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nnovation is crucial for development! Especially in these (Bauman calls them ‘liquid’) times, characterized by a constantly changing world, we have to adapt and continuously keep up-to-date. Innovation, as well as brand, is an important concept to face and deal with the future. Considering the question, two aspects of marketing crossed my mind: a scientific approach and an applied approach. I will develop these two viewpoints and support most of my ideas with concepts of advanced marketing.
Scientific approach
The consumer’s decisions are memory- and stimulus-based. However, either we try to understand the consumer and learn how he takes a decision, or we impose a change and educate the customer in order to drive the market. To get the scientific marketing to develop, we need not only constant progress but also disruptive change, called innovation. Now, no matter in which direction we assess marketing, it starts with the consumer and we need to know how the consumer reacts and behaves, how his mindset is constructed and how he deals with the brand in terms of value, image and experience. If the final goal of marketing is to maximize customer equity, sum of customer lifetime values, then the science has to study and develop all necessary instruments and concepts to achieve this goal. This is either done by continuous scientific research and thinking, or by big step innovations bringing great and disruptive changes along with a new paradigm.
As our world evolves faster and faster, we have to keep the science up-to-date, too. Let us consider the transition from modernity to post-modernity. Not only the whole context was changing but also the actors were shifting their behaviors and characteristics. Marketing instruments and understanding had to follow the paradigm shift and to adapt adequately. “Postmodernism proposes a complete rethinking of the principles of science in general and marketing theory in particular”[1]: this is basic reasoning to claim that innovation is a need in science and particularly in marketing. Considering that we have now entered hypermodernity, innovation is more than ever on time for this constantly uncertain and changing future. The Long Tail of marketing contains plenty of new ideas. Among those, certain will really better fit to today’s circumstances and the more marketing applies these concepts, the richer and more effective it will become.
Innovation has occurred, is occurring and will still occur. Let us just consider consumer psychology. Current research, like Harvard’s study on implicit social cognition or Kahneman’s work on hedonic psychology, has revealed very interesting and useful insights into the consumer’s decision process. In fact, I think that there are still thoughts and feelings to study that exist either outside conscious awareness or outside conscious control. Innovation also creates new ways of conducting research using methods that monitor or track customer behavior and analyzing data. It is crucial for marketing to understand the consumer and since he is on the one hand still not fully understood and on the other hand constantly evolving, innovation in scientific marketing will always be necessary.
Applied approach
According to McGuire’s motives, the consumer has need for novelty, seeking for variety along with a certain degree of openness to change. This aspect is a major driver for a company’s innovation. “The more innovative the product, the greater the difficulty of fitting it into an established frame and meeting the frame’s minimum requirements.”[2] This statement has an impact on the three types of brand differences: innovation should be performed on brand performance associations, on brand imagery associations as well as on consumer insight associations. An innovative company will thereby sustain its brand’s performance.
Furthermore, as our society is moving from product dominant logic to a service dominant one, new opportunities show up to considerably improve the main challenges, that is to say quality and satisfaction, service encounter and productivity. Goal would then be to find innovative solutions in order to improve each of these dimensions. Let us just take as example the Gap Model: each gap could and should be filled with innovative solutions.
In general, the question is how to deal with the future. Innovation and progress should help in experimenting and thinking-through in order to better face the future. Innovation is not listening to the consumer’s need, but it preempts the consumer, teaching him/her and the market which way to go. A proactive strategy will thereafter change both the consumer behavior and the market structure. Considering this strength of innovation will put a company in a market driving position, making it even stronger and more successful. Driving the market is bringing real innovation. Not only does it increase market share in a given market, but disruption even creates exponential share of future markets. We should also recall that today’s offer is marked by an excess characterizing so many marketing proposals. Either the society introduces a sense of proportion, as defined in ‘Mediterranean thinking’, or companies use innovative marketing to differ from the competition, for example developing customer insight associations. Let us recall that the Long Tail is not full of crap, there are good ideas and applying them adequately will enable the company to think beyond mainstream.
There are many ongoing trends out there; it is necessary to test and experiment what works and what does not. Innovation is required in this process and is already very present. Techniques assessing this issue are still quite young, i.e. the sperm strategy (a concept of multiplication), and further are to be developed, hence more innovation is needed. Successful trends may even be branded, for example `green marketing´[3], making a company innovate on a new concept. In fact, environmental issues have a growing impact on our society and selling products or services based on their environmental benefit can be a very powerful - proactive? - marketing strategy. The obvious aim is to incite the consumer to view the “greenness” of a product or service as a benefit and to base their purchase decision accordingly. However, Susan Ward[4] claims that, for green marketing to be effective you have to ensure three things: being genuine, educating your customers, and giving them the opportunity to participate. These points reflect exactly the content of the course and the arguments I use to underline the need for (more) innovation in marketing.
Conclusion
In a nutshell, we can affirm that marketing does need innovation, like every science. It will even require more innovation than before, since the current (liquid) times are evolving faster and faster. Both the science and the company will have to maintain a high level of innovation in order to understand, or to preempt, the consumer and to compete in a given frame of reference. Some companies, Apple for instance, do already apply these concepts efficiently. Most others will have to follow in order to keep or increase their customer equity. Finally, we notice that many innovative instruments are out there, like word-of-mouth, brand relationship programs or Internet marketing, but their use is still limited and it is the companies’ turn to develop them in an innovative way.
Remark
Peter Drucker lets me consider another approach, claiming that the only two aspects of business are marketing and innovation. Thereafter, these two would be interdependent and innovation would hence be crucial for marketing (and vice-versa). However, this consideration is drifting away from the focus .
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