The Hindu Business Line : `Marketers must be in tune with technology changes'

MR L.H. BHATIA, former Marketing Director, BPL, addressing the management students at the KLE Society's Nijalingappa College in Bangalore on Monday. — G.R.N. Somashekar

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Bangalore Feb. 26 In today's hyper competitive scenario, marketers must think beyond the 4Ps of marketing and bring the customer to the foreground, said Mr L.H. Bhatia, former Marketing Director, BPL.

Addressing management students at the KLE Society's Nijalingappa College Academy of Business Management in Bangalore, as part of the Business Line Club event on `Marketing in an open economy,' Mr Bhatia said: "Forget product, study consumer wants and needs. Forget price, understand consumer's cost of satisfying than want or need. Forget place, think of convenience to buy, and forget promotion, the word is communication." Understand the consumer's mind to do better business in future, he said.

The marketer's job is to promote consumption and that can be done only by understanding customer expectation and how it changes. Meeting customer expectation is the biggest challenge to marketers today, said Mr Bhatia, who then went on to elaborate the way marketing has evolved today.

"In the new environment, marketing is not about selling products but about keeping customers. Marketing has transformed from a monologue to a dialogue with customers. It is not a function ... it is integral to the organisation as it can redefine the way business is done."

Mr Bhatia said marketing evolves as technology evolves. "The future belongs to customers who have an enormous choice of brands and products. And technology is transforming choice and this choice is transforming the market place."

He used the example of Sony to illustrate this point. Mr Bhatia said till three years ago, the Japanese company held a monopoly in personal music system until it was overtaken by Apple with its iPod.

He also quoted the case of BPL, which till three years ago was seen as an "emerging Indian MNC but does not exist today as it did not read the direction in which technology changed''.

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