Marcos Fava Neves
The consumer's kingdom
By Marcos Fava Neves (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2010-07-26 10:16
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The sovereignty of consumers led companies that want to conquer markets and win competition to a new strategic behavior. In essence, they need to be demand driven. This behavior is based on paying attention and collecting information about the consumers (1), competitors (2) and environment (3), to have a deep analysis and quick reaction of environmental changes (4).
Companies switched to a long range approach valuing satisfaction and well being of buyers (5). It is a new integrated network organization, dynamic and harmonic, decentralized with delegation (6) and now designed with a problem-solution based approach (7). This problem solution based approach considers "from trying to sell to helping to buy". There is a continuous search for new ways to solve existing needs, launching added value solutions (8) that considers and values corporate social responsibility (9), smooth and collaborative network with suppliers, distributors and service providers (10), with a strong focus on smart market segmentation (11), knowledge generation and dissemination (12) and measurement/accountable marketing (13).
With this behavior, there are several success cases of companies with performance contributing to growth of demand, democracy and inclusion. The target is to have very satisfied consumers with repeated purchases, what is called the "lock in" strategy (14). Companies build relationships and informal contracts with consumers that even can blind them towards competitors, increase their cost to change to another company, building a sustainable competitive advantage, with growth and profitability.
I always like to finish my articles with a working list. I have numbered here 14 points that could be transformed into questions (how to...?) that will make part of a planning debate of companies towards a list of ideas for improvement. Let's call them the "Consumer's Kingdom 14 Questions". Good work!
The author is a professor of strategic planning and food chains at the School of Economics and Business, University of Sao Paulo, Brazil (www.favaneves.org) and an international speaker.