Companies, of course, should study other companies that have mastered certain processes, whether those be product development, customer retention, or order fulfillment. Benchmarking, however, has two forms: passive, in which one company copies the practices of another; and creative, in which one company copies and improves on a process seen at another company. Creative benchmarking is about bettering the best, not just copying the best.
– You write that the customer has become the hunter. What impact does that have on marketing strategies?
Customers now have the power. With the advent of the Internet, they have great amounts of information about brands, prices, product quality, features, and service at their disposal. This is in contrast to the past, when information was largely in the hands of the sellers and the cost of acquiring information was high for the buyers. Today the buyer of a car goes on the Internet, searches for product and price information, and comes armed with the facts to wrest a good price from the seller. The sellers who have the best chance to survive and prosper are those who have found ways, in the words of Jack Welch, to «keep giving the customers more for less… while maintaining a profit.»
– How can a company survive in an environment where the markets are changing faster than the marketing?
Not all companies can survive! This is evidenced by the high rate of bankruptcy and the rapid increase in M&As. When there is too much capacity, mergers help to rationalize that capacity. The companies that will do well will be those that can create and deliver the most value to customers. The task is to assess the trajectory of customer wants accurately.
Essential Vocabulary
1. globalisation
2. site
3. trend
4. preferential terms
– предпочтительные, наиболее благоприятные условия5. retention
retain
retained
6. transaction (trans)
7. mediator
mediation
mediate
8. scenario
9. implication
implicate
10. expenditure
expend
expendable
11. tool
12. sales force
– сбытовики13. set
set
14. facilitator
facilitate
15. measure
measure
16. metric
metric
17. campaign
18. prospect
prospecting
prospect
prospective
19. retailer
retail
20. capacity
21. overcapacity
22. scarcity
scarce
23. merger
merge
24. benchmarking
25. mergers and acquisitions (M&A)
– слияния и поглощенияExercise 1*. Which of the following statements are not correct and why?