Observations and Trends

in Marketing
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Marc Van de perre

Managing partner Interface Marketing
Vice-president Belgian Marketing Foundation
Chairman B2B Expertgroup
The Problem with our Western Economy...

Overcapacity
 Overcapacity

Customers are scarce, not products

Demand is the problem, not supply
Overcapicity leads to
hypercompetition
... And what’s the result?
 So, how do
companies (try to)
survive in this
hypercompetitive
environment?
The solution is

finding and

maintaining
a

sustainable

competitive advantage
Competing on
products?
Lowering
production cost?
And what about
brand?
 The channel advantage

Companies are putting at least as much effort

into
how
they go to market as into

what
they bring to market.
Built on the logic of Built on the logic of
managing managing information
manifacturing and information
industries industries
 The changing perception of value

Consumers have become more sophisticated,

demanding, and micro-segmented

Consumers increasingly trust

only their own ability to seek
value

Fragmenting demographics and user

needs multiply the range of market
segments

Marketers will have to deliver clear

articulated value to an ever more cynical
set of consumers
 The Growing Importance of Changing
Generations
It will no longer work to market to the
averages. We must learn to market to
the differences!
There’s no such thing like an ‘average
consumer’. We must market to the
individual and to accomplish that we
must understand how today’s new
customers differ.
Moreover, generations change at the
speed of light and guarantee a melting
pot of the most diverse ideas, habits,
and needs (boomers, yuppies, dinkies,
bobo’s,…)
 Communicating with the consumer

The world of fully interactive multimedia is

far from accomplished, but:

Marketers increasingly have success in

communicating with smaller and smaller
consumer segments through multimedia
technologies and sophisticated database
marketing programs.

Technology is an enabler but at the cost of an

increasingly complicated decision-making
process!
 Time Poverty

Needless to say we live in a fast paced

world
Customers are too busy to read ads, too
busy to shop
Customers don’t wait to let the info
come to them, instead they organize in
searching and processing the info they
need (e.g. bots)

Marketers will have to cope with the

speed of change. Convenience and
time-to-market are key!
Markets are changing
faster than
our marketing!
 Two major forces affecting businesses

Supply-side Demand-side
Commoditization Customization
 The Big Challenge

A New Business Organization

From To

Enterprise vision Short term, Long term,

Product-focused. Customer-focused.

Organization Hierarchical structure. Interprising,

Networked economy,
Hub & spoke
organizations

Sales Little customer knowledge, High customer

Face to face selling. knowledge,
Mass-customization,
Multiple channels selling,
E-commerce.

After sales and services Reactive, Proactive,

Separate processes and Integrated processes and
organization, organization,
Slow. High responsiveness.
 The New Marketing Paradigm

The concepts of mass production and

mass marketing are giving way to new
business models in which customer
relationships are becoming the central
issue
The value chain of the ‘customer
focused’ enterprise now follows the sell-
build-redesign principle in contrast with
the former one of design-build-sell

Sell Build Redesign

 Multiple Forces of Change

Multi-Channel Environment
Rising Service
Information
Consumer Commodit-
Intermediaries
Expectations isation

Crushed
Point & Click Digital Only
Value
Promiscuity Competitors
Chain

Channel Fixed
Business
Preference & Asset
Disintegration
Replacement Syndrome
 Disintermediation

Amazon.com

Author P E P D Customer

Electronic Publishing
Businesses need to shift from
focusing on their

product portfolios
to focusing on their

customer portfolios.
 The key success factor to
implementing a customer-centric
organization is the ability to create
and deliver customer value that
goes beyond the product or service.
The Customer-Focused Enterprise

Customer
The Customer-Focused Enterprise

Customer
 The Customer-Focused Enterprise

Outsourced

Outsourced

Customer

Outsourced
The Customer-Focused Enterprise
 Competencies always outlive products

The customer-focused organization

requires a corporate knowledge to
define, create and deliver superior
value to the customer.

The focus question we should ask ourselves is:

What critical skills should we develop

and outsource to be best in the world
from our customers’ viewpoint?
Wish you lots of success!

Marc.Vandeperre@interface-marketing.com