According to the one-to-one marketing theory, we can judge the future needs of customers by the past preferences of customers reflected in the customer database. There is a paradox here: the implementation of one-to-one marketing needs the support of customer database, and the establishment and improvement of customer database needs the close interaction between enterprises and customers. In fact, it requires customer loyalty, but cultivating customer loyalty is precisely the purpose of one-to-one marketing, which in turn has become a necessary condition for realizing one-to-one marketing.
Undoubtedly, for some old customers, it is indeed possible for enterprises to improve their satisfaction by using and perfecting their existing purchase data and providing better services and products, thus consolidating their loyalty. But for those customers who don't buy repeatedly, especially some durable goods consumers who don't buy frequently, it is difficult for enterprises to make customized decisions according to different customers with sufficient customer data. For example, a family may buy refrigerators, color TVs and air conditioners for more than ten years. When they have the demand for repeated purchases, the historical purchase data is not only pitiful, but also may have lost its value because of the change of customer preferences over time. For enterprises to carry out one-to-one marketing and provide personalized services, this information can no longer form the basis of action. Without enough valuable customer loyalty behavior as a starting point, one-to-one marketing will become a castle in the air.
2. Customer-oriented trap
One-to-one marketing is declared by its preacher as the most thorough customer orientation, because all the activities of the enterprise are to meet the needs of every customer excavated from the customer database. However, in the process of interaction between enterprises and customers, whether according to the historical data of customers' purchases or according to customers' complaints and suggestions, the established needs, preferences and attitudes of old customers for existing products and services are reflected. Can enterprises dominated by these data create brilliant ideas in the future in generate? Can there be the vitality of sustainable development?
Stephen Brown, a professor of marketing at Ulster University in Northern Ireland, a visiting professor at Northwestern University in the United States and a marketing scientist, once criticized those enterprises whose customers' express needs were not synchronized in an article published in Harvard Business Review. He believes that customers are short-sighted, and even they don't know what they really want, so only when enterprises give full play to their creativity can they tap their needs. Management scientists Hammer and C.K.Prahalad also said that the future of an enterprise depends on the vague demands of customers, especially the demands of potential customers. Exploring the needs of these customers and satisfying them is the real customer orientation. It is these impossible things in the customer database that can guide the future of the enterprise and ensure its long-term sustainable development.
Enterprises caught in the extreme "customer-oriented" trap of one-to-one marketing will find that once competitors launch products that exceed customers' existing expectations with extraordinary foresight, they will step into the danger of being betrayed by old customers, and one-to-one marketing will become the "failure" of enterprises.
3. Ability trap
One-to-one marketing does not fully consider the limitations of enterprise capabilities, whether it is customized products and services based on a single customer or cross-selling. It seems that any personalized customer demand enterprise can meet it; As long as it is the needs of old customers, enterprises in any field can also be extended.
In fact, in order to meet the needs of customers beyond the existing business scope, enterprises must expand their capabilities in the existing value chain and even create a brand-new value chain. This must not be done at will, because enterprises are limited by limited resources and face various technical and financial barriers. Can Lenovo customize Lenovo refrigerators or Lenovo color TVs for computer customers? Can McDonald's open a school for frequented children? To some extent, it is as absurd as asking a best-selling novelist to write a philosophical book with profound connotations for his loyal readers.
The emergence of mass customization, in the view of Peppers and Rogers, can ensure that enterprises can design and produce for each individual customer, while ensuring that the cost remains within a certain range. They also neglected to divide the final product into different modules and increase the production mode of available final products through module combination, which is still limited by limited modules. Beyond this boundary, enterprises still cannot meet the individual needs of customers.
In the era of increasingly fierce competition, if an enterprise wants to be in an invincible position, it must cultivate its own core competitiveness, that is, it must do better than its competitors in creating customer value, which competitors can't imitate. However, according to the requirements of one-to-one marketing, enterprises will inevitably disperse resources in many links of the value chain, and it is difficult to cultivate core competitiveness. If you fall into this one-to-one marketing ability trap, it is impossible for enterprises to gain a competitive advantage.
4. Brand positioning trap
Advocates of one-to-one marketing emphasize the need to focus on customer share rather than pursuing market share. In order to accomplish this task, the guiding ideology of Peppers and Rogers is to ensure that each old customer of the enterprise buys more products produced by the enterprise through cross-selling.
Under this policy, Starbucks can no longer be just a coffee shop. Because once an old customer shows a demand beyond the scope of service, Starbucks should launch it for him, whether it is hamburgers, fried dough sticks, soy milk, noodles, beer or cigarettes. It seems that only in this way will Starbucks become the only choice for every old customer to have a casual meal, and the customer share will increase accordingly. This may be just a joke, but we should doubt this theory.
