Indeed,
most people take it for granted that when a product/service
is useful, it should sell in large quantities. In these people’s
minds, marketing new products or services is indeed plain sailing.
All you need to do – according to them – is measure
the needs of your potential customers (provided you know who
they might be). Subsequently, you would then have to match your
options against the declarations of your interviewers, and hey
pronto! Rational customers will inevitably bite into your well-designed
rational baits. I wish life were so simple. Unfortunately, it
is far from being so easy. First of all, with ICT marketing,
targets are not always known. In a way, this is quite normal
in so far as ICT marketing is actually about ‘new’ concepts,
some of which are very technical and sometimes hard to explain,
even when they are targeted at specialised audiences.
Besides,
there is no such thing as a passive ever-ready customer in this
context. Anything can happen. In actual fact, anything will
happen. This is what I found out when I launched an out-bound
fax online service for Wanadoo in 1999. Originally, the whole team assumed
that our clients would be the typical mass affluent young males
that all market surveys at that time described as being the
standard profile for Internet surfing audiences. The reality
proved very different and we soon found out that this service
was extensively used by senior clients.
Strangely enough, none
of the surveys we had indicated anything about older users being
more inclined to buy services online. None of the vast amounts
of money poured into advertising were aimed at these people.
Youngsters and students were at the centre of all strategies,
despite their extensive taste for free downloads and the free-for-all
business model. This why spending a bit of time on the notion
of ‘need’ is necessary. Discussions have been going on that
subject for over 2000 years but still do we understand what
it really means to ‘need’ or ‘require’ anything? Let us remember
the discussion between Socrates and Glaucon, in Plato’s Republic, in which Socrates exclaims: “I do not think
that we have adequately determined the nature and number of
our desires, and until this is accomplished the enquiry will
always be confused.”
The divide
between desire and requirement is not a clear one. In book II
of Plato’s republic, Socrates tries to draw the line between pure
necessity and luxury. In his description of the ‘Ideal State’,
adding sofas and tables off which one could dine is a sign that
the country has become a ‘luxurious State’. Indeed, you do not
need to sit at a table to be able to eat your dinner. You may
very well sit on the ground or even stand up for that matter,
like people do in receptions for instance. So, what difference
is there between tangible requirements and luxury? In other words,
are we not abusing the term ‘need’ when we are talking about marketing
new products and services? When does ICT marketing have to address
potential clients hidden (or obvious) desires instead of trying
to fulfil basic requirements?
There
is no definitive answer to such questions, at least not a simple
answer. But the very fact that we are asking ourselves these questions
is actually improving our understanding of the context of ICT
marketing and helps us avoid reading rash conclusions. Also, the
view whereby ‘rational’ thinking leads to ‘rational’ buyer behaviour
is fundamentally skewed and should not be relied on. Satisfying
basic needs is in no way the aim of ICT marketeers, and visions
whereby a ‘just do it’ –some sort of Nike approach to marketing-
would prevail are completely wrong and ineffectual.
If we
take a few examples, would you say that browsing your e-mail from
your living-room or even at your kitchen table using WI-FI is
a ‘must have’ (need) or a ‘nice to have’ (comfort)? or is it just
a ‘cool’ thing to do (desire)? Is that new multimedia mobile phone
you have (or will inevitably) just purchased a real must-have
or that status symbol linked to peer-pressure? Will you wait for
your current TV screens to break down in order to buy a new one
or will you yield to that inevitable desire to possess one of
these brand new flat LCD TV sets as soon as they have –in your
opinion- become affordable? Let’s face it, we have to go beyond
the mirror that is hiding our clients’ real motivations from us.
Marketing
ICT Products/Services
At Or To People?
Figure
7: (Some of) the various types of ICT marketing
approaches
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