Absolute Value

Marketing is studded with well-embedded beliefs, e.g., the brand is even more critical in an environment saturated with choice; marketers must be constantly preoccupied with maintaining consumer loyalty; positioning the product properly is crucial to success. However, in some product categories at least, these principles appear to lose their relevance. Indeed, the Internet, with its many comparison sites, user forums and expert blogs, dramatically changes the way consumers make buying decisions today. More and more, these decisions are based on opinions collected online, more than on company sales arguments. This explains why the initiatives traditionally used by marketing teams to influence consumer decisions—ad campaigns, point-of-sale displays, etc.—are becoming less effective. The authors analyze these trends, with many nuances. Far from announcing the demise of marketing, they encourage those responsible to see their trade differently and redirect at least part of their efforts and budget to new tools of influence. They can do this, for example, by spending less time trying to segment customers upstream and more time tracking the reviews of their products on the Internet in real time, in order to adapt their messages and provide responses on the spot. This means dialogue-based marketing rather than mass marketing, in sum. A book to read thoroughly and which will necessarily pose some challenging questions.