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Many companies naturally see the middle, 'making' stage as the bit where wealth is actually created. But actually, if we look a little more closely at the process as a whole we soon discover that the matching and connecting functions of marketing are absolute, central economic necessities. Quite simply, if you fail to bring the right product or service to market, or fail to sell it, your survival is at risk. Making without matching and connecting is wasting. So the consumer understanding that informs this matching and connecting is the stuff of high stakes indeed. .
In fact, so high are these stakes that they actually colour how and why companies approach consumer understanding in the first place. In theory, the purpose of marketing (and the consumer insights that drive it), is to understand consumer needs and meet them. In practice, the real role of consumer understanding in the marketing corporation is rather different. Its real role is to reduce corporate risk and protect investments. .
To see the full effects of this shift in focus let us look a little closer at marketing risk. Running a modern company is rather like steering a supertanker. Like the supertanker, it takes a long time for the modern firm to change direction. There is a significant time delay between researching a need or market and actually bringing an offer to market. The whole process of researching, developing, testing, making and launching may take years. Companies have worked hard to reduce this time lag, but the risk it generates is still significant, because markets are always moving and changing. .
It is compounded by the fact that firms have to commit sometimes enormous sums of money to R&D, productive capacity, distribution and marketing, before any cash returns are actually generated. Like the supertanker words, not only does it take time to change direction, but enormous weight and momentum is attached to each such decision.
