There Are No Customers; Only Stakeholders

Web 2.0 and Marketing 3.0 are here and these are due to the internet revolution. Companies have evolved and constantly changed their strategies and approaches towards how they look at their consumers and customers. How do they treat the market?

After going through web 2.0 and marketing 3.0 and understanding the ideas imbibed in them, I thought of combining them both and developing a new approach to visualize the market and the customers. Essentially everybody is a stakeholder for an organization; the approach which I suggest is that we stop looking at our customers and consumers as someone who is out of the organization rather we see them as partners in the organization, part of one big family. This approach is already in place to an extent with the customers but not with consumers.

When a consumer who is happy with your product and your services writes good review about you on the social networking site he is basically doing marketing for you. Thus he is playing the role of one of your marketing guