Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is an excerpt of an article from the Joel Rubinson on Marketing Research blog.
Marketing organizations should embrace simplification as a pervasive strategy for competitive advantage. Life has become too complex with overwhelming numbers of choices at every turn. Complexity leads to frustration, anger, and people making bad choices that make them feel stupid.
Consider the success of three firms that are in the simplification business, pure and simple.
- Google. No company has simplified life more than Google, making search the way we find information, navigate to websites without having to remember the URL, and marking the beginning of how we shop. Yes, Google has simplified the shopping process among an overwhelming array of offerings.
- Amazon. Amazon remembers us, our preferences, and our wishes. It shows us what others think of the products we are considering. It is open 365/24/7, so we choose the store hours. It even gives us apps so we can buy the product we see in a store at a lower price online.
- Apple. Apple has led the movement of reinventing how something works to make it simpler with the emergence of touch interface apps on smartphones and tablets.
NBC made their Olympics programming accessible however and wherever someone wants, and guess what? TV viewing went up. Simple! Staples advertising is based on "simple" (using the word "easy") but then runs deals that can only be redeemed online vs. in their stores Not simple ... it's one brand, guys!
There are 45,000 products in a supermarket but the average shopper only buys 400. In a Home Depot or Lowe's, chances are what you are seeking is located somewhere distant in their massive store.
Can we reinvent marketing approaches to simplify shopping? Absolutely! Tesco turned Korean subway stations into grocery stores where you order using your smartphone from virtual products displayed on the back wall. You can imagine less futuristic approaches that would also be demonstrable improvements. Some examples:
- A brand and retailer might use signage and mobile apps to let shoppers know what the best sellers are in a category (a brilliantly simple idea I first heard from Herb Sorensen).
- A cross-functional team of shopper marketing and social media personnel might drive visual integration by reinforcing package graphics with photos on Facebook to make it easier for shoppers to find the product that matches their needs on a given day.
- Retailers could seamlessly link online, mobile, and offline shopping with the use of unifying profiles, to create digital shopping lists that are brought into the store. Such a system could push reminders to shoppers based on likely purchase cycles. This is only a step or two beyond what you already see with SCAN IT! in Stop & Shop.
Insights teams need to learn how to bring these insights to marketers, developing a model of what "simple" looks like and what the impact will be on customer action.