Marketing 3.0

Marketing 3.0 is the latest buzz going around in many marketing circles. In this post let us try to look at what the experts have said and how has the marketing concept evolved over the years...

According to Philip Kotler, Marketing 3.0 is in short, values-driven marketing. Over the years marketing has developed from a product-centic approach towards a customer centric approach and now the latest trend is towards a human centric era...

Marketing 1.0:
It represented the time when companies were involved in just building superior products and their imagination was limited by the functional benefits of the product. eg. Tide cleans better, Volvo stands for safety etc. This is similar to the "selling concept" coined by Sir Philip Kotler.

According to Sergio Zyman, Coca-Cola's former VP of marketing, 'the purpose of marketing was to sell more stuff  to more people often for more money in order to make more profit'.

Marketing 2.0:

Here the purpose was for companies was to differentiate themselves from the competition by adding an emotional dimension to strengthen their appeal to customers. This was a more customer centric approach where the job was no more to "find the right customer for your product but to find the right product for your customer". eg. J&J's Baby Powder is perhaps the most perfect example for such kind of marketing. This was brought upon by the Information Age of the 1950s...

Marketing 3.0:

Brought upon by the digital age (1990's), companies have become more transparent to the consumers (not by choice ofcourse) and those companies that have acknowledged this first and adapted to it are no doubt the ones that are calling the shots in most of the categories. 

According to Philip Kotler  "Mktg 3.0 is how a product and its company are sensitive to social and economic issues that are a concern to everyone.  Companies that conduct themselves ecologically and create real value that aligns with the social good will be competitively favored.  The new media will increasingly carry more favorable statements about "caring" companies" and this will influence the buying choices of more consumers."

With the advent of marketing on social media networks,not only products but even parent companies are being discussed by consumers like never before. In such an environment, bad word of mouth can create a lasting dent on a company's image and thus affect their product sales. Consumers increasingly want to purchase from so called Green companies, discussed in one of my other blogs.

In a recent presentation by Mr. Philip Kotler, he has described Values-based Marketing in the form of the following slide:

This is all for now, do post if you get to know any more developments on this topic...