Last monday we had a very interesting guest-lecture from Irene van den Brink, from VODW. In her presentation she showed us how VODW creates ideas for companies or specific products. It seems to me very difficult to start with such a new idea. Because, how can you find out what a customer wants?
Irene van den Brink explains to us how difficult this can be, but more important in which way you can try it. It can be complex, especially for marketeers I think, because we cannot switch of our knowledge. We cannot see ourselves as representative consumers any more. That makes it more difficult to imagine what costumers think of advertisements for instance. And this is a key factor for successful marketing for a company. Especially because the value of a product is perceived and determined by the consumer, not by the firm (slides session 10). Of course we know how to use marketing research, but will this bring a representative outcome in each case? Or is this almost impossible, since customers are more and more interested in transparent companies and increase their knowledge about marketing.
In this way we also talked about how Apple, especially Steve Jobs, uses marketing. Are they making special and good products, without research and sell it directly to the customers? Or do they know exactly what customers want by extensive marketing research? In any case, a company like Apple will have to be creative, innovative and different!
Steve Jobs about what customers want (is it megabytes, megahertz, or is it expression):
Steve Jobs about what customers want
A funny ad about what customers want:
Consumer Value Creation 