Your opinion: The aim of Marketing? (Peter Drucker)

“The aim of marketing is to knoww and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself” – Peter Drucker

Did we lose (some) touch with this initial insight by mr. Drucker, looking at nowadays marketing?

Gianluigi Cuccureddu

Consultant ? Marketing Strategist ? Venture Advisor

In short, “yes”. I think that we’ve generally lost touch with those principles. It’s not just marketing products and services. It’s permeated our entire culture. Low-quality “shotgunning” has been slowly replacing targetted, quality interactions. Email customer support, recuriting by keywords, telemarketers, facebook friendships, offshoring and outsourcing, 500 channels and nothing to watch, disposable “everything”, etc. It’s hard to argue with the approach when you can spend next to nothing to saturate thousands with your message and get a handful of positive hits in a matter of minutes. Even if you take into account the number of people that you piss off in the process, the sheer numbers tend to make the behavior worthwhile. Why take the time to do it right when you can be “good enough?

I think that we’re coming to a point where people are going to be willing to pay more to get back that personal touch and connection. They’re starting to recognize that they’re being treated like mindless cattle. Taking the time to understand the customer needs isn’t the “given” that it used to be and Quality has been replaced by “I can live with that”. But I beleive that the pendulum is swinging back and a return to these principles is going to become the differentiator that raise organizations above their competition. (at least I hope so. The alternative is that we continue down the path of information/crap overload and our needs get lost in the noise)