Open For Changes…Anyone??

I had a soft skill training which took the whole of my Thursday. This soft skill training focused on the topic understanding yourself and others. In this training I really see how people are so different from every angle. These different characters could also be influenced by different roles, background, values, and reasons from the inside of the person. Therefore, the behavior that we see is just a small exhibit from the whole picture.

The most interesting part of the discussion is the fact that different characters have different tendency towards the changes in life aspects. Some people enjoy changes and see it as innovative and interesting steps in life. On the other hand, others might hate changes badly.

Marketing involves the whole aspects within the society therefore changes could not be avoided. According to Philip Fisher, a great investment opportunity comes from a company which realizes that a success from a single product is not an eternity. The management should realize that competitors will attack the market from different angles therefore it will change the customer and the society behaviors. The management has to understand that almost all success will fade if no further innovation, improvement, and probably extension to be implemented.

Approximately, two months ago I received a bad news from my family about the failure of my uncle in his optometry business. A decade ago his business was going very well and everything seemed to be very perfect. The Asian crisis, the occurrence of a lot of new and attractive shopping malls, the existence of new and different segmentations within the market, and a new costumer spending patterns turned the situation upside down. This is another sad story that I need to share to you.

The Road to Success is Always under Construction

A very successful Australian entrepreneur once told me that the road to success is always under construction. My real life experience could be treated as a great example. Fourteen years ago I was still a very young and naive student in a small primary school. My teachers told me that I was a bright student. I managed to be the leader of the class at that moment. My parents were so happy and very proud of me. At that time I was over the moon and felt like the greatest person in the world. I was thinking that if I could be the champion of the class now, I will always be the best student regardless which grade I am. However, the reality spoke differently. I became lazy and did not pay attention during the lecture. I left all my homework behind and did not prepare myself for the exams. My marks crazily plummeted. I was really young and naïve to think that the road to success is actually always under construction.

My father opened a Chinese food restaurant in Jakarta around ten years ago. At that time our restaurant was one of the pioneers in the location. In fact, the Jakarta hospitality industry was not as competitive as now. As the pioneer we basically controlled the local market and business basically was really good. Again he was over the moon and was indulged by being one of the leaders in the restaurant industry.

It is the nature of business that success will invite competition within the market. Even sometimes the new competitors would come to the market with better concept and bigger capital. Competition in the market shapes the customers’ requirement of better products or services. Not just competitors, a lot of different social and politic events also changed the business environment. For instance, the Asian crisis really diminished our sales. Both competition and the social changes created a new customer lifestyle and eventually a new consumer consumption pattern. As a kid I witnessed the fall of my father’s business. From that moment I realized that being a leader in one situation does not necessarily mean an eternal success. Even the five times world cup champion, the mighty Brazil, is not actually undefeated.

At the age of 22 I started a small business in Australia. It is basically an online retail business based on eBay, called Klick ‘N Save (http://www.klicknsave.com.au/). With a very little capital, I managed to obtain sales worth of AU$22,000/month. Since I am only a human, again I was over the moon and became too proud of myself. I did not thoroughly consider in sustaining the success by ignoring the competition and being insensitive towards the market. I absolutely failed as a marketer. I did not conduct any further market research in order to adjust my items selections. I was just too happy with the items which were highly on demand without realizing that latent competitors were actually getting closer to us. As I frequently said that in this modern society business environment changes very quick. Therefore, it requires us for being sensitive towards it. In the matter of months, the success was wiped out.

Approximately a month ago I started the new Klick ‘N Save with the new team. Within weeks, I have already faced a lot of challenges which can make me suffer from headache. Creating a sustainable business means than just being a temporary market leader. I have seen a lot of great businesses went down just within weeks. Even the mighty IBM could not sustain when Dell, Acer, and Compaq erode its market share.

I am still far from being successful but I hope this small sharing could strengthen the entrepreneur and marketing spirit of the rest of the group. The road to success is always under construction.

Comments, opinions, and questions are greatly appreciated.

David HerlambangMarketingFirst

Marketing and Love

To the beautiful Barbara Ellen Wijaya. Thank you for being a beautiful inspiration for me in understanding marketing and business. Thank you to keep supporting me with your beautiful heart. Thank you for your beautiful belief in me. Thank you.

In this column I would like to redefine marketing which is often perceived merely as “selling” in the business environment. However, I believe that marketing is actually involved in a lot of different aspects in our life. Intentionally or not, everyone is a marketer. Starting from having a name which is so called “our brand”. When our names are mentioned in the middle of our relatives, a lot of different perspectives and opinion would flow from each different person toward us. Some of them might like us, and hopefully not many of them hate us. This perspectives and opinions come from our attitude, manner, and acts that we have done towards our friends and relatives. This is totally similar to the situation when a brand "Coca Cola" is mentioned in the society. Some of us might like this particular classic soft drink, and some of us might hate it. At the end of the day, having a brand means developing a good culture which can be recognized by the society.

On the other hand, love is another interesting word to be explored. A life without love would only mean emptiness. When you see movie in the cinema you will find love story in it regardless the genre of the movie. It could be an action movie but it will have love story as the spice in it. When you listen to the random song on the radio, the majority of them would refer to love. These facts clearly stated that love is an important aspect in our life. I personally believe love is actually around the corner wherever you go and whenever the timing is.

