By M. Isi Eromosele
In a society where individualism and competition are
considered to be the hallmarks of a free market economy, it is not surprising
that organizations are slow to recognize, and in many cases reluctant to
implement, collaborative marketing strategies.
Collaboration within this context refers to any marketing activity
whose effect is to create synergies, leverage resources, or to address multiple
problems with a single effort. This is not to suggest that cooperative strategies
do not exist, quite the contrary, but their active development is at best
sporadic and frequently unbalanced.
Business marketing has undergone and continues to undergo an
evolutionary change over the last twenty five years. Advancements in technology,
intensified competition, scarcity of resources and customer lifestyle
adjustments have all contributed to our contemporary business culture of doing
more with less.
Most global organizations, in an initial effort to address
these mounting pressures, turn their attention inward, focusing on achieving greater
efficiency by reorganizing their internal operations. Cross-functional coordination,
flat organizations, inventory control, the elimination of needless redundancy
are all explored.
Two new elements are coming into the forefront of global
marketing, expanding beyond traditional organizational borders: strategic
partnering and relationship marketing.
Strategic partnering builds on the fundamental principle
that it is everyone’s responsibility within a given supply chain to actively
contribute value to the end consumer. If something is not adding value, it
should either be eliminated or have its cost reduced until it is adding value.
Relationship marketing builds on the principle that it is
easier to keep a customer than acquire a new one. This area of marketing is
still in its formative stages with companies just beginning to explore how to
form and sustain strategic partnerships with their customers.
While there is yet much to explore within the scope of
building and managing collaborative marketing organizations, current practices
continue to reflect a global view based primarily on an adversarial or
competitive business model. These efforts reflect an excessive focus on
business self-interest on the part of most companies.
Although organizations have begun to recognize the necessity
for cooperation in an interconnected global environment, these same
organizations have been reluctant to consider how their customers might independently
benefit from collaborative strategies.
Consider these fundamentals. Every exchange involves at
least two parties. Everyone engaged in an exchange does so with the belief that
they are deriving value from the transaction.
In this case, value simply being that the benefits outweighs
the costs. As in this context, collaboration has largely been addressed from
the seller’s perspective. How about the needs of the customer? Surely consumers
bring similar concerns and interests to the process of exchange.
Internal And External Collaboration
Collaborative marketing has implications for both the buyer
and the seller. Just like an organization, every customer has a set of internal
operations they must execute before, during and after each transaction. In the case
of the consumer, internal operations are
understood to be the cognitive, emotional and behavioral
processes that he/she engages in when acquiring or disposing of a good or service.
The classic marketing assumption is that problem recognition
occurs whenever a consumer sees a meaningful difference between their pain and
their need or desire. From a competitive frame of mind, every product, every
problem is therefore competing for the consumer’s most immediate attention.
The excessive emphasis on competition contributes to the
maelstrom of daily marketing messages that now bombard the typical consumer. The
collaborative problem-solving strategy is very straightforward. Companies need to
develop and/or illustrate how their products and services are related to a
variety of others in solving collective customer current and future needs.
In effect, you are helping the customer to accomplish
multiple tasks with little additional effort.
Marketing of these multiple product/service benefits can
take one of two forms. First, by communicating these additional benefits directly to the
consumer, you are enhancing or leveraging the collective benefits that they can derive out
of a given transaction. This is very similar to the benefits derived out of simultaneously
solving multiple problems.
The second major use of this technique is to communicate
directly with the role set members. Since the role set may also have some of
their needs satisfied through the consumption process of another person, they in
effect have a vested interest in favorably influencing the other consumer’s
behavior. At a minimum, but by no means trivial, the role set is less likely to
actively engage in behavior that directly competes for the consumer’s attention.
Although some progress has been made in the business arena, first
with respect to systems integration and next in the arena of strategic
partnerships, very little if any progress has been made in trying to help
consumers benefit from the same level of integration.
Showing a consumer how they can solve multiple problems or
simultaneously meet the needs of different people can be a tremendous benefit
for consumer as well as the company.
M. Isi Eromosele is
the President | Chief Executive Officer | Executive Creative Director of Oseme
Group - Oseme Creative | Oseme Consulting | Oseme Finance
Copyright Control ©
2012 Oseme Group
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