Home > Work > HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategic Marketing (with featured article “Marketing Myopia,” by Theodore Levitt)
1 " Management must think of itself not as producing products but as providing customer-creating value satisfactions. It must push this idea (and everything it means and requires) into every nook and cranny of the organization. It has to do this continuously and with the kind of flair that excites and stimulates the people in it. "
― Harvard Business Review , HBR's 10 Must Reads on Strategic Marketing (with featured article “Marketing Myopia,” by Theodore Levitt)
2 " no amount of technology can really improve the situation as long as companies are set up to market products rather than cultivate customers. To compete in this aggressively interactive environment, companies must shift their focus from driving transactions to maximizing customer lifetime value. "
3 " The key distinction between a traditional and a customer-cultivating company is that one is organized to push products and brands whereas the other is designed to serve customers and customer segments. "
4 " Compare net-promoter scores from specific regions, branches, service or sales reps, and customer segments. This often reveals root causes of differences as well as best practices that can be shared. What really counts, of course, is how your company compares with direct competitors. Have your market researchers survey your competitors’ customers using the same method. You can then determine how your company stacks up within your industry and whether your current net-promoter number is a competitive asset or a liability. Improve "
5 " The measurement system cost more than $4 million per year, but the company made such significant progress in building customer loyalty that the company’s management considers it one of the company’s best investments. "
6 " We needed a greater sense of urgency.” So the management team decided that field managers would not be eligible for promotion unless their branch or group of branches matched or exceeded the company’s average scores. That’s a pretty radical idea when you think about it: giving customers, in effect, veto power over managerial pay raises and promotions. The rigorous implementation of this simple customer feedback system had a clear impact on business. As the survey scores rose, so did Enterprise’s growth relative to its competition. Taylor cites the linking of customer feedback to employee rewards as one of the most important reasons that Enterprise has continued to grow, "
7 " One company that manufactured resins used in exterior paints discovered this firsthand. By researching the needs of commercial painting contractors—a key customer segment—the company learned that labor constituted the lion’s share of contractors’ costs, while paint made up just 15% of costs. Armed with this insight, the resin maker emphasized that its product dried so fast that contractors could apply two coats in one day—substantially lowering labor costs. Customers snapped up the product—and happily shelled out a 40% price premium for it. Three "
8 " What the railroads lack is not opportunity but some of the managerial imaginativeness and audacity that made them great. "
9 " To compete in an aggressively interactive environment, companies must shift their focus from driving transactions to maximizing customer lifetime value. "
10 " They determine that effective marketing calls for people skilled in segmentation, targeting, and positioning. Once companies hire marketers with those skills, Marketing becomes an independent player. It also starts to compete with Sales for funding. "
11 " The history of every dead and dying “growth” industry shows a self-deceiving cycle of bountiful expansion and undetected decay. "
12 " Tesco uses its data-collecting loyalty card (the Clubcard) to track which stores customers visit, what they buy, and how they pay. This information has helped Tesco tailor merchandise to local tastes and customize offerings at the individual level across a variety of store formats—from "
13 " Directors and management need to spearhead the strategy shift from transactions to relationships and create the culture, structure, and incentives necessary to execute the strategy. What "
14 " The most dramatic change will be the marketing department’s reinvention as a “customer department.” The first order of business is to replace the traditional CMO with a new type of leader—a chief customer officer. The "
15 " If thinking is an intellectual response to a problem, then the absence of a problem leads to the absence of thinking. "
16 " To be effective, the CCO role as we conceive it must be a powerful operational position, reporting to the CEO. This executive is responsible for designing and executing the firm’s customer relationship strategy and overseeing all customer-facing functions. A "
17 " Ultimately, the CCO is accountable for increasing the profitability of the firm’s customers, as measured by metrics such as customer lifetime value (CLV) and customer equity as well as by intermediate indicators, such as word of mouth (or mouse). Customer "
18 " Is that not what consumer research is for—to find out before the fact what is going to happen? The answer is that Detroit never really researched customers’ wants. It only researched their preferences between the kinds of things it had already decided to offer them. For Detroit is mainly product oriented, not customer oriented. "
19 " The profit lure of mass production obviously has a place in the plans and strategy of business management, but it must always follow hard thinking about the customer. "
20 " THIRTY THOUSAND NEW CONSUMER products are launched each year. But over 90% of them fail—and that’s after marketing professionals have spent massive amounts of money trying to understand what their customers want. "
