Will There Ever Be “Business As Usual Again?”
This was a discussion someone brought up in the Marketing Executives Group on LinkedIn, and I thought I’d share my thoughts on this blog as well.
The first thing I was taught as a sales was: people don’t change their minds. They simply make more informed decisions based on the information that was provided at the time of their purchases.
With the “old” business model, big corporations controlled the information flow through advertisements. Communications went one-way: companies -> ads (mostly TV ads) -> consumers. Companies who had money were able to build huge brands through repetition of ads. Consumers had very few channels to obtain information, and thus, the best possible purchasing decision was to go with the “popular” brands on TV.
The combination of the overflowing channels on TV and the inception of the Internet suddenly changed that. Now we have WAY too many choices and not enough time.
So two things happened:
#1. Average stuff gets ignored. This is human nature: we like to talk about remarkable things. Don’t get me wrong, average is still good, and we still use them every day. They just don’t get talked about. What traditional companies are starting to find out is that their market shares are beginning to shrink, and they can’t figure out why. The truth is, they are probably doing what they have always done. Heck, maybe they are even doing it a little bit better job. Unfortunately, the core of their business is to make average products for average people. That alone has decided their fate on the Web.
#2. Information flow changed. All of sudden, consumers are not only talking with their family and close friends; they can now reach out to literally millions of their “friends” online. What do they talk about? As I mentioned above: remarkable stuff. Again, traditional companies are now seeing their market shares being taken away by someone who is cheaper, faster, easier to use, etc. They didn’t lose their business. It was simply taken away. Those solutions had always existed. What changed between now and then is that people can actually find out about them, and make a “more informed” purchasing decision.
So no, business will never be as usual again, and if traditional companies still insist on being “average”, they will just fade away.
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