Is customer the king?

To continue .....


Looking at the current Indian marketing scenario, I have a feeling that we are moving back in time. Kotler says that in the evolution of marketing ,before the marketing concept became popular, there is a selling concept which states that "customers and businesses, if left alone will ordinarily not buy enough of the organizations products. The organisation must therefore undertake an aggressive selling and promotion effort" ( Kotler Philip, Marketing Management, Pearson Education2003).

In this present scenario, it is true that companies will survive only if there is a super efficient sales force. The reasons are that increasingly every products are being commoditized and there is an increase in the power of retails, information explosion that has given the consumer an unusual power. This has ensured that without an efficient salesforece companies cannot survive.

But is it now an overkill?

Even when companies focus on sales effort, concept like segmentation shouldnot be overlooked. For example, there has been lot of effort on increasing credit card usage in India. Credit card now comes free for life and sales people are just selling creditcards like chocolates .
Is it not wise to look at whether the consumer wants a credit card. Does he like to use one ?
Does he have the ability to pay back?

Recently a news channel showed a mutual fund agent giving discounts to a client from his brokerage. what does that mean?

It simply means that we are not practicing marketing. we are just selling....

Is customer the king?

As one of my friends remarked, If customer is the king, then why would all companies want him to be loyal?

The real fact is that no company regard customer as the king. It is all about money honey!!
Marketing is creating and exchanging goods of value between the company and the customer so that the needs of customers are met and the company objectives are achieved in that process. So what is happening now is this exchange process.

Marketers tried to attract customers by treating them well and thus came the cliche " customer is the king" . Look around You , you get to know that this is an utopian phrase. It is only economics in play.

It is now the choice of the customer that whether he wants himself to be treated as a king ( and pay for it ) . Last day me and my wife ordered a cake for my kids birthday. The cake was not made according to our specification. I was in my opinion that we take the order. But my wife insisted that we dont take the order and go to another shop.

She insisted on her right but how many of customers do that?

So Demand to be treated as a king and find the company that treats you like a king and enjoy!!!

Dear friends

This is the platform that you have been searching for:This will offer a stage where we can discuss practical marketing problems and find solutions to that problems.Hope you will share the insights from your experience in marketing and sales so that it provides a learning experience to all of usregards