Abstract
It was an innocent student question on balancing short-term value versus long-term value destruction in my Innovations class, which led to a heated classroom discussion. I stopped the discussion in the middle and gave them an assignment for the next class, to read Kotler’s (1972) article on ‘What Consumerism Means to Marketers’. An article that had greatly impacted my career more than 40 years previously.
The results were amazing. They learnt far more from the article and from each other than it would ever be possible to teach. The next step was to approach Gautam Mahajan and ask him if he thought Professor Kotler might be willing to offer a new commentary on where we have been and where we are heading.
Professor Kotler’s response (Kotler, 2020) has been very insightful to read, and it raises a number of important questions in my mind. Alongside the major new features of consumer life, we read that more companies are trying to be responsive to consumer needs. I would have expected by now (almost 50 years later) that almost everybody would have climbed onto the bandwagon of Stakeholder Capitalism, given the amount of research showing the social benefits as well as the higher profits of such companies. However, the customer rage studies (Alcantara, 2020) over the past 20 years have consistently shown that this is not the case. More than 50% of companies in 2020 still do not answer customer complaints. What are we doing wrong? What can we do to change?
As good as our lives have gotten, we still feel the need for strong consumer protection, and even when we get it, there are attempts to water it down as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) example shown in Kotler’s (2020) article.
We used to talk about government of the people, by the people and for the people, but now that seems to be a case of ‘do what I say, not how I act’ by government officials at all levels that seem to be oblivious to what a personal example means for consumers, especially in these trying times of the pandemic. This is clearly a case of value destruction. We are cutting off the branch that we are standing on. I would like to see consumer protection become less reactive and more proactive. Not just more companies willing to take a stand for social justice and welfare, but almost all of them. Let us make regulation the exception, and not the norm.
Fagiano (1991), many years ago, tried to explain why literacy is a company’s business. By raising the level of education in a community, it becomes a more desirable place for people to live, making it easier to attract high-quality employees, raise the standard of living and lower the crime rates. What would happen if we could offer more affordable housing, better childcare (especially in times like this pandemic), and better water and healthy living conditions, as Professor Kotler mentions? Milton Hershey was able to do it over 100 years ago, and several companies are doing it today. Why are they still the exception and not the rule? Why are we accepting this as the status quo, and not pushing for change, to make this world a better place?
Education has become the rule and not the exception, as more and more people are able to attend universities, colleges and local community colleges. But what are we teaching? Who decides the curriculum? Are we teaching yesterday's curriculum to solve yesterday's problems or are we teaching the students new skills that businesses need in order to succeed in a constantly changing environment? In far too many cases, education is becoming more organization focused and less student (customer) focused. Classes are taught by available faculty according to their strengths rather than attempting to find the best teachers for the skills students and businesses find necessary to succeed. Attempting to add a new course to the curriculum is considered in many places to be a waste of resources. Prepping for a new course or conducting more research? Adding one class means dropping another class and how will that impact tenure?
Godin (2020) has defined marketing as anything we do that changes the culture for the better. What does that say about concerns for privacy, and what does that say about too much advertising. We are still stuck in the selling mode, as opposed to social marketing or even the marketing mode. When was the last time a company actually tried to understand customer needs and come up with a better solution? Co-creation (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2000) came onto the scene more than 20 years ago, but how many companies are sitting down with customers to solve problems? Yes, there are a few, but why is not almost everybody doing it?
Social media is leading social change, but it also appears to be highlighting major differences between groups, radicalizing rather than stressing common denominators. Movements such as ‘Black Lives Matter’ should be leading the way towards social equality for everyone. We need to be moving forward towards a better tomorrow. Tolerance is not a zero-sum game. In a culturally diverse society, we should all be celebrating our differences as well as building on our similarities. We should be asking what can we be learning from other cultures, and not trying to destroy them. Value creation and not value destruction.
Can education and business sit down and co-create a curriculum that will prepare students to make a contribution that can offer students skills for the twenty-first century, skills that businesses desperately need and skills that will allow people to provide for their families?
Can business sit down with consumers and make more ‘Desirable Products’? How can we devise a plan to increase the common good? Where do we want to go? Some businesses have found that treating their stakeholders (employees, customers and suppliers) well has greatly increased shareholder returns, a classic Win-Win situation. Why are more organizations not following their lead?
Can consumers sit down with politicians and businesses and co-create a greener planet? We need more solutions, and less finger-pointing. We need more value creation and less value destruction. We need to be making a difference. People need to matter. We are not just cash cows for shareholders or pawns in a political game. We need to be co-creators of our future. Not just a few companies, so that we can delude ourselves into thinking things are getting better, but everybody needs to contribute to making a difference, so that we can actually feel good about ourselves, and we can contribute to making this world a better place to be through value creation.
Professor Kotler has done it again and paid attention to what we need to be doing to increase the common good and ensure that our children and grandchildren will live in a world they can be proud of. It is now up to us.
