Market sensing and learning strategy Strategic market choices and targets Customer value strategy and positioning Strategic relationships and networks Strategic thinking and thinking strategically Strategic transformation and strategy implementation

 Developing a value-based marketing strategy  Market sensing and learning strategy  Strategic market choices and targets  Customer value strategy and positioning  Strategic relationships and networks

 Market sensing and learning strategy: Competitive strength through knowing more

 Understanding customers and markets  Black swans and white swans  From market research to market sensing  New cross-over tools for management understanding  Marketing intelligence  Interpretation  Lessons in learning  Enhancing sensing capabilities

 Companies have little understanding of why their customers behave the way they do  Executives looks at averages and ignore market granularity  Agile, fast-moving businesses show high knowledge-intensity  The goal is to raise a company’s “Market IQ”  Crunch question = what do you know that every rival does not also know?

 The black swan analogy underlines the limitations to our learning and the fragility of our knowledge  Black swan events are the “unknown unknowns”  Market sensing demands open-minded inquiry and experimentation not probabilistic estimates and sampling

 What is the difference between market sensing and marketing research?  marketing research involves techniques of data collection and processing  market sensing is a process of management understanding

Management information systems Marketing research Cross-over tools Marketing intelligence Market sensing capabilities Market understanding Internal records CRM data Databases Surveys Observation Market tests Ethnography Internet Futurology Scanning Trends Clues Interpretation Sources of marketing knowledge Processes of management understanding

 Limitations of conventional market research  unreasonable expectations  the limits of questions  the “right” results  we don’t believe it  excuses

 The elephant in the market  Strategic and non-strategic marketing information

Importance of information Urgency of information High Low High Low Priorities Short-term dilemmas Strategic Time wasters

 Finding out what customers want a product or service to do for them  Solves customers’ problems  Rather than asking a customer what they think of this product or service, the customer should be asked what they like, or don't like, about a particular experience. Source: Shape the Agenda (2004) The Creative Dilemma: Successful Innovation in fast-changing markets,(3) Cookham, Chartered Institute of Marketing

'Companies that target their products at the circumstances in which customers find themselves, rather than at the customers themselves, are those that can launch predictably successful products. Put another way, the critical unit of analysis is the circumstance and not the customer.‘ Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator's Solution  Customers experience life as a series of 'jobs' that they need to get done.  'Jobs' can be actions ranging from washing your hair or cleaning your teeth, up to getting your finances sorted or communicating across the globe in a shorter space of time.  Finding out what those jobs are leads to value innovation, rather than asking how what we've got already can be better made to suit the customer's desires. Source: Shape the Agenda (2004) The Creative Dilemma: Successful Innovation in fast-changing markets, (3) Cookham, Chartered Institute of Marketing

 Ethnography  hidden in plain sight  neuromarketing  Internet sensing  the wisdom of crowds  blogs  virtual reality  social networks

 Uses long periods of observation of people in their 'natural habitat‘  Closely watching people in their everyday life  Example: mobile phone usage.  You get an unemployed single mother using it as a sanction - "if you don't behave I won't give you any money to top up your mobile."  You might get that kind of insight from a focus group but you'd need a really good question. Source: Shape the Agenda (2004) The Creative Dilemma: Successful Innovation in fast-changing markets, (3) Cookham, Chartered Institute of Marketing

 Futurology  careful examination of what is going on around us  scenario building – how things may unfold  visioning – working out what is likely to happen and what we want to happen

 Trends and clues  trendspotting  new identity groups  the quest for cool  looking for clues  deep mining  But play nicely and don’t be naughty  Managing customer knowledge

 Link between information, sensing and management understanding relies on processes of interpretation  Integration of multiple information sources central to evidence-based management  Goal is sustaining learning to create competitive advantage

 Storytelling  Watching customers  Meeting customers  Customer days  Building customer scenarios  Listening not evaluating  Studying complainers

 A structure for market sensing

Probability of the event occurring Effect of the event on the company* HighLowMedium * 1=Disaster, 2=Very bad, 3=Bad, 4=Neutral, 5=Good, 6=Very good, 7=Ideal Utopia Field of dreams Things to watch Danger Future risks

 Managing the market sensing process  choosing the environment  sub-dividing the environment to focus attention  identifying the impact of external changes  interpreting the model for strategy building  Linking market sensing to plans  providing information as a stimulus to thinking  consider who should be consulted and involved

 A note of caution  market sensing and new learning may be disruptive inside an organization

 Don’t trust any research – at all – none –whoever does it – however much it is “justified”  Don’t trust it  When any research clashes with common sense and personal experience interrogate the research to death  Trust (not unquestioningly) research on past events – for guidance  Never trust research on “intentions”  Treat with huge pinch of salt research on attitudes  NEVER MAKE A DECISION ON QUALITATIVE RESEARCH - ESPECIALLY FOCUS GROUPS

 Do research yourself wherever possible  Use it for ideas, directions etc FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION