FUTURE MARKETER……??
Marketing developed as a subject in the business context aiming customer satisfaction at a profit. Once the subject born like many other disciplines, scholars and writers started adding more and more new knowledge to the subject. This is the natural trend in developing any subject. But the question is whether the subject is going into the right direction. To explain this point further, human tendency is, once they started believing something, they firmly believe it and collect further facts to prove it without questioning its fundamentals. Likewise the subject marketing also developed throughout many decades.
It says the purpose of marketing is customer satisfaction in many books but professor Drucker says the purpose of marketing is to create customers for the business. This Drucker’s idea seems more logical in terms of real marketing. Marketing evolution start with industrial revolution. Because with the industrial revolution, technology entered into the manufacturing and resulted bulk production quantities. So business started suffering from finding out sufficient number of customers to sell out the excess production. There were only two strategies:
1. Increasing existing consumers’
consumption
2. Finding out new markets within the country and international markets. There were no any other strategy to sell their excessive stocks. So they started selling more products to their existing customers and found out new markets within their country and other countries. This was named as globalization. While they were penetrating existing markets and new markets further and further, the problem they faced was how to increase consumer consumption further and introducing these products to new markets because those days every country had a self-sufficiency. They consumed their own country products. And more than that people used to have very simple lives, their requirements were limited and mainly they were their basic human needs. Especially countries like Sri Lanka, groomed up with very strong Buddhist cultures. By nature Buddhism teaches human being to lower down their mental attachments and get used to very simple lifestyles.
With this context, it was quite difficult to penetrate into these traditional countries and traditional markets. This required some certain kind of strategy to apply. Sales management started out of this context and its prime objective was to apply influential selling techniques to attract more customers. Sales management included tools and techniques to penetrate into existing customers and attract new markets and customers for the business.
This approach works for many new markets but scholars by nature look at improving further and further the subject. They researched the subject and tried to find out more innovative methodologies to create more customers and found three key subjects which has a direct relevance with marketing as follows:
1. Psychology – individual thinking
2. Economics – rational thinking
3. Sociology – group thinking. By collaborating these three subject, they developed one subject called marketing. The scope of marketing was larger than sales. Actually sales management is a part of marketing management scope. Marketing was a combination of above three subjects namely Psychology, Economics and Sociology. Although marketing was defined as customer satisfaction at a profit. Now the question is, whether it is customer satisfaction or business satisfaction. Because customers cannot be happy as they are increasingly losing their saving due to high level of consumption. Now marketing is a tool that appeals existing and potential customers towards the company’s products and services. Here marketers take use of individual thinking, group thinking and rational thinking. Now the problem emerged. When customers use their rational thinking, they just look at the value they get from a product or service and look at the rationality of buying that product. Therefore it is a fair deal but once it come to the consumers’ irrational mind set, it is always work in an irrational manner. Marketers get used this mind behavior badly in current marketing context. There marketer use individual thinking and group thinking behaviors. They develop many communication appeals to attract customers in an irrational manner towards the product or service. Now marketing communication in collaboration with branding have fallen into this category. Always human mind is trained to attract towards things that they feel good, happy, joyful or comfortable. This is a fundamental nature of the mind. Here the biggest issue is human beings cannot control their own mind and they have fallen into this trap. Marketing get this point for their advantage and create the message in a tactful manner to induce customers. For example, entire communication mix is about this tactful communication in order to induce customers or appealing their irrational mindset;
1. Advertising
2. Personal selling
3. Public relation
4. Direct marketing
5. Sales promotion
Each of above element, tactfully targeting human beings irrational part of the mind. With this consumer want to buy more and more products not because they need it for their living but because they need it due to other psychological reasons. See below examples:
This clearly shows how modern marketer is shifting the entire game plan. So everyone has fallen to the irrational mind set including the people who develop these strategies. Because they too follow the same as their consumers in their personal life thinking this results better life. But this formula has not considered rational mindset. Once the mind become irrational, it takes decisions irrationally. They may fall into unnecessary consumption resulting poor personal finance management. But again to sort out this personal finance issue, other service sector business firms come with credit cards, leasing facilities, personal loan schemes and easy payment schemes. But again this system collapse in the long run. Without studying this system everyone follow this circle with the aspiration of profits. What they don’t see, is this vicious cycle.
So what is marketing need to be really? Marketing has to support people to be more rational and always be vigilant about their irrational behavior. This will be the real customer satisfaction and it will be a long run satisfaction. Because consumers get use to stick to rational consumption instead of irrational or unnecessary consumption pattern. Instead of misusing marketing for own benefits, marketers need to look at the broader perspective and design honest marketing models. Marketing has to be a supportive force for consumer decision making process. With marketing support consumers should be able to take their consumption decision rationally. Consumers need to simplify their wants and have simple lives instead of highly complicated lifestyles. Because customer satisfaction is a process and it does not have any destination. Once a customer get into satisfied level, again he fall into the previous psychological state very soon, again he look after the satisfaction and face the same result. But the challenge is human beings do not understand this reality. This was very clearly explained in Abraham Maslow’s motivational hierarchy also. But people do not bother these concepts and move faster with the existing trend and end get nothing. Maslow shows five levels of human hierarchy of needs:
1. physiological needs
2. safety needs
3. social needs
4. esteem needs 5. self-actualization needs
Here the key point is, human beings start their requirements from level one and go to others levels, sometime, the order may not be followed and at the same time multiple needs also can be followed. Importantly the key point is once you achieve one need level, you feel no satisfaction as wished and want to go to the next level. This shows the reality. But once it comes to the fifth need level, it talks about a different level of satisfaction without any material wealth. It is a kind of spiritual. This was further reconfirmed by the prominent marketing writer professor Phillip Kotler also through him book “Marketing 3.0”, he says the future of marketing is spirituality and what we have learnt so far is about the history of marketing which is not valid.
Modern marketers need to understand this fact clearly and internalize this knowledge into their thinking. But what is visible is due to various reasons, current marketers still carry the old marketing philosophies. The reason is as explained in earlier they themselves have fallen into the same trap, thinking their satisfaction is permanent due to current income level, current luxuries and social status.
Now the time has come to do a paradigm shift in the context of marketing on behalf of future generations. Marketers need to conduct in depth analysis of their consumer psychology and work for the betterment of society instead their own faulty success parameters. Here the main enemy is, our own very well positioned ideology about consumer satisfaction, because if anybody believes customer satisfaction is permanent and by increasing consumption, consumer’s happiness/satisfaction levels also going up, he/she will not understand this fundamental truth. Let’s line up for a better world through better marketing.