They Are Waiting for You: Marketing Through the Prism of Expectations

Copyright © 2011 by Artur Alekperov.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2011913254

ISBN: Hardcover    978-1-4653-0299-1

ISBN: Softcover      978-1-4653-0298-4

ISBN: Ebook           978-1-4653-0300-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

0-800-644-6988

www.XlibrisPublishing.co.uk

Orders@XlibrisPublishing.co.uk

301779

UDC Identifier 339.138

BBC 65.290–2

Author’s number А45

Arthur Alekperov

They Are Waiting for You—Marketing through the Prism of Expectations.

UDC Identifier 339.138

BBC 65.290—2

Author’s number А45

Why do people buy? Why do they buy specifically from you? Why will they continue to buy from you? This book is dedicated to answering these questions. The author has worked on the launch of brands such as Stream, 009, and Internet from the Moscow City Telephone Network. The book is primarily targeted at people who are involved in managing a company’s business. It will allow them to better understand why marketing is actually necessary, what can be expected from it, and in what it can be most useful. This book may give practicing marketing experts some food for thought about their customers, their expectations, and may also help them gain a fresh perspective on situations. The book will also be of use to students of marketing and management, as it will give them a foothold in the foundations of marketing, which are often unclear in the big classic textbooks, owing to their all-encompassing nature and the sheer volume of information they contain.

Proofreading—Polina Kovalenko

Artwork, page proofs, design—Dmitri Makalkin

Prologue

If you feel an inner need to do something—do it.

Victor Gornostaev

Even though I had known for a long time that I had an inner need to share my thoughts and observations, I would have never taken that first step if it weren’t for Viktor Petrovich Gornostaev.

We met at the beginning of 2007 and worked together on the Internet from the Moscow City Telephone Network project for several months. He was a man with encyclopedic knowledge and a variety of interests: philosophy, music, psychology, and teaching. He couldn’t tolerate idleness or empty promises. He was always doing something even though it was hard for him because of an old sports back injury from when he was a volleyball player. Petrovich was strong-willed like Dikul and led a very active life.

During one conversation—out of the several that we had throughout the years when we worked together—I mentioned how I had wanted to write a book about marketing for a long time but that it wasn’t working out. From then on, Petrovich took the book’s fate into his own hands. In his e-mails (which he called ‘prods’), he began a methodological siege: every day he made me do something. He sent me opening quotes for chapters, he asked to see the content, and he drew me into discussions about various issues.

However, fate had something else in store . . . Now, I feel compelled to finish writing this book and dedicate it to the memory of Petrovich.

This book is not a classic marketing textbook. I find uncompromising textbooks daunting. Do it once, twice, three times . . . did you do everything correctly? Sure. And it didn’t work? That’s strange . . .

You’d be tempted to ask: just what exactly should have happened?

All kinds of training lead to understanding of a particular set of schemes that make your conclusions more obvious. Case studies tell us how various companies acted in similar situations. That is all well and good but it deprives people of the possibility of free thought. Entrepreneurial spirit, intuition, and the firm intention to carry out an idea to its logical end—all come together to form the basis of success.

So should we put SWOT analysis, Ansoff matrix, BCG matrix, Roger’s curve, and the lifecycle curve into the trash? Of course not. We just have to understand that these things are all just tools that help us to build an understanding of marketing.

They make things easier. They make things clearer. They reduce the likelihood of overlooking things.

There was a brilliant magician called Arutyun Akopyan. He would stand in front of you doing tricks. One, he tears a poster into tiny pieces; two, he neatly stacks the pieces; and three, the poster is whole again. You can do the same thing 10,000 times and the same thing will happen.

When you begin to try and fill in a SWOT analysis table, you will realize that you are only dealing with the tip of the iceberg. In order to fill in the page, you have to sift through a lot of information, audit the company, research markets . . . You can spend weeks and months working to find out your opportunities, your consumers, and market situation, and only ten minutes to show the fruits of your labor to your shareholders. Each of them wants to add to your strengths and weaknesses.

If you want to learn how to fill out a table correctly with the right numbers, then pick up a classic textbook. If you are trying to understand the nature and essence of things, then we are on the right path.

Chapter 1

Managing Expectations and Relationships

Even what is familiar is familiar only to a few.

Aristotle

Marketing Is Broader Than People Think

Let’s begin from the end. No matter what definitions for marketing we come up with, it all boils down to the answers to a group of questions: What do people buy? Why do they buy? Why do they buy specifically from us? How much do they pay? Why do they return? etc.

Many people see marketing as the activity between three entities in the market: the product (brand), the consumer, and the vendor. And that’s it.

But there’s more. When we begin to think about a product (brand), it turns out that this category may be broader than generally considered. We sell ourselves to an employer and sign a contract with him to carry out a set of duties at an expected level of quality. Politicians also sell themselves to us. The only difference is that we have a ballot in our hands, not a sales receipt.

Do you think that it has more to do with PR? Yes, I agree. I just think that marketing and PR (in the modern sense of the term) are actually the same thing. That way we can manipulate these concepts however we like. For example, ‘marketing is PR in the market’ or ‘PR is marketing in social relationships.’

They do have differences in products, target audiences, and complexity of communication, but in essence, they both work with the same things: expectations and relationships. The practical idea behind this is that marketing and PR must be as close as possible. My experience has been that synergy between the two areas yields great results.

I Buy Expectations

Expectations hold the key to marketing. No matter what people are buying from you, they are actually buying an expectation.

This is true whether it is the first time they are buying something or the second. But the second time they buy they are doing so with the expectation that the product will be as good as it was the first time.

It doesn’t really matter how these expectations came about—through advertising, recommendations, or perhaps they just felt like a bit of variety and grabbed your yogurt off the shelf.

