| |
| |
| “Marketing is just not about marketing a product or service. Marketing means enhancing total customer experience. Focus on the total customer, not just on your product.” |
| |
| |
| |
| |
|
|
innovation’ and the other I call is ‘business model innovation.’ It is the new way of doing the same business.
This leads me to the other question. Do you find any of these learnings coming into the MBA classroom? Take entrepreneurship, which is today all-pervasive and is entering into all functional areas - not only in the start-up stage, but every stage of organisational growth and it is a continuous change. Does it get reflected in the MBA curriculum at either Kellogg or other leading business schools?
The answer is yes. It’s not that you create another course. In marketing course, you should pick up a case, which deals with economies in transition. Because, if you create a whole course of economies in transition, then you don’t have the body of knowledge. So, I think that rather than creating a course, the more important thing is to show how the same thing can be done in a different context. When you build these things into the curriculum, the standard practice is to add another course called ‘Economies in Transition’ or ‘Managing Economies in Transition.’ Of course, students may feel that same marketing is applied to Vietnam, Cambodia and similar countries, and they may not be interested in working in those countries.So, they may think, ‘why should I take care when I have not come to Kellogg to study about Bangladesh or Vietnam!’
What is your message to the marketing executives who are
|
|
working in this kind of environment?
My first message is not to think of marketing as a functional expertise. Marketing is a mindset. Mindset means you have to think in terms of customers and segmentation. Thinking is independent of context.
Second, marketing is just not about marketing a product or service. Marketing means enhancing total customer experience. Focus on the total customer, not just on your product – which means before the customer buys the product, while the customer is buying the product or using the product, and after the customer buys the product. The total experience is where you need to find that differentiation.
Third, I believe that marketing does not mean huge expense. Many people think of marketing only in terms of price. To me, a simple definition of marketing is how I make the product cheaper than others. So I say price is transparent, value is opaque. All customers can see the price tag but many customers can’t see the value. When I have to define marketing, I give a simple definition: “educate the customer of the value you are offering.” So, marketing is nothing but customer education. Whether you are in Africa or elsewhere, you have to show the same thing to the customer – what the value is. And once the customer perceives that the value is greater than the price they have to pay, they will go for it. |
