Summary

O Customer , Where Art Thou

Stephen Brown

School of Marketing , Entrepreneurship Strategy

University of Ulster

Jordanstown

Co . Antrim

BT 37 0QB

Northern Ireland

O CUSTOMER , WHERE ART THOU

ABSTRACT

In the mart of life , whether you love them or hate them , marketers are and will continue be an inseparable part of the global social , cultural milieu . They exist to tout products and services to customers , who through time and experience have trained themselves to take marketers claims with a pinch of salt . Can marketers outwit today

's market savvy educated customers ? They have to , and if they don 't , they fall by the wayside . The tussle is eternal . Battles are won and lost , and marketing gurus , in the business of touting their own wares to marketers , inject fresh thinking and concepts in the market place some succeed , some don 't

There is no gainsaying the fact that customers are wary of marketers and chary of the tricks they play blatant attempts at fake familiarity bogus benevolence , pseudo concern and friendly fire sales . Marketers too delight in sticking various labels on customers ' lapels conservative reactionary , stuck-in-the-mud , afflicted with incorrigible inertia , and envisioning future needs in terms of existing products , processes markets and prices . theless , they doggedly pursue the strategy of customer orientation , complaining that it militates against innovation

The marketing rhetoric has changed over time from customer satisfaction to delight , rapture and enchantment as customer focus has increased (Kotler et al 2002 Mckenna 2002 Peters et al 2003 . As marketers struggle to secure customers for companies in an era of cutthroat competition , consumer culture has been scarred . Today 's sophisticated customers are wise to the vile of marketers ' Machiavellian maneuvers The truth is products parity and benchmarking leave the educated customer with little choice despite costly branding . Companies pay a heavy price for retaining brand loyalty . Customers know quite well that their loyalty is vital to companies desirous of obtaining an advantage over competitors . Today 's consumers , reared on advertising , brought up on branding and trademarked from birth , use their strength as brand buyers to shape the policy of brand suppliers , and are happily calling multinational organizations to account . For companies , the lesson is live by customer orientation .you may die by customer orientation (Table 1 : Battle in Seatle

MINI- THE SEDUCTIVE BABY

In what is called , realignment post Drucker , customer-savvy marketers have reshaped and evolved methods , which penetrate the customers mind and heart , using the weapons of mediability , inclusion , nostalgia and irony- MINI- , which encapsulates the essence of contemporary marketing and an alternative postmodern model of marketing practice and philosophy

Take irony , defined as saying one thing and meaning the opposite . It works best when both parties know how the other ticks (Childers and Hentzi 1955 . However , it is not new and of late , the ironic imperative has expanded beyond disparaging the customer and slandering the product to mocking the marketing and caricaturing the commercials

Nostalgia rides piggyback on what marketers are calling `Retro Shock ' of revivals , remakes , replicas , re-runs...