Strategic thinking and

thinking strategically

Market
sensing
Strategic
and
market Customer
learning
choices value
strategy
and strategy Strategic
targets and relationships
positioningand
networks

Strategic
transformation
and strategy
implementation
 Developing a value-based marketing strategy
 Market sensing and learning strategy
 Strategic market choices and targets
 Customer value strategy and positioning
 Strategic relationships and networks
 Market sensing and learning strategy:
Competitive strength through knowing more
 Understanding customers and markets
 Black swans and white swans
 From market research to market sensing
 New cross-over tools for management understanding
 Marketing intelligence
 Interpretation
 Lessons in learning
 Enhancing sensing capabilities
 Companies have little understanding of why their customers
behave the way they do
 Executives looks at averages and ignore market granularity
 Agile, fast-moving businesses show high knowledge-intensity
 The goal is to raise a company’s “Market IQ”
 Crunch question = what do you know that every rival does not
also know?
 The black swan analogy underlines the
limitations to our learning and the fragility of
our knowledge
 Black swan events are the “unknown
unknowns”
 Market sensing demands open-minded inquiry
and experimentation not probabilistic estimates
and sampling
 What is the difference between market sensing
and marketing research?
 marketing research involves techniques of data
collection and processing
 market sensing is a process of management
understanding
 Processes of management
Sources of marketing knowledge
understanding

Internal records Management

CRM data information
Databases systems Interpretation

Surveys
Observation Marketing
Market tests research
Market sensing Market
capabilities understanding
Ethnography
Internet Cross-over
Futurology tools

Scanning
Marketing
Trends
intelligence
Clues
 Limitations of conventional market research
 unreasonable expectations
 the limits of questions
 the “right” results
 we don’t believe it
 excuses
 The elephant in the market
 Strategic and non-strategic marketing
information
 Importance of information
High Low
High

Priorities Short-term
dilemmas
Urgency of
information

Strategic Time
wasters
Low
  Finding out what customers want a product or
service to do for them
 Solves customers’ problems
 Rather than asking a customer what they think
of this product or service, the customer should
be asked what they like, or don't like, about a
particular experience.

Source: Shape the Agenda (2004) The Creative Dilemma: Successful

Innovation in fast-changing markets,(3) Cookham, Chartered Institute of
Marketing
 'Companies that target their products at the circumstances in which customers find
themselves, rather than at the customers themselves, are those that can launch
predictably successful products. Put another way, the critical unit of analysis is the
circumstance and not the customer.‘
Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator's Solution

 Customers experience life as a series of 'jobs' that they need to get done.
 'Jobs' can be actions ranging from washing your hair or cleaning your teeth, up to
getting your finances sorted or communicating across the globe in a shorter space
of time.
 Finding out what those jobs are leads to value innovation, rather than asking how
what we've got already can be better made to suit the customer's desires.

Source: Shape the Agenda (2004) The Creative Dilemma: Successful Innovation
in fast-changing markets, (3) Cookham, Chartered Institute of Marketing
 Ethnography
 hidden in plain sight
 neuromarketing
 Internet sensing
 the wisdom of crowds
 blogs
 virtual reality
 social networks
  Uses long periods of observation of people in their 'natural
habitat‘
 Closely watching people in their everyday life
 Example: mobile phone usage.
 You get an unemployed single mother using it as a sanction - "if
you don't behave I won't give you any money to top up your
mobile."
 You might get that kind of insight from a focus group but you'd
need a really good question.

Source: Shape the Agenda (2004) The Creative Dilemma: Successful Innovation in fast-changing markets,
(3) Cookham, Chartered Institute of Marketing
 Futurology
 careful examination of what is going on around us
 scenario building – how things may unfold
 visioning – working out what is likely to happen and
what we want to happen
 Trends and clues
 trendspotting
 new identity groups
 the quest for cool
 looking for clues
 deep mining
 But play nicely and don’t be naughty
 Managing customer knowledge
 Link between information, sensing and
management understanding relies on processes
of interpretation
 Integration of multiple information sources
central to evidence-based management
 Goal is sustaining learning to create
competitive advantage
 Storytelling
 Watching customers
 Meeting customers
 Customer days
 Building customer scenarios
 Listening not evaluating
 Studying complainers
 A structure for market sensing
 Probability of the event occurring

High Medium Low

7
Field of
Utopia
6 dreams

5
Effect of the
event on the Things to
4 watch
company*

3
Future
2 Danger
risks
1
* 1=Disaster, 2=Very bad, 3=Bad, 4=Neutral, 5=Good, 6=Very good, 7=Ideal
 Managing the market sensing process
 choosing the environment
 sub-dividing the environment to focus attention
 identifying the impact of external changes
 interpreting the model for strategy building
 Linking market sensing to plans
 providing information as a stimulus to thinking
 consider who should be consulted and involved
 A note of caution
 market sensing and new learning may be disruptive
inside an organization
 Don’t trust any research – at all – none –whoever
does it – however much it is “justified”
 Don’t trust it
 When any research clashes with common sense
and personal experience interrogate the research to
death
 Trust (not unquestioningly) research on past
events – for guidance
 Never trust research on “intentions”
 Treat with huge pinch of salt research on attitudes
 NEVER MAKE A DECISION ON QUALITATIVE
RESEARCH - ESPECIALLY FOCUS GROUPS
 Do research yourself wherever possible
 Use it for ideas, directions etc FOR FURTHER
EXPLORATION