Putting the cart before the horse idiom can be used to describe a common mistake in marketing which many companies do by developing products or services without first understanding the needs and wants of the target market and that is where market led marketing is of great help. Marketing led marketing refers to an approach where a company’s marketing strategy is driven by the needs and wants of the customers rather than the company developing the product first and then hoping to find its target market. In simple words market-led marketing is all about leading the horse to the cart that is the company should be putting the customer at the forefront of the decision-making process. In order to get a better idea about this concept one should look at the advantages and disadvantages of market led marketing –
Advantages of Market Led Marketing
Increased Customer Satisfaction
The best marketing is done by the consumer because 1 satisfied customer can bring 10 new customers and 1 unhappy customer can take away the business of 100 potential customers. Increased customer satisfaction refers to the improvement in the level of the delight of the customers towards a company’s products, services, and overall brand experience. When a company adopts a market led marketing, it tends to focus on identifying and addressing the specific needs and wants of its customers, which leads to the creation of products and services that better meet the expectations of the customers resulting in increased customer satisfaction.
Superior Market Positioning
A company’s capacity to position itself in a way that makes it more appealing to its target market is referred to as better market placement. When a company uses a market led marketing, it frequently carries out market research to identify the needs, desires, and preferences of its target market. The company can then utilize this information to create a distinctive value proposition that sets it apart from its rivals and thus attracts more customers to the company resulting in increased sales as well as profits for the company.
Forward Looking Approach
Companies never produce only one product rather they have to keep developing new products or services better meet the needs of the consumers, market led marketing through market research helps the company in understanding the needs and wants of the consumers apart from identifying the features, benefits, and pricing that are most attractive to the customers thus helping in optimizing the product development process in future.
Disadvantages of Market Led Marketing
Costly and Time Consuming Process
The biggest disadvantage of market led marketing is that it is a costly process in the sense that the company has to conduct extensive market research in order to identify the needs and wants of consumers besides market led marketing also requires a significant amount of time to conduct research, analyze the data, and make decisions based on the findings which not many companies can do and hence a big negative as far as market led marketing is concerned.
Unpredictable Market Trends
Another problem with market led marketing is that market trends are never static rather they change very quickly since the basic premise of market led marketing is to identify customer needs and market trends hence any change in market trends can make the whole exercise of market led marketing redundant.
Gap between Market Research and Product Development
Another drawback of market led marketing is that there is always a time lag between the company doing market research and doing the product development on the basis of that market research because if market trends or the mood of the consumer changes before the company actually develops a product than it will result in a big loss to the company as there will be no buyers in the market for the company.
As one can see from the above that market led marketing has pros as well as cons and that is the reason why any company thinking of using market led marketing should carefully read the above points and then only should take any decision whether it wants to go ahead with market led marketing for its products or not.