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for young people to access products and services related information. Consumers also follow recom- mendations of other users more than advertisers. is is why it is essential to communicate in a way that is relevant and meaningful to these target consumers.
What are customers’ problems?
petroleum – products of the Second Industrial Revolution. e home appliance and automobile industries developed thanks to these inputs. Com- panies could solve customers’ conscious problems through consumer research and determine ways to add features and enhance the quality of their products.
with new products. In addition, customers have new problems which cannot be solved by products
To succeed in business, each of us has to con-
tinue to implement marketin“g at every level of the and it is becoming di cult to solve old problems
organization. I de ne marketing as developing solutions for customers’ problems. Customers can
alone. To solve these new customer problems, we need to provide services via the Internet which were brought about by the ird Industrial Revolution.
e reason that many Japanese companies su er
from erce price competition and cannot grow is that they cannot solve customers’ problems while sticking to old models and consider only products, without recognizing and understanding the changed nature of customers’ problems. On the other hand, companies such as Apple, Google and Amazon
have created new business models to meet the new age. ey are growing strongly by solving custom- ers’ new problems through various internet-based services and internet-enabled products. is set of processes is marketing in the 21st century.
Companies such as Google, Zappos, Apple, eBay and Amazon found innovative ways to solve customer problems
by using the internet, creating new business models for a new age.
be our consumers and suppliers, or employees for human resource depart- ments, or management for nancial departments. So our customers exist both inside and outside the company.
Marketing solves two kinds of problems: customers’ conscious problems and unconscious problems. One big di erence between the two is whether or not we can nd them through research. We can nd customers’ conscious problems through research, but not their unconscious ones.
Marketing in the 20th and 21st century
Many companies in the 20th century developed appliances and machines that used electricity and
customers have
new problems which cannot be solved by products alone.
DisrUPtioN & iNNoVatioN
A set of standard processes de ned marketing in the 20th century. In the 21st century we now have many high-quality and high-performance products,
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