Trends in Marketing Thinking and Practice

Here are the main marketing trends that we see:

• From make-and-sell marketing to sense-and-respond marketing. Your company will perform better if you view the marketing challenge as that of developing a superior understanding of your customer needs rather than as simply pushing out your products better.
• From focusing on customer attraction to focusing on customer retention. Companies need to pay more attention to serving and satisfying their present customers before they venture in an endless race to find new customers. Companies must move from transaction marketing to relationship marketing.
• From pursuing market share to pursuing customer share. The best way to grow your market share is to grow your customer share, namely to find more products and services that can be sold to the same customers.
• From marketing monologue to customer dialogue. You can create stronger relationships with customers by listening to and conversing with them than by only sending out one-way messages.
• From mass marketing to customized marketing. The mass market is splintering into mini-markets and your company now has the capability of marketing to one customer at a time.
• From owning assets to owning brands. Many companies are beginning to prefer owning brands to owning factories. By owning fewer physical assets and outsourcing production, these companies believe they can make a greater return.
• From operating in the marketplace to operating in cyberspace. Smart companies are developing a presence online as well as off-line. They are using the Internet for buying, selling, recruiting, training, exchanging, and communicating.
• From single-channel marketing to multichannel marketing. Companies no longer rely on one channel to reach and serve all their customers. Their customers have different preferred channels for accessing the company’s products and services.
• From product-centric marketing to customer-centric marketing. The sign of marketing maturity is when a company stops focusing on its products and starts focusing on its customers.

These trends will affect different industries and companies at different rates and times. Your company must decide where it stands with respect to each marketing trend.