You’ve all heard the timeless advice “know your customer”. Most marketers agree knowing the customer is fundamental to serving the customer. Basic stuff right? But I wonder how committed brand managers are to really knowing their customer? The very term “brand manager” implies something less that “brand builder”. In our opinion, to be a brand builder requires empathy for the customer!
As consumers, our attention spans are getting shorter and shorter. We are inundated by brands – on the shelf, in print, on television, on our phones and computers, on coffee cups, napkins, billboards, trash cans, t-shirts, cars, just about everywhere we turn.
Finally, marketers are acknowledging the necessity of listening to consumers – aka “people” – and brands are adjusting to the social networked environment by opening conversations.
If you are a good marketer you’ve heard of the Net Promoter Score (NPS). If you are a very good one, you know what your NPS is. If you have no idea what I am talking about, read the definition at the bottom, and then meet me at paragraph two.
Academics rarely get out much. So it is perhaps no surprise that one of the major conferences for marketing academics, the European Academy for Consumer Research Conference proved so popular.