Now, how can these two interesting aspects could be connected to one another? How can marketing, a concept of becoming a market leader in business be involved in a life aspect called love? And the most importantly, how can the marketing principles be applied in our love life?

Firstly, let us recall our memory when we fall in love. You would try to know them by talking to them, make some phone calls, and ask them out. Basically you are doing the very important aspect of marketing which is market research. Your target is actually your potential customer. In love better understanding on your crush will actually increase your chance to win their heart. I suppose business environment should be treated in the same manner. Better understanding on your potential customer will actually increase the possibility of creating the better product or service for them. The problem is the majority of marketers who claim to understand marketing often overlook this aspect.

I have stated for a few times that business environment is actually changing faster than what we can imagine. Political, technology and culture changes directly or indirectly alter both consumer behavior and business competition. For instance, internet has enabled a lot of new activities which was impossible. This then enables Amazon.com to become the latent competitor of the conventional offline bookstores. These changes are impossible to be stopped. Therefore, the only way to become a leader in business is to create the sustainable culture within the company in order to overcome the external changes which could have the direct or indirect impacts.

I think this condition also happens in love. Creating a sustainable relationship is also not an easy subject. You may have heard the expression “I cannot love you anymore, you have changed so much” in so many love stories. Let’s face it life is a journey. In the middle of our journey, a lot of changes in values would happen. The changes in value would affect our attitude, behavior and action towards our partners. Similar to marketing where understanding customers is a key to stay in the market, understanding our partners would be the key to create a sustainable relationship. I personally think that marketing and love are the never ending learning processes. Therefore, creating harmony within a relationship is pretty similar in creating sustainable values within the company.

In so many love stories we have seen how a guy tries to attract his crush’s attention by acting nicely as a gentleman. At the first date, a girl will dress up beautifully to create a memorable impression and hopefully the guy would become head over heels. The more I think about it, this phenomenon is actually very similar to advertising in marketing. The company actually tries to attract their customers’ attention by communicating the wonderful values behind their service or product via advertisements. In my previous column called “Towards the Good Will Marketing”, we can also see how companies try to create a wonderful impression in the community by giving positive impacts.
On the whole, by reading this column hopefully you will get a better understanding of the applicability of so many marketing principles in your life. I hope this column could further encourage more people to learn marketing in order to enhance their quality of life.

Further comments, questions, and opinions are more than welcome.

David Herlambang

MarketingFirst

Revisiting Your Business Concentration

I woke up this morning and went straight into the bathroom. I turn on the tap and as I washed my face, I was intrigued by one of the natures of water – its ability to reshape itself according to its containers. This enables water to fill up any empty space regardless of its shape.

I suppose this phenomenon also applies in our daily life, not excluding business and marketing sections. Often enough, we will encounter situations such as marriage and migration which require us to change. I have personally experienced this situation when I chose to further my studies in Sydney. I needed to change my daily routine, learned the new culture and of course communicate in different language.

In this modern society, business environment is changing faster than what we can imagine. These changes occur because the technology, politic, culture and also the people are changing. A decade ago, how many of us can imagine that banking transaction can be performed via mobile phone as well as the internet? How many of us can imagine that the oil and gold price will rise to the current level? How many of us can imagine the tragic incident that happen on 9/11?

According to Hermawan Kartajaya, one important aspect of marketing is being able to create a sustainable value. Being a market leader does not make you a great marketer. A great marketer is one who is able to sustain their position at the pinnacle of the market from time to time. A great marketer is also one who can understand the cultural, political and technical fluctuation of the business environment. Basically, human desire is generated by these changes. Or in other words, business opportunities are always created by the changes in any aspects in the society. You just have to spot it by expanding your sense of sensitivity.

IBM had always been a market leader in hardware industry. However, their persistent concentration on the super computer market to obtain huge profit from big companies and their ignorance on the growing PC market causes them to lose their credibility as the most admired company. In addition, they also lost their position as the market leader. PC market eventually became the most substantial marketing in the computing industry since technology change enables smaller computers to have greater ability than the humongous computers. Dell Computer on the other hand quickly noted this technology change and surpassed IBM from the PC market and become one of the great leaders in the computing industry.

Encyclopedia Britannica (EB) had been a leader in the printed encyclopedia market for almost 200 years. However, technology again changed everything. The invention of CD enables data storage to be more convenient and since modern technology allows featured animation and sound effect, it appeals more to the public. EB’s decision to stay conventional and reluctance to produce encyclopedia in CD, eroded their profit and domination.

Many years ago, the fat content in Chinese food had attracted fierce media attention in USA. As the country with the highest obesity rate in the world, this issue gravely affected the Chinese food business. Most of their profit plummeted up to 50%. A restaurant called Hunan Garden Szechuan Restaurant decided to change to Café 19 Chinese Health Food Restaurant. Still serving Chinese food, this restaurant changed their ingredients and menus to comply with the healthy food standard in USA. The so called “fat-free” Chinese food business attracted sales income much higher than before the fat controversy.

These examples clearly pointed out that it is very important for a company to recognize the market in order to be sustainable. Surely becoming sustainable in business is not a simple task. There are some situations that require us to broaden our business scope, others might need us to shrink the business scope, and of course there are some cases that require us to change our business scope. The ability to redefine the business scope in every single situation would dictate the success of that particular company in the long run. As Andy Grove said “Only the Paranoid Survive”.

Comments, opinions, and questions will be greatly appreciated. Thank you