The vitality of the brand is condensed in the relatively consistent value it provides to the target customer group, that is, it exists in the value positioning of the brand, rather than being scattered in the different values provided to each customer. Because every customer has complex and diverse needs, increasing customer share requires enterprises to expand business projects. At the same time of differentiated development, the result will inevitably deviate from the brand positioning, disperse and blur the corporate image, and the brand value will be diluted. One-sided pursuit of increasing customer share is bound to quench thirst by drinking poison, which is likely to push enterprises to the point of no return.
5. Database general trap
In the view of one-to-one marketing advocates, the development of information technology is enough to ensure that enterprises can dig out detailed and accurate customer preferences and needs from customer data. There is such a logical basis here: history always repeats itself. Unfortunately, scholars who study consumer behavior have proved that many customers' buying behavior is impulsive and not repetitive at all. It is useless to collect historical materials at this time.
In addition, consumers have the psychology of innovation and change, especially in today's increasingly personalized, this psychology will be more obvious. If we design future products and services according to the characteristics of customers' past needs, I am afraid that enterprises will fall into a situation of losing vitality and will eventually be abandoned by customers. For example, according to this logical thinking, fashion designers only need to design clothes according to customers' past wearing preferences, without innovation and breakthrough. In this way, girls who love beauty don't need to go shopping in Taobao, and fashion designers can completely give way to machines.
Furthermore, from the customer's purchase desire to the final purchase behavior, there are many influencing factors, which can be a temporary emotional fluctuation, a word from a friend or a shopping guide, a detail of the terminal layout, or even a change in the weather. No matter how advanced information technology is, it is impossible to put all these massive data into the database and analyze customers' consumption behavior.
It can be seen that the customer database is by no means omnipotent, and it is difficult to accurately mine the laws of customer purchase behavior. Without a full grasp of consumer behavior, one-to-one marketing has become a mirage.
6. Customer added value trap
One-to-one marketing believes that enterprises can better serve each customer, increase the value of their experience, and reduce the economic and energy costs they pay, thus increasing the added value that customers get after fully understanding their preferences and establishing learning relationships.
However, in the long process of establishing this kind of learning relationship, customers and enterprises need to invest their energy together to let enterprises know customers' habits and preferences in depth. The example of Lego company quoted in One-to-One Enterprise shows that after buying Lego toys, customers should fill in the warranty card, register on Lego website, communicate with the enterprise and constantly feedback information. While enjoying the fun of toys, a child has to rack his brains to help Lego think about how to further improve its products and fill out those boring forms. God knows how imaginative Chili and Rogers are. Few people think that even a seven-year-old can do this now. What wishful thinking!
One-to-one marketing needs to design personalized services to increase the value gained by customers, so as to distinguish these customers from each other. For example, when an old passenger gets on the plane, the stewardess must pass the instructions of the database and serve him a cup of his favorite drink and a magazine he often reads without waiting for the old passenger to speak. Sounds very human. But through this example, we can see that to implement one-to-one marketing, many enterprises must put a lot of energy into the details that customers do not necessarily pay attention to, and into those aspects that can not obviously increase customer value. And if the preferences of the above-mentioned old passengers change, this flight is not flattering, but reduces the value of the customer experience.
It can be seen that one-to-one marketing may increase customer cost, but it may not necessarily increase customer value, so the added value of customers is greatly reduced, and customer satisfaction is also reduced, which completely deviates from the original intention of enterprises to implement one-to-one marketing.
7. Customer power trap
How much data do you need to thoroughly understand customers' buying habits and preferences? How much power does the enterprise have to obtain this information and use it for business? From a Hollywood movie Enemy of the Country, we can see that people are prying into citizens' privacy concerns under any seemingly noble excuse, and people's awareness of self-protection is gradually strengthened. If all enterprises really regard one-to-one marketing as a "victory" and use various information technologies to dig out all the details of customers' living habits, then people are like living in a spy group, and they will inevitably lose a lot of self-space in the face of snooping eyes everywhere. How can customers not resist this kind of corporate behavior that may not be worth the loss to them?
As another example cited by one-on-one marketing advocates, BaristaBrava coffee chain requires employees to remember every customer so that regular customers can get their usual meals without ordering. However, many customers regard the option as a right that should be exercised, not just the cost. Being deprived by merchants for even seemingly considerate reasons will also lead to customer dissatisfaction and bring negative effects. Enterprises should not be smart.
In the process of one-to-one marketing, communication is two-way. With the development of information technology, the cost of transmitting information is greatly reduced. That's why Peppers and Rogers think the time is ripe for one-on-one marketing. However, the development of information technology is also a double-edged sword, because while reducing the cost of information transmission, the amount of information that people have to contact every day has also greatly increased. In particular, those "unsolicited" commercial emails have flooded to a worrying level, which makes the cost of processing these information rise. This has caused great resistance from many people. For this reason, the European Union completely prohibits sending commercial e-mails to individuals without the prior consent of the recipients. One-to-one marketing advocates ignore the decision-making power of customers as information audiences, and the public's resistance to information dissemination must be unexpected.