If you don’t understand these, don’t claim you’re good at marketing
If you don’t understand these, don’t claim you’re good at marketing. When people think of marketing, they often envision marketing professionals engaging in business activities and sales behaviors that involve creating, communicating, disseminating, and exchanging products for the market. However, Willem Burgers, a marketing professor, believes that marketing is not only the management of “exchange,” but also a knowledge system and even a way of thinking. Burgers, who used to teach marketing and strategy at the Central European International Business School, shared his understanding of marketing in a class at Chaotic University. According to Burgers, marketing can be considered from the following three perspectives:
Firstly, marketing is a strategy for managing exchange, which needs to be considered at the strategic level. The research topic of marketing is actually “exchange,” and marketing management is the strategy for managing exchange. Based on this foundation, a series of questions can be raised, such as what to exchange, with whom to exchange, where to exchange, how big the exchange scale is, and how to set the exchange price.
These questions are actually subfields of marketing, such as product pricing, sales management, advertising placement, market research and development, new product development, channels, retail, wholesale, and so on. Under each subfield, there are even more specific topics. Marketing covers a wide range of areas, so no one can know everything in the field of marketing.
Willem Burgers explains that marketing managers need to understand details in specific areas. For example, US President Trump almost always wears a red tie, and research has shown that men wearing clothing with the color red are more attractive to women. In addition to details, marketing managers must also have strategic thinking.
He compares marketing to a chess game, where strategic thinking in marketing includes two levels: the first level is to play the game well along a predetermined route, and the second level is to be a strategist who develops and manages the route and process. “Things always happen at these two levels. Without strategic thinking, marketing managers would probably be more like supermarket cashiers who follow procedures but do not manage them.”
Secondly, marketing is a collection of complex knowledge, and marketers are collectors and users of this knowledge. Willem Burgers believes that marketing is also a knowledge system, and the job of a marketing manager is to collect knowledge and find ways to use it to make their company more successful.
He also introduced the practice of Winn-Dixie, a US chain supermarket. When you enter this supermarket, the first thing you see is flowers. The supermarket uses the “flower fragrance effect,” as research has shown that flower fragrance largely affects women’s judgment of things, causing temporary short-sightedness.
In supermarkets, 90% of products are purchased by women who tend to overestimate the prices of other items due to the presence of fragrances. The net profit of American supermarkets is about 2% to 3%, and a 0.1% increase in the selling price can lead to a 5% to 10% increase in profit. Therefore, Wendy Dixie used fragrances to reduce customers’ sensitivity to prices, significantly increasing the supermarket’s profit margin.
Thirdly, marketing is a philosophy based on various common sense principles that focuses on actual value and manages probability. In the view of Willem Burgers, marketing is also a philosophy and a way of thinking. He believes that philosophy is, to some extent, common sense. What is common sense? Common sense is the way of thinking that you are not aware of because you are too familiar with it. The common sense of marketing is to recognize that thinking about problems with different common sense will bring different results. Therefore, it is necessary to understand as much as possible the common sense on which others think about problems and focus on real value.
Willem Burgers once consulted for a company that produces asphalt. The company’s product quality was good, but the price was twice that of ordinary asphalt. The company had communicated with a city in Jiangxi Province, and the mayor decided to use the higher quality product. However, the procurement officer at the transportation department was concerned whether the quality was worth paying twice the price for.
He analyzed that in the procurement of transportation, financial logic is used where the focus is on financial costs, while the mayor considers the overall social costs. If the quality of asphalt is poor and there are holes in the road, fixing them would require blocking traffic, causing many cars to burn extra fuel for hours.
In marketing, one should think like a mayor and consider various factors that are constantly changing. Burgers believes that marketing is also a science of probability as even if one does everything right, the result may still be wrong. Therefore, it is important to manage these probabilities and focus on statistics. To excel in marketing, one must learn two things: asking good questions that pinpoint the core issue and constantly trying new things to overcome uncertainties.
Additionally, Willem Burgers suggests that to excel in marketing, one must learn two things. Firstly, one must know how to ask good questions. Good questions are those that can pinpoint the core of a matter. Achieving this requires marketers to think deeply and overcome their tendency to make assumptions. They must keep asking questions until they reach the essence of the problem. Secondly, one must continuously try new things. Marketing is filled with uncertainty, and often, yesterday’s successful methods may not work today. Therefore, it is necessary to constantly adjust marketing strategies and try new approaches.
