The key to starting with the consumer is to remember that the task of marketing is to inform and thus persuade. It is certainly not to bludgeon the hapless consumer into submission. We have to remember that by buying things from us, consumers are doing us a huge favor. This favor is strictly conditional and can be withdrawn at an instant's notice without any previous warning.

What do marketers need in order to inform and persuade? In a word, knowledge. Notice I did not say information. Most marketers demand information but this is stupid. The problem is not lack of information. There is usually far too much information. The problem is a lack of structured information i.e. information that has been analyzed in some fashion. In other words, knowledge.

Having said the above, it needs to be emphasized that the starting point for knowledge is information which means data. So marketers need to collect data but not just any data. They need to collect data on consumers. Specifically data is needed on consumer's needs and wants. This however is not enough. Data by itself is useless. It needs to be put into a structured format i.e. it needs to be converted into knowledge. In other words, the data needs to be analyzed and converted into something useful and usable.

This leads to one inescapable conclusion. Marketers need to be data miners. Marketers need to be actively involved in the data mining process. And the data needs to be collected from all possible sources. This is necessary in order to provide a holistic view of the consumer. We have to keep in mind that consumers do not lead compartmentalized lives. How then can we break up the consumer into discrete portions and declare some portions fit for finance and some for marketing? For too long, data mining has been the domain of computer scientists and IT people. This is stupid. The computer and IT people are more concerned with specific algorithms that try to find patterns in data sets. They don't really understand what the patterns reveal. That is the task of marketers. Sadly, marketers have been neglecting this area till now which also means that their efforts have been less than optimal simply because they have lacked knowledge regarding their consumers.

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Marketing Today

Marketing is a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they want and need through creating, offering and exchanging products of value with others.

The above is a current definition of marketing given by Professor Kotler. This definition highlights several important points that all marketers (and by marketing, I mean people who are in marketing positions as well as those who are in sales positions) need to keep in mind.

First of all, marketing is a process. A process by definition is a series of actions directed towards an end. So if marketing is a process, then by implication it is not a one time affair or something that is added on at some point between the time a product leaves the factory (or a service is produced) and the time it is finally consumed. It is not a nice optional extra that can be safely cut when economic conditions are bad and restored when they are good. Infact research indicates that entities which cut marketing in hard economic conditions are not able to take full advantage of an economic upturn. So marketing is an integral part of an organization. The set of activities that constitute marketing are crucial to a company's success and viability. Remember that marketing and its essential component sales are the only set of activities that bring in revenue. Everything else is a cost and plays a supporting role. This is not to deny their importance. All the other processes that a company engages in have their place. No company can ignore them for long. However, without marketing and the revenues that marketing brings in, there will be no organization.

The second important point is that marketing is a social process and not just a managerial one. This is an important distinction. Managers who view marketing as being managerial also tend to view marketing as being adjunct to the main business; something that can be tacked on and removed at will without consequence. On the other hand, if marketing is a social process, then it becomes central to all entities. This distinction also makes clear that marketing involves not just a company but all stakeholders. This includes customers, suppliers, employees, even competitors. This point also makes it clear that marketing is not just reserved for corporations. It plays an essential role for all professions including doctors, lawyers, engineers etc.

The third important point about the definition above is that it talks about individuals/groups; in other words, it talks about consumers. Marketing is all about consumers. More specifically it is all about providing information to consumers. No marketing activity can succeed without a focus on the consumer. If we look at any successful brand, there is always an unrelenting focus on the consumer. Whenever companies have lost sight of this, their marketing efforts have faltered and become useless.

IBM is an excellent example of this. The company bet the farm on the launch of System/360 in the 1960s. This was a computer system designed with the customer in mind and it was a phenomenal success because of this reason. Indeed IBM created a new genre of computers - the mainframe with the introduction of this machine. By the 1980s however, the company had fallen in love with its technology. The customer came a distant second to the technological marvels of the hardware. Needless to say, customers were not impressed and mighty IBM flirted with bankruptcy before refocusing itself on the customer once again.

Apple is another example of a relentless focus on the customer. The company has completely redefined two product categories and created a third one by focusing on the customer and their needs. Sony had a lock on the portable music player industry until Apple redefined what a music player could be. The result: the Sony Walkman - the industry leader for 30 years - has now been discontinued. In the mobile phone industry, Nokia has been shaken so badly that they have been forced to jump in bed with Microsoft in order to compete effectively. Again this was due to Apple's strong customer focus.

