Live from #TMRE14: Why Marketing May Not Matter Much

Stanford University Graduate School of Business Professor of
Marketing Itamar Simonson explained how the rise of
today's informed and empowered consumer is subverting marketing convention.

Simonson, co-author of 'Absolute Value: What Really Influences Customers in the Age of (Nearly) Perfect Information,' reviewed the ways in which
brands in many categories'moreover, branding, conceptually'and traditional
constructs like loyalty, positioning and targeting are losing relevance and
effectiveness.

Consumers have unprecedented, immediate access to information and
their preferences are increasingly transient, malleable and subject to the
influence of other consumers, he noted.

What matters is current experience, not prior performance, Simonson emphasized.

Accordingly, brands as value proxies and loyalty as a purchase driver are
waning.

The implications for market research may be significant.

Simonson argued that to try to predict future behavior by
measuring consumer preferences today will prove increasingly difficult.

He said he expects loyalty metrics like NPS and lifetime value measures to lose utility and
that market research will focus less on tracking and more on conducting quick
experiments (A/B testing, etc.).