We all have heard of Malcolm Gladwell and may have read his writing. The Tipping Point came off the press a decade ago sharing the idea that “little things can make a big difference.” Now take that concept as the launch pad into Mark Penn and E. Kinney Zalesne’s Microtrends: The Small Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes. Have you ever wonder who coined the terms “soccer mom” or the ever-growing breed of middle-aged women also known as “cougars?” These are just two of the 75 microtrends called out by the book chapter-by-chapter. It demonstrates the power of research and statistics.
Interesting videos related to this book:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/21347665 - Jim Cramer on Mad Money
http://pennschoenberland.edgeboss.net/wmedia/pennschoenberland/client1/abcnews_penn_09052007.wvx - Nightline’s coverage of the book
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hifihRzPevE – and of course an Authors@Google coverage
-- Team G (Nick, Jolie, and Chi)
The topic that stood out to me the most in the videos was that of contradictory development. In the past it was easier to "generalize" people and market segments because there were fewer classes to choose from (i.e. age, race, income, geography); but today we are seeing a large number of small trends driving the market. This new shift is causing a couple things to happen that companies need to be aware of in order to stay ahead of the curve: 1. Trends are always changing 2. It is more important than ever to understand the needs of the consumers within the small segments 3. Small trends are leading to other small trends. WIth all of these trend options, there is a good chance that two or more trends are moving in completely different directions, contradicting more and more market data that is gathered. This will make it even tougher for companies to gauge what they need to produce for their consumers.
ReplyDeleteOne question I had was how much of this micro-trending is applicable to manufactured products. Yes, you can get your coffee in 135 different ways at Starbucks, can you get your TV set, car or smartphone customized for your particular taste and whim at a practical price. So micro-trend is great way to differentiate and find niche market in the service industry. But even in service industry, there are counter-trend to micro-trends. Examples would be your wireless plan, choice of account types at your bank etc. Maybe following micro-trend is not a necessity for monopolistic or oligopolistic markets.
ReplyDeleteMy hunch is that eventually these so-called micro-trends will solidify and consolidate. I don’t know if you can ever have too many choices, but I also don’t think there needs to be 150 types of cell phones on the market either. I agree with Aaron in that trends are always moving one way or another. The current market climate seems to be so volatile, especially in high tech. As a potential investor, I would remain skeptical over these so called micro trends, and cautious in regards to their staying power. On the other hand, there is also an exorbitant amount of readily collectible data available from a variety of sources, which I think companies are compelled to act on. I think one of the complications manufactures and service providers have is the dilemma of going with your core product line, making small revisions during the products life cycle, or, do you constantly cater to individual niche markets.
ReplyDeleteWait a second. The average video game player in America is 33 years old? Okay, what is the confidence interval? Show me the standard deviation, and the skewness! I need more data. Maybe a bit off topic with the marketing piece, but oh well…this is a blog. I think this is an interesting concept. The difficulty, from a marketing standpoint, is to correctly identify what microtrends may be relevant, and which could affect current products, potential future products, or emerging markets, and then obtaining more substantive data. This is why the quantitative research is so important. Go back to the average age of an American video game player. Taken on its own, and at face value, marketing a product aimed at this stat may be a good idea. But you are headed for disaster if you solely rely on this data before marketing/investing. I am pretty sure that Jim Cramer has learned this lesson over the past two years.
ReplyDeleteThis book emphasizes one of the key points we've been learning about - focusing on the customer needs rather than set demographics. On the http://www.microtrending.com website, they mention another trend that moms over 45 are one of the fastest growing groups of video game players. Moms are probably the last group of people I would have thought of to do marketing research on to understand the video game experience for players but that demonstrates how big of a trap it is to segment your market before understanding potential customer needs.
ReplyDeleteI disagree that the microtrends will solidify and consolidate - I think they'll only multiply and expand moving forward making it more difficult for marketers to know what trends are likely to stick around and be profitable. It's interesting to learn in class about the vast tools available for marketers to research and target their market which are valuable but essentially give no insight in to microtrends. Video game moms won't be trending on twitter or high on a google keyword search, so how do marketers make a case for a valuable market when there's little data to back it up. It shows that you can't google your way in to a million dollar idea, intuition and observation go hand in hand with quantitative data to launch a successful product.
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