Today, in a consumerist society, where supply and demand form an amalgam for commercial operations with the sole purpose of reaching the customer and potential consumer, I will address an issue that is practiced empirically but is not yet technified in countries like ours.
Marketing requires a new fundamental orientation of the company, which must stop looking inside its products, to look outside and observe the needs of customers. The selling activity is focused on the needs of the seller and on the needs of the buyer. The selling activity is concerned with the need of the seller and tries to convert its product into money; Marketing is concerned with satisfying the customer's needs with the product and the set of activities related to its creation, delivery and consumption.
The need to adopt a customer orientation has been expressed in multiple ways: It is not we who command, but the consumer. What the customer wants, he gets… According to the marketing concept, the customer is at the top of our business. Our business must be looked at through the eyes of the consumer.
Instead of putting what is easiest for us to manufacture on the market, we have to find out much more about what the consumer is willing to buy. In other words, we will apply our creativity more intelligently if we focus it on people and their wants and needs, than if we focus it on products.
One very important thing is to recommend that our points of view be customer-oriented, and quite another to do so. The company that truly wants to adopt a customer orientation must take several steps, including:
1. Generic definition of need. The first requirement is that the company formulates a basic definition of the fundamental needs that it tries to feel, serve and satisfy.
As an example, the International Business Machines (IBM) is not considered so much as a producer of computers, but as an organization that satisfies needs "to solve problems". This does not mean that the organization has to operate exclusively for the sole purpose of serving a basic need, nor does it mean that it must engage in a fundamental business; rather, rather in pursuing businesses that appear to offer good prospects for growth and profits.
2. Definition of target groups. When our business defines a certain category of basic need to orient its efforts towards it, it realizes that it cannot serve all the manifestations of this need with all kinds of products that can be produced. A role model is Volkswagen who have decided to develop products that meet the needs of those who need economical and safe car transport.
3. Differentiated products and messages. Another characteristic of customer-oriented companies is that they seek to serve the different needs of the target groups they have chosen by developing differentiated products, messages, and marketing programs. Thus, the Ford Motor Company developed the Mustang model to serve young (or young psychology), sporty and high-income drivers, and the Maverick model to serve those who needed economical and safe transportation.
4. Consumer research. Here marketing requires a considerable investment in consumer research, to measure, assess and interpret the wishes, attitudes and behavior of the different target groups. A company that takes the concept of marketing seriously must also take the development of research services seriously, or hire highly competent market research staff. Confusion often arises as to what consumers say they want, and what they actually seem to need, what to find out.
5. Differential advantage strategy. The company that concentrates on getting customers and serving them as they deserve has to investigate authentic values to offer them and not limit themselves to serving them the same products and / or services with superficial and insignificant differences. You must examine the elements of your prestige, resources or opportunities, which may constitute advantages positively superior to those of the products and services of your competitors.
