The Customer Learning Curve: Creating Profits from Marketing Chaos

Citation

John, J. (2005), "The Customer Learning Curve: Creating Profits from Marketing Chaos", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 22 No. 5, pp. 290-291. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363760510611752

This book gives the reader tools to develop insights into customer behavior with a framework to assess the financial implications of marketing and sales efforts. The authors claim their framework gives the firm an integrated view of the components of technology, price, service, communications, and distribution. The framework is anchored around what the authors call the “customer learning curve” (CLC). By using the framework, they assert that everyone in a firm develops a marketing perspective, is able to cope with the many choices, deal effectively with disruption, make mid‐course corrections, assess the progress of a new product or service, update what they know, and help top management make good choices.

For those familiar with the awareness, interest, desire, action (AIDA) model, the framework is an extension of the hierarchy of effects approach in moving customers through various stages towards adoption of a product. For others, it is an excellent tool for a systematic view of the various stages that customers go through before they settle on a provider.

The first chapter outlines the framework and content of the book. The authors develop their framework in a sequence of nine chapters. The content and the rest of the chapters are laid out as follows:

1. 1.

   Chapter 2: Who needs what your company sells?. This chapter presents the basics of segmentation in a very practical manner. The authors use the yin and yang metaphor of flexible versus focused approach in achieving a balance in the determining the appropriate market segment. Also discussed are segmentation of business‐to‐business markets and positioning to capitalize on each segment's unique characteristics and variable needs.

2. 2.

   Chapter 3: Who is aware of your offering and its benefits?. The authors discuss the importance of starting with the awareness levels of customers and present ideas on how to communicate product benefits through the sales force, advertising, and other tools, including electronic media.

3. 3.

   Chapter 4: Who can access your product or service?. The focus in this chapter is on how the customers who are aware of the benefits of your product need to be qualified in terms of having access to the product. The chapter also identifies red flags that warn you when access changes need to be addressed and discusses ways to design new or amended channels.

4. 4.

   Chapter 5: Are your customers motivated?. When customers are aware and have access to the product, the next step is to determine if they are motivated to view your product as a possible solution to their needs. Key issues include determining who to motivate and how to excite a wide variety of potential purchasers. The authors describe the different uses for intrinsic and extrinsic motivators and how to identify demotivators that may be blocking purchase.

5. 5.

   Chapter 6: What influences purchase? Pricing and selling your product or service. This chapter discusses how to evaluate the effect of your prices on purchase, how to deal with competitive pricing activities, and how to manage pricing within your own company. It also examines the sales force from the perspective of the strategic marketer.

6. 6.

   Chapter 7: Who learns how to use your product or service?. Here are provided fresh techniques for helping understand different customers and their learning needs, and for dealing with rapidly changing learning environments.

7. 7.

   Chapter 8: Do your customers experience value?. The authors explore some useful techniques for measuring customer satisfaction and meeting of customer expectations in this chapter.

8. 8.

   Chapter 9: Are you creating loyal users?. The first issue this chapter addresses is how to determine customer loyalty, including research approaches that track individual customers and their characteristics. Several ideas for loyalty‐building programs are also described.

9. 9.

   Chapter 10: How to create profits from marketing chaos. The entire CLC approach is reviewed in this final chapter, along with the important question of how to lead an organization to adopt the CLC approach.

Although the references are not from research in scientific and peer‐reviewed journals, the material is based on respectable practitioner publications. This book is very useful for the practitioner with plenty of hands‐on applications that can be implemented without too much difficulty. The frameworks and ideas are well developed and presented.