In practical terms, it is very important to understand what expectations people might have and how they relate to satisfying demand.

The formula, ‘By purchasing these boots I’ll become the coolest guy in town,’ is a formula of expectations. There is a demand or goal which can be incredibly cynical, to ‘stand out of the crowd’, and there is the expectation that it is these boots which will help him achieve that goal. If the expectations and reality are not the same things, then they will be disappointed. This is called cognitive dissonance (meaning that there is a disparity between the two things). Therefore, it will not matter that the boots are of very high quality and are made from crocodile skin. The goal has not been achieved.

Why did the guy decide that the way to achieve his goal was by owning those boots? Who told him that? Perhaps it was the stereotypes that exist in his mind? Maybe, the salesperson told him?

How can we describe our behavior? Why do we do certain things? Why do some people lounge around on the couch and watch TV, while others go for a hike, and still others seek entertainment in a store by purchasing things? Why do we do what we do? What motivates us?

Conscious and Unconscious Goals

Goals are what motivate us. A goal may be conscious (such as me writing this book) or unconscious (we instinctively try to avoid danger). It may be to satisfy needs: food, water, enjoyment, adrenaline, whatever. Or it may be to achieve Nirvana.

The main purpose of marketing is to understand goals, help them become a reality, and propose a way of achieving them.

During every minute and second of our existence we are trying to achieve goals. Try pausing for a minute and recording your goals and then link them to their actions.

Is the room too warm? Your body gives you the goal of making the room a more comfortable temperature. What action will you take? Will you open the window? Take your shirt off? Turn on the air conditioner? Take a bath? Any action you take may or may not lead to achieving that goal. If it is 30°C outside, opening the window is hardly going to help you.

A goal is one thing, but the ways of achieving it are completely different. Therefore, we turn to another set of factors which we need in order arrive at a decision.

Consumption Situation

One of these factors is the consumption situation. We may do different things in different situations. For example, when walking in the park we are more likely to buy ice cream to cool off rather than turn on an air conditioner. But we do buy air conditioners for our homes or offices.

By the way, where did you get your air conditioner from? Let me guess, you bought it. You bought it because you are sure that it is one device that can save you from the heat.

Everything we have discussed so far has been simple facts. Did you expect anything else?

What brand is your air conditioner?

I am absolutely certain that your purchase was not done at random and you were able to find out a lot of information about air conditioners, which you think still do not matter. For example, what kind of coolant it uses, how many filters it has, its noise level, and so on and so forth.

You might have become an expert in air conditioners and even recommended a ********* brand air conditioner to a friend.

So why do you believe that a Toshiba air conditioner is better than a Daikin? Did you say that you didn’t care which one you bought? But didn’t you end up choosing one of them? Maybe they just didn’t have any Daikin air conditioners and you didn’t want to bother looking for any? Meaning that you had the added benefit of not having to travel anywhere. If that store had had Daikin brand air conditioners then would you have bought one? Without trying to offend anyone who works in the marketing department at Daikin, that would have been their mistake. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Although I am again speaking about seemingly banal things the experienced eye would spot several marketing aspects in that short paragraph. In addition to goals and consumption situations, we have spotted properties.

Properties

We are now coming to a very interesting area, which is really at the heart of marketing.

Let’s review what has happened.

The air conditioner is a complex apparatus and has several properties. Of course, I am not an expert in air conditioners, but I have had to buy one before. So with the aid of the Internet, I’ll list some air conditioner properties:

• Windowed, split system, channel, mobile, cassette;

• Anti-bacterial filters;

• Productivity;

• Hot/cold;

• Noise levels;

• Type of Freon;

• Cost;

• Service

If you are an air-conditioning expert it probably wouldn’t be hard for you to compare two dozen air conditioners and pick the best one. I, personally, do not intend to do that. For me it would only make sense to have a few, specific characteristics such as: is it powerful enough to cool a 20 m² room, does it get rid of harmful bacteria, is it quiet enough to not wake the neighbors, and, finally, I don’t want it to break down. I think all of these factors are important because I read about them on the Internet, I talked to friends who already have air conditioners, or I have asked a salesperson. Judging by all of these indicators, I should pick a Daikin, Hitachi or Toshiba air conditioner. But I bought a brand that I was completely unfamiliar with because the last salesperson convinced me that Carier air conditioners are the best.

Recent contact with the retail sector has only strengthened my belief that even if you have a unique product with outstanding branding, its sales will be disappointing if the salesperson in the store is not motivated to sell it.

I don’t know how different brands of air conditioners work, but mine has been working without any problems for six years now. All of the marketing efforts boiled down to the recommendation of one person, who seemed like he knew what he was talking about.

From a Fact to a Recommendation

Let’s recap.

The product has certain consumer properties. They may be objective ones (2 kW of power) or virtual (the fastest Internet). These are facts. The buyer may or may not decide to pay attention to certain facts. He might believe you or not believe you.

He might even be convinced that it is not an objective fact. For example, the idea that a fiber-optic cable is connected to his room. This is yet another myth from the Internet.

At one time the modem was the symbol of dialup, Internet access through a telephone line. Any connection to a modem (cable or ADSL) made buyers think of slow and inconvenient access to the Internet. That was a damaging stereotype for ADSL and DOSIS Internet providers who used special modems, but it was useful for Ethernet Internet providers who used network cards that all computers have.

Here we are adding two more ingredients to the marketing cocktail: the myth and the stereotype.

Myths and Stereotypes

If these ingredients didn’t exist then mankind would go mad. Every fraction of a second we are thinking about where to step, what ingredients are in this yogurt or that yogurt, what kind of steel is used to make these scissors, how was it hardened—these