Edited by a professor of marketing and global strategy at Switzerland’s IMD, this book brings together IMD faculty’s cutting-edge insights on marketing innovation. Chapters describe everything from value chain marketing, commoditization (and how to counter it), and service marketing to shaping markets, pricing, and getting the organization on board for building and sustaining customer value.
Take the chapter on value chain marketing. Traditional marketing theory and practice focus on the “next in line” customers, the direct users of a company’s products or services. Marketing innovators have learned to trace an entire value chain as they try to understand and influence the behavior of the “customer’s customers” who are several steps down the line. Exa, a small start-up firm, for instance, struggled to market its new tools for cleaning services by distributing them only through the building trades—until it realized that it also needed to influence members of the building services’ value chain: building owners, building managers, and related service companies.
To apply the concept to marketing practice, the chapter’s author describes the workings of a “macro business system.” A company—in this example, Exa—maps its macro system by identifying its participants. Then it analyzes its dynamics by assessing all the relevant developments and drivers. A company would also need to understand its downstream customers and develop propositions to meet their needs.
Emerging market changes have constantly brought new managerial issues to the surface for marketing professionals and demanded that they think beyond traditional core ideas. This book should help marketing leaders who are eager to find new ways to improve the marketing practice of their organization.
- Poping Lin