Blog 2

Since I started learning about marketing the most important part of every marketing aspect is the consumer, every strategy must be based on understanding what a consumer needs and wants. After looking at this readings I can reaffirm that the consumer is the most important but it is not that easy to understand their needs and wants just based in what "they think" they need and want. As a consumer I often suggest improvements or point out disadvantages of certain products or services but I almost never consider the implications that those changes could have in aspects such as price or quality and I am sure almost nobody does, consumers do not have the knowledge nor the experience to suggest valid possibilities to solve a certain problem.

Given this, consumer understanding is important but what its really essential is to translate that understanding into something we can really use to create a true solution, that is the challenge!

The straight forward solution that comes to my mind is to listen the most consumers as possible and try to understand their life, try to get in their shoes and in their mind, based on the knowledge generated try to live their life for an instance and ask whether or not he would be interested in this product, service or proposal. Now I get why Clinton got into the White House!

I have heard a lot of times the case of new coke but today is the first time I really realize why it was a disaster. Coca Cola trusted their consumers when they said they wanted a more sweet product, and at first glance this might sound obvious, but it is definitely not the right thing to do. Why? Because people do not really realize what they are suggesting.

I have been thinking about times I have participated in surveys or focus groups. Most of the times you don't even want to be there, you are either participating because you get a $20, because your stupid friend agreed and you were trapped or because you didn't want to seem rude with the nice lady. Either way you want to finish as fast as possible, you do not think things through and might not even understand what you are dealing with. This is the reason why good marketing researchers understand not what people said but what he really meant by what he said (seems confusing, and it is!!! And that is the reason I guess its so hard to do and also the reason why we still see a lot of companies spending millions in R&D and in consumer research and still launching pure crap).

Over analyzing and over spending on the planning stage of a project is way cheaper than launching a failure. In today's market where we are facing a more diverse, changing and demanding set of consumers its crucial to go a step beyond surveys, scanner databases, panel data and actually step in our consumer shoes and try to understand first what are they saying, then why are they saying it and at last what do they really mean??? Quite a challenge......