Very importantly, the definition above talks about needs and wants. There is a clear distinction between the two and entities that do not recognize this difference tend to underperform with respect to their peers and eventually fade into obscurity and irrelevance. I will be talking about the distinction between needs and wants in later posts.

Finally, the definition above talks about "creating, offering and exchanging products of value". It is irrelevant how a company views its own products and services. What is relevant is how are its products viewed by others? Why does Gucci command a premium over competitors? It is because customers place a higher value on its products than on its competitors. Similarly, why does Harvard University command a premium over State University of New York (SUNY)? Potential customers place a greater value over the education obtained at Harvard than at SUNY irrespective of the teaching quality at either institution. It is not relevant what SUNY thinks of itself or how Harvard views itself. The value that customers place on either is what counts. So the definition above is a strong indictment of inward thinking.

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Defining Marketing

What is marketing all about? What relevance does it have? What role does it play? These are all relevant and important questions for marketers to answer. Simple questions. Complex answers. Without an understanding of the issues raised by these questions, marketing is simply ineffective. It is like jumping into the deep end of a pool when you don't know how to swim properly. Unfortunately far too many marketers do precisely this. They then end up thrashing around, flailing helplessly. In desperation, money is thrown at inundating consumers in a veritable deluge of advertising, promotions and other marketing tactics. This only serves to put off people and then marketing is blamed for a problem whose roots are elsewhere.

So once again: what is marketing all about? The (very) short answer is information. Specifically, marketing is about giving consumers information to let them make informed choices. Note the emphasis here. Marketing is not about the manufacturer or the company. They are not important. Infact they are so unimportant that their very existence is irrelevant. Don't believe me? Consider Nokia. The world's largest producer of cell phones, its position seemed to be of one of central importance. The company has a lineup to satisfy all pockets. It stood for everything and thus it stood for nothing.  Today it is in deep trouble because it became focused on the "wonderful" handsets it was making. Will the cell phone handset market be affected if Nokia were to somehow disappear tomorrow? No.

However, even the statement made above that marketing is about giving consumers information to let them make informed choices is too simplistic. There are cases where consumers may not be aware of what they want. This could be because of existing alternatives. For example, nobody was screaming for a car. The horse and carriage were perfectly acceptable alternatives and had been so for centuries. Right into the 1950s, there were ads in magazines touting the benefits of the all electric home. Obviously people were not breaking the doors of the electric companies demanding to be given connections.

Completely new product categories pose a special problem. They are so completely outside normal experience that potential consumers have no idea how to use them. The telephone is an example of this type of product. When it was introduced, no one had any idea how to use the new device. It took time for people to figure out proper usage and even then new uses kept on being developed over time. The internet is another example of a completely new type of product. All of us are still trying to figure out how to use the Net properly. It does not help that new ways of accessing and manipulating the information residing on the Net (which itself is increasing at an exponential rate) are constantly being developed. Just as we think we have some handle on how to use the Net, some new technology or method of accessing or interacting comes along and we find ourselves essentially at square one again.

So when we talk about giving consumers information, we need to dig deeper than simply asking them what they want though listening to consumers is a very important and integral part of marketing.

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On Marketing

What is marketing? A question that has been asked, pondered upon and written about by management thinkers down the decades. A question that is the bane of existence for young BBA (Bachelor Business Administration) or MBA (Master Business Administration) students. Despite all the thinking and writing, there is still no clear or even decent answer to this deceptively simple question. While this would be considered a weakness in most areas, this lack of clarity is actually one of the great strengths of marketing. The field is not constricted by a particular dogma or "right" way of doing things. It is fluid, flexible and adaptable.

Textbooks are rife with definitions for marketing with different people coming with their particular interpretations. For example:

Marketing is the management process that identifies, anticipates and satisfies customer requirements profitably -- The Chartered Institute of Marketing

The right product in the right place at the right time and at the right price -- Adcock et al

Marketing is a social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they want and need through creating, offering and exchanging products of value with others -- Kotler

Similarly if marketing practitioners were to be asked, each would come up with a particular definition highlighting a particular emphasis. Thus marketing is like an ocean with many different fish. Each person can highlight a particular area and work on it.