WHY CHEAPER IS BETTER – THE CUSTOMER

This exploration to find an answer to the question of why cheaper is better for the customer would seem to be a no-brainer. The apparent answer is, “duh, it’s cheaper!” However, that’s not the case in all situations. Customers will pay a healthy premium for something because they can, and it bolsters their image. They […]

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WHY CHEAPER IS BETTER – THE MARKETING ORGANIZATION

The other day I explored “when” cheaper pricing is better—positioning that a competitor claims to be the same as the leader but cheaper. Today’s musing is “why” cheaper pricing is better. Now, I’m not advocating that we compete by being the low-cost choice. In fact, virtually all my clients choose to market their brands with […]

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WHEN CHEAPER IS BETTER

The saying goes, “you get what you pay for.” The meaning is clear: if it’s cheap, it probably means it’s of poor quality. Or is it? One of the strategies for winning is the promise of “better value.” There are three approaches to creating a perception of better value: 1) value-added—offer more for the same […]

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BEWARE OF MURPHY’S LAW

My wife has begun preparing for our move from the family home despite it being several months into the future. She came across a stack of Approach magazines, which I diligently read a lifetime ago when I was a young Naval Aviator. Approach, a publication of the Naval Safety Center, focuses on Naval and Marine […]

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ASK, LISTEN AND OBSERVE

There’s a place and time for the formal, projectable kind of marketing research. However, the wrong marketing research can put a drag on momentum, suck-up marketing support funding, lead to the wrong conclusions, inaction and even paralyze the organization with useless facts.  Marketing research should lead to knowledge. And, knowledge is a practical understanding that leads […]

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DEVELOP EMPATHY AND GET REAL!

You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself. John Steinbeck I think it is fair to say that we marketers should strive to empathize with our target customers. After all, empathy is about seeing, feeling and understanding what another person is experiencing—from their perspective. It could better lead us to discover legitimate and […]

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Think icon.

Icon – ikon, (noun) an object of uncritical devotion; an emblem, symbolSynonyms: God, hero, idol Another icon passed away. No, not a human icon (such as Lee Iacocca, the subject of my musing in the last blog), but the Volkswagen Beetle bit the dust. The Beetle is the best-selling car of all time. The last […]

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LEARNING FROM LEE IACOCCA – MARKETECT

Lee Iacocca, among one of the first “business celebrities,” passed away on 2 July 2019. Most of us may be familiar with him in name due to his celebrity but not fully appreciate his accomplishments since he was prominent back in the 1980s—long before most of you became marketers.  He, along with Steve Jobs (Apple […]

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DON’T LET SUCCESS GO TO YOUR HEAD*

Past success(es) can be a problem. In a 1999 Harvard Business Review article, “Why Good Companies Go Bad,” which could easily be titled, “Why Good Brands Go Bad,” Donald N. Sull writes, “Success breeds active inertia, and active inertia breeds failure.” This is as true today, perhaps, even more so than when it was first written […]

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WAYS TO WIN IN THE MARKETPLACE

With so many product choices today, we truly live in an age of abundance. It is also an age of sameness. Moreover, generally acceptable quality (GAQ) reigns. So, how might we break-out of the pack to win? There are four ways to win with our brand in the marketplace. I’m not referring to functional areas such […]

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