The Business Book

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access to much of this information,
providing companies with copious
amounts of data for marketing
purposes. Software that tracks and
analyzes customer preferences via
their online and mobile activities
has enabled companies to engage
in what is called customer
relationship marketing (CRM)—
using the data extracted about
customers and their preferences
to sell more products and services
to them. Amazon, for example, uses
a customer’s shopping history to
recommend similar products and
to show online browsers what other
customers with the same interests
have recently bought.

Real-time data
Telephone customer service sits at
the other end of the spectrum from
social media. Pioneered in the
1980s, it began to prove even more

useful in the 1990s with the increase

in call centers. Management can

divert calls from customer

service—or listen in—to learn what

issues consumers may be having,

what could be improved, and what

problems they have that need to be

solved. Marketers have dubbed this

“customer experience management”

UNDERSTANDING THE MARKET

(CEM), because it captures the

customer’s immediate interaction

with the seller, whereas CRM uses

a customer’s history.

The field of neuroscience has

taken the idea of customer

understanding to the next level,

advancing Drucker’s premise that

businesses needed to drill down

into the customer psyche and

discover how decisions are made.

Several studies by branding guru

Martin Lindstrom have caused a

sensation by proposing that, no

matter how consumers may answer

in face-to-face research, the only

way to know what subconsciously

motivates them to buy is to measure

changes to their brainwaves when

exposed to certain images, sounds,

and smells. According to Peter

Drucker, “the main objective of

neuromarketing is decoding the

process that take place in the

Personalized marketing makes use of
information gathered from social media
and other platforms to create tailor-made
advertising. Consumer A is an active,
athletic individual, and would respond
to marketing that speaks to this lifestyle.

Customer relationship marketing
makes use of historical data to produce
individual marketing. Consumer B is
an avid TV watcher; an online retailer
could make recommendations for DVDs
based on previous purchase history.

Psychographic profiling allows
marketers to find common ground
among a diverse group of individuals.
A canny marketer aiming for consumers
A, B, and C could use their shared taste
in music as a way forward for a campaign.

MUSIC SPORTS VACATION LEISURE

Consumer A

Consumer B

Consumer C

People are unlikely to know

that they need a product

which does not exist.

John Harvey Jones

UK industrialist (1924 –2008)