Why are Businesses Struggling?
A big part of the problem lies with companies, which need to update their value creation approach that has emerged over the past few decades.
They can no longer view value creation narrowly, optimizing short-term financial performance while missing the most critical customer needs and ignoring the broader influences determining their longer-term success.
In their article “Marketing Malpractice,” Clayton Christensen and coauthors Scott Cook and Taddy Hall write: The prevailing methods of segmentation that budding managers learn in business schools and then practice in the marketing departments of good companies are a key reason that new product innovation has become a gamble in which the odds of winning are horrifyingly low. A better way to think about market segmentation and new product innovation exists—the market structure as seen from the customers’ point of view.
Ted Levitt said: When people need to get a job done, they hire products, not the other way around.
The context of business has changed over the last few decades.
Traditional approaches to sales—wringing a market for what it’s worth—no longer work for sustained growth.
Earlier, the manufacturer used to manufacture goods that he could based on his ability. The marketing person used to apply his expertise in marketing it, and the salesperson used to convince the buyer to buy the product.
Instead, organizations must reverse their thinking to survive and grow today.
Today a company begins with the customer and his needs, not with a patent, a raw material, or a selling skill.
Given the customer’s needs, the industry develops backward concerning the physical delivery of customer satisfaction. Then it moves back to creating the things that partially achieve these satisfactions.
Herein lies the capability of professionals and entrepreneurs to map the Customer Journey.
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