The world changes! We are entering the era of flexible marketing. After thousands of years of generalized shortage the industrial revolution brought to the occidental world a production overcapacity of industrial goods. The potential supply initially exceeded the existing demand, pressuring the price to drop and creating competition among suppliers. First we invented publicity, which was later rebaptized as advertising, and its multiple derivatives and techniques. Unfortunately, as anyone could practice this new art, the relative efficiency of its approaches progressively diminished and it become essential to find something else. Americans were first, followed by the rest of the wealthy countries who finally got the idea of listening to their customers’ needs, means and desires to better meet (or to exceed) them. Thus, suppliers were able to rationalize their efforts, as they reoriented their actions “toward the bottom of the chain”. It helped them to maximize their profits! Basic marketing was born.
However, this early approach of
this basic (or historical) marketing required the use of a display of expensive
and specific tools. In particular, there are surveys and studies.
You may add to that, the massive communication costs, which are supposed to
convince practitioners and final users: this
context privileged the ”Big Businesses” and was out of reach for
small businesses that could not afford notoriety campaign and large scale
promotions. But the environment was modified: consumption mutated as customers
would become more and more alert, better informed, less credulous and more
disloyal. The naivety of advertising approaches decreased with time and its
frequency lead to increased saturation. An essential event, in fact, a new
revolution, would again disturb the picture: the possibility to access and
to use all kinds of information. A few powerful firms once guarded computer
databases, analysis softwares, networks, and the Internet. That has changed!
As deregulations spread to all sectors of activities, old postulates based on the certainty of customers’ behavior forecasts and/or on permanent typology became irrelevant and useless. At this level, the knowledge is replaced by the know-how and new reasoning skills become valuable. What follows is a chance given the small and medium enterprises to fill the gap, transform their weaknesses into strengths and adapt themselves to new situations, and technological and behavioral evolutions.
There are left over forms of the primitive and basics in marketing. Its philosophy and its logic continue to orient our actions even if customers’ needs, desires, and means are extremely volatile. Yet, in terms of strategic research and data gathering almost everything has changed. An illustration of those concepts is presented by the symbolic transformation of the bombard to a search-head shuttle…exemplifying that it is better to know why things must be done that to know how to act.
Understanding the marketing spirit means acquiring reflexes and elementary logics that are derived from “good” principles. To help you, the book that you are about to download, is based on original approaches and is built around images, short stories, metaphors. This laid-back presentation of more or less complex concepts will lead you to effortlessly acquire the appropriate reflexes. The practical and realistic book is full of concrete examples, which you may apply in your daily life. The theoretical concepts that are unrealistic and unpractical are not present here.
In particular, this book discusses the new relationships of 3 partners who must collaborate and exchange information i.e. the producer (P), the distributor (D) and the user (U). Once upon a time, the producer was the king and the distributor and seller just sold what they were given. Then modern business appeared and it is now the consumer who greatly influences these decisions. While they once paid and remained silent, those users and final consumers were completely disrespected by the producer. They are now in charge and their emphatic proclamation as king is recent. The traditional antagonism between P and D is transformed into a close and forced collaboration with the consumer. This consumer, is a strange being. Often you may not anticipate his decisions or behaviors; he may not appear to be objective, as you will see in our green beans story (page 19). If a price is discounted, it would be preferred to a stable net price which is often still more financially interesting for the consumer. The old reflex of associating high price and high quality persists and numerous psychological factors intervene today in our decision buying processes. That explains that the proper marketing more often integrates direct and indirect services in a global offer. Pans, aquariums, zoo stories, and geometrical figures will prove that the initial marketing of a good extends much further that a simple classical offer.