Some of the widely believed half truths about customers that are presumed during strategy formulation and regularly exposed during strategy execution are :
1. Customers are in blind love with their brands. Customer will move to another product category or product mix, if their brand moves in that direction. Just keep the 'soft' aspects of personality/culture the same, and brands will be pied pipers to customers.
2. Customers come as a marriage gift or dowry. If a company acquires a brand/product, they assume that they will acquire all the customer relationships. Acquiring companies pay a good value for these relationships expecting them to migrate. They do not make much effort to understand the cause and strengths of these relationships that the acquired brand shares with its customers.
3. Customers love big size. When they merge a small brand Y into a big brand X, all the customers of Y will feel privileged to become customers of X. They do not pay much heed to a possibility that perhaps customers of Y wanted to identify/associate/relate with the smaller brand.
4. Customers love siblings , cousins etc. One of the myth is that because a customers are loyal to a certain brand of the company, they will have positive inclination to buy other brands from the same company. If they buy cars from a company, they might also wish to buy mobile services.
5. Customers are headless bozos. Build it, they will come
6. Customers love a brand more than the brand loves the customer.
7. Customers are sitting ducks for cross selling & up selling.
8. Customer is a moron, she is not my wife.
1. Customers are in blind love with their brands. Customer will move to another product category or product mix, if their brand moves in that direction. Just keep the 'soft' aspects of personality/culture the same, and brands will be pied pipers to customers.
2. Customers come as a marriage gift or dowry. If a company acquires a brand/product, they assume that they will acquire all the customer relationships. Acquiring companies pay a good value for these relationships expecting them to migrate. They do not make much effort to understand the cause and strengths of these relationships that the acquired brand shares with its customers.
3. Customers love big size. When they merge a small brand Y into a big brand X, all the customers of Y will feel privileged to become customers of X. They do not pay much heed to a possibility that perhaps customers of Y wanted to identify/associate/relate with the smaller brand.
4. Customers love siblings , cousins etc. One of the myth is that because a customers are loyal to a certain brand of the company, they will have positive inclination to buy other brands from the same company. If they buy cars from a company, they might also wish to buy mobile services.
5. Customers are headless bozos. Build it, they will come
6. Customers love a brand more than the brand loves the customer.
7. Customers are sitting ducks for cross selling & up selling.
8. Customer is a moron, she is not my wife.
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