Scenario Marketing

This week we will look into the technique that some company applied in their attempt to secure customer loyalty.

Getting a customer meaning expanding the market share of the company. It is important for any company to secure as many customers as possible because it will eventually translate into net profits of the company.

Scenario customer relationship management technique or in a shorter term scenario marketing is to develop possible scenarios that the potential user/customer that will go through when performing a certain task. These scenario will then be use as a basis for innovation for the company. Companies can employ initiatives in supporting those scenarios thus, increase the efficiency of the user/customer in performing their tasks. However, is scenario marketing can enables the company to extend their understanding in their user/customer ?

The first case we are looking at is the National Semiconductor Manufacturer. They have developed a system that support the user/customer in making decision particularly in what type of product will be best suited in user/customer's design. By doing so, it enable the user/customer to save enourmous amount of efforts in developing a new product. This savings translate into loyalty for the user/customer because they will continuosly revisiting the website and make purchase through the manufacturer.

The second case is the Tesco case where their understanding on how customer would like to obtain their groceries through local stores enable them to rip profits from high-profit customers. Their tools also enable the customer to continue revisiting their website thus, contribute to customer loyalty.

The third case is the Buzzsaw.com where they create collaborative environment to enable different parties in construction development to interact. This initiatives directly support the user/customer in their efforts in undergoing their individual task.

All these initiatives has granted them customer loyalty because of their understanding of the customer needs. Nevertheless, in developing scenarios are usually tedious and dangerous because we have to consider the risk of omitting important details during the development.

In my opinion, the key to success in scenario marketing strategy is the ability to gather users opinion and incorporate them into a process that aim to support the users/customers. Once the users/customers have uses the support the company has to offer, it will create a switching cost for the customer to switch products because of their familiarity of the company's exisiting line of products. This switching cost ultimately translates into customer loyalty because customer will become hesitant to switch between manufacturers because they will need to put additional efforts in learning the pros and cons of the new product.

Although scenario marketing seems to be very effective in earning customer loyalty, building a precise scenario is extremely difficult because of multiple contingencies involve. Getting the contingency right is I believed to be the critical issue to success.