Where customer is the boss in a company

In recent days, the term 'marketing' carries some important concepts. Marketing is not now confined to focusing on promoting and selling products only. Rather it is to retain customers in the long run. Nowadays, companies are in the scramble not only for improving sales growth but also for attracting and retaining consumers. Traditional marketing is used to be company-focused and product-based. The companies give more privileges on sales growth rather than on long-term customer relationship. The existing products are forced to the market through aggressive selling and advertising pressures. On the other hand, modern marketing is usually service-driven and customer- oriented.
Traditional marketing concentrates on satisfactory products, but modern marketing concentrates on customers' needs, wants and satisfaction. It is continuously redefined and reflected in new concepts. So in the globalisation era, companies need to consider the modern marketing concept and apply it with the competitive market change.
Marketing mix concept changes in course of time. Companies believe that a perfect mix is the combination of value discipline and relationship marketing. In recent times, companies focus on only one particular value discipline and improvise with the change of the industry. They also put lots of emphasis on maintaining long-term relationship with the customers. Marketers develop products in such way as to give scope to the customers to use the service and tie the customers' network. Value discipline is how the customers define and judge value of a desired product in terms of convenience, after-sales service, durability, dependability, and prestige. Companies design their marketing strategies based on three types of value discipline. These are: (a) Supply chain effectiveness (b) product leadership and (c) customer intimacy and retention.
Supply chain effectiveness focuses on competitive price and convenience whereas product leadership and customer intimacy deals with innovative product and customer relationship respectively. Dell computer focuses on convenient delivery to the customers rather than on specialised and sophisticated product. Its main objective is to minimise the operations cost and to provide the services in the most convenient way to the customers. Apple focuses on unique and innovative products and introduces them as product leader in the market. They continuously strive for new technology and ideas and apply it in their own products. Instead of relying on what the customers say they want, Apple focus on defining needs that consumers didn't know they had. Also they need to provide quick solution of their latest products and services as they want their customers satisfied with it.
Some companies pursue marketing strategy based on customer intimacy. These companies focus on maintaining long-term relationship with the customers. They give importance to the customers rather than value to single transaction or sale. Companies which practice operational excellence develop the customer service line in such a way that they are dedicated only to provide services to the customers regardless of time. Their main objective is to provide the right products to the right customers. Not only that, they are committed to provide product-related services for life time of the products. In this way, they maintain long- term relationship with the customers because they believe customers are the key factor in sales growth.
'Relationship marketing' is a new concept that has recently been introduced. It defines long-term relationship with the customers to sustain the market in the long-run. Marketers develop different means of tools and techniques to maintain their relations with their valued customers. These include telemarketing, e-mail, social network, loyalty programmes etc.
 Today's idea is 'customer brings customer' and based on this concept, companies formulate strategy and execute it accordingly. Focusing on relationship proved confirmed sustainability in any economic situation. During recession, the companies which adopted relationship marketing performed better than other companies, because, their respective customers were loyal enough to maintain the relationship.
Nowadays, most of the airline companies are dedicated to interact with the customers daily and provide feedback to the management. Based on the feedback, they design their operations in such a way that the customers get the highest benefits. This helps them to achieve maximum customer satisfaction and loyalty which helps them to be placed into a trustworthy company in the industry.
In modern marketing, 'customer value' becomes more significant than sales figure. Many service- oriented companies like banks, airlines and direct marketing companies have started implementing one-to-one marketing and loyalty programmes to develop relationship with their valued customers. This writer believes value discipline and relationship marketing are the perfect combination of modern marketing.
Currently, Google is the fastest search engine in the whole world. They developed their value based on 'product leadership'. They offer 1 GB free space while launching gmail.com. And no other search engine companies are offering this. Their idea is to attract and retain customers. Also they have offered iPhone and web apps which actually have become part of people's lives. In this way, they are growing their customer base and maintaining the relationship.
Becoming an industry leader requires a company to choose appropriate value discipline with mix of relationship marketing. In today's corporate culture, it has become a quite challenging task to attract and retain customers as all of the companies are in the race of luring customers in their own ways. A company should follow some vital practices in order to formulate modern marketing strategy and sustain the lead. These practices are: (a) strong vision of their value discipline, (b) tendency of understanding change in customer demand, (c) development of internal consistency, and (e) advancement of technology and operating techniques. Company management with strong vision fuels employees to execute strategy and plan more effectively. Companies need to be incredibly customer- focused nowadays because the customer is in control. Besides, technology and the social trends are changing continuously along with customer needs.  Marketing needs to be active inside the organisation in order to break bureaucracy and get the company to serve the customers. Today's marketing goes beyond traditional advertising and selling. Now they are more focused to maintaining their relationship with the customers.
Recently, some retail stores are focusing relationship marketing through social media like Facebook, Twitter etc. They create an open platform in the company website to make transaction easier. They also design individual plans for individual territory. They impose 'operational excellence' as their value discipline and strives to meet the customer needs as well. On the other side, they also develop many purchase schemes like gift cards, discount coupon and special offer in order to attract customers and give them the feeling that they value customers.
Modern marketing is an essential component in business strategy. Proper strategy and execution contribute to business success. Today's big companies are established on concrete foundation of proper marketing mix. They create a significant example for entrepreneurs and developing companies. In order to sustain the lead, modern marketing is the principal tool and it cannot be denied in any way.
The write is an MBA student
at the Ashland University,
Ohio, USA
amyfahmina@yahoo.com