A Customer-oriented Manager for B2B Services. Valerie Mathieu

Чтение книги онлайн.

Читать онлайн книгу A Customer-oriented Manager for B2B Services - Valerie Mathieu страница 10

A Customer-oriented Manager for B2B Services - Valerie Mathieu

Скачать книгу

that begins with market segmentation and continues with segment targeting. These key marketing concepts are essential to the implementation of a customer focus16.

      1.2.3. Operational marketing

      Operational marketing refers to the implementation of the marketing strategy. The notion of marketing mix is very closely associated with operational marketing.

      1.2.3.1. The marketing mix

      A good marketing mix must above all be coherent, coherent between actions and coherent with the positioning.

      1.2.3.2. Expanding the marketing mix

      While the “4Ps” model remains the reference model of operational marketing, the means of action of marketing have been progressively widened. In order to be in phase with the evolution of the markets, it is obviously necessary today to integrate the notions of experience, customer relationship, digitalization, social responsibility and sustainable development. Among the various extensions of the marketing mix concept and more specifically of the “4P” model, it is interesting to look at two of them: the “4Cs” model and the concept of the services marketing mix.

      The “4Cs” model, proposed in the 1990s by Robert Lauternborn, is a sort of transposition of the “4Ps” model from the supplier’s point of view to the customer’s one (Lauternborn 1990). Each of the four elements of the 4Ps is translated into a customer benefit in the 4Cs model: customer needs, convenience of buying, cost to satisfy and communication. The “4Cs” model thus emphasizes the customer orientation of marketing even more explicitly.

      The concept of the service marketing mix was developed in the early 1980s by service marketing specialists to better integrate the specificity of service17. Three other levers of action were added to the traditional “4Ps” model: people, physical evidence and processes. The people element takes into account the actors who play an essential role in the service relationship. These are the staff in contact, the customer and the other customers. The physical evidence reflects the importance of the physical environment in which the service takes place as well as the different tangible elements that are present during the relationship with the customer. The process refers to all the procedures, mechanisms, activities and flows necessary to provide the service. Each of these three service-specific levers is dealt with in the last part of this book.

      1.3.1. Restricted marketing

      1.3.1.1. Credibility crisis

      Marketing suffers from many prejudices and is often referred to in a pejorative way in order to discredit or denigrate people, approaches and actions. It is considered vulgar, manipulative and even dishonest. In some sectors, it is now clearly in conflict with aspirations for sustainable development and greater social justice. In industrial, technical and scientific environments, where it is well established within large companies and organizations, it is still little appreciated by the players because it is probably not well known. Is it then to counter these negative energies that the title of Chief Customer Officer is now more easily given to the old-fashioned Chief Marketing Officer? Or should we see it as a final questioning of marketing’s actual capacity to take an actual interest in the customer, so that it is necessary to integrate its raison d’être into its title?

      1.3.1.2. Difficulty of implementation

      1.3.1.3. Customer orientation as an extension of marketing skills at the managerial level

      The solution to involve managers in the implementation of a marketing culture, strategies and tools would be to increase their competence in customer orientation. For companies without a marketing department, the customer-focused manager would become the key player in the deployment of a customer culture. The customer-oriented manager does not have to “do the job” of a marketing department, but must have the ambition to fully integrate the customer into his/her vision and actions. The marketing department and customer orientation will never be in competition but ideally in collaboration and synergy.

      1.3.2. Marketing exposure to technological challenges

      1.3.2.1. The digital revolution

      The term digital revolution clearly indicates the impact that digital technologies will have on society in general and on business in particular. Marketing is one of the privileged targets of this digital revolution and cannot survive without integrating it. We talk about digital marketing or e-marketing to gather strategies, methods and tools that rely on the Internet. Digital marketing is an undeniable means for marketing:

       –

Скачать книгу