Here are 10 things that are likely to change by 2020.
1. Customer of One
It is now possible to have a detailed picture of every individual you sell to. Almost as if you knew them personally. You can capture their preferences, history, credit – anything in your (big) database.
2. Millions of customers
With the rise of digital products and digital commerce, traditional barriers to scaling up are diminishing. One the one hand this allows smart companies to grow almost infinitely. On the other hand it creates a new kind of monopoly.
3. Six Sigma is so 1960!
GE – often considered a gold standard of quality – cites Six Sigma as “A vision of quality which equates with only 3.4 defects per million opportunities for each product or service transaction.” Now, sure, that’s a teeny tiny number, and would still be pretty acceptable if maybe those 3.4 defects per million were spread over a year. But what happens if you do a million transactions a day, like an ecommerce or travel firm? That’s nearly a hundred unhappy customers in just a month. And six sigma is a level of perfection that not many firms have achieved, so imagine the volume of unhappiness!
4. The internet is invisible
No, I didn’t say that. Eric Schmidt the Chairman (and former CEO) of Google did. When everything and everyone has an IP address the internet becomes just one fuzzy cloud of semi-sentient objects. Today we use bigbasket.com or similar services to reorder groceries. Tomorrow we will just scan the product for a refill from our favourite service provider. Digital commerce will be surpassed by object commerce.
5. The customer is a media house
With social media, a customer can easily have an audience in the thousands. Social commerce sounds very nice, until you remember the old media adage that ‘dog bites man’ is not news, but ‘man bites dog’ is a headline. So Flipkart can get a million deliveries right, but it’s the box with the rock instead of a phone that happens to reach the fellow with a 1000 friends that gets all the coverage.
6. The artisanal economy will thrive
The last 200 years has seen a steady progression from home-made to hand-made to mass-manufactured across product categories. Economies of advertising and distribution were largely responsible for this. However this has peaked, and with the ability to market and deliver (through aggregators), there is a return to hand-made or artisanal products. Concern for the environment, health and the rise of individualism are key drivers in this shift. Chris Anderson of Wired wrote about the Long Tail in 2004. Now it is mainstream and media, manufacturing and distribution are in synch.
7. Rise of DIY product design
Maggi figured this out 30 years ago – the Indian home chef doesn’t like to serve food straight out of a packet – there has to be an element of prep and customisation. IKEA is a billion-dollar company that sells you furniture that has to be assembled. As it becomes economical to make and distribute tiny quantities of things, there is a rising trend towards selling components that can be customised and assembled as per the user’s choice. Marketers will need to understand customer needs and then provide an eco-system to deliver a wide range of choices. This will play across a vast range of industries such as home improvement, entertainment, food, fashion, holidays. This frees up marketers from a 100% understanding of what the customer wants to probably a 90% understanding with the rest being customised by the enduser.
8. Crowdsourcing
As the cost of communication drops to zero, there will be far more products and services delivered by an eco-system as opposed to a single monolithic organization. Some may be delivering the entire product while others may be creating a small element, like the old fashioned assembly line. The power of this model derives from its infinite ability to scale and shrink as per demand. From a marketing standpoint the biggest challenge will be to create an umbrella brand that can provide a premium to this ever-changing group of providers.
9. The rise of infomercials
Marketers will have to learn to disguise information as entertainment and move a higher proportion to product placement. Given the continuing success of informercials clearly consumers will invest half an hour or more in a sales pitch if the value proposition is sufficiently compelling. Barbie movies are a wonderful example of how the product can BE the story. Look for food brands to own characters such as Disney’s Sam Sandwich. For goods that have a more tangible aspect – say fashion and accessories, show rooming may become the next big thing. Expect malls to transform from retail to entertainment and community centres.
10. Goodbye Marketers. Hello Marketologist.
The days of the Mad Men are seriously numbered. Modern marketing relies heavily on technology to ensure quality, brand standardisation and customer understanding in a world that shifts every second. The ability to develop a customer experience roadmap and technology architecture is every bit as valuable as being able to distil customer insights into a product roadmap. The successful marketers of 2020 will seamless be able to marry fields such as technology, behavioural economics, process optimisation and marketing to create an optimal and dynamic customer experience.
The road to 2020 promises to be a disruptive and transformational journey for marketers. Customers on the other hand will finally be back where they belong – at the center of the ecosystem.
This article was first published in Paul Writer’s Magazine- Marketing Booster (Issue: Jan-Feb 2015).
Image courtesy of [imagerymajestic] at FreeDigitalPhotos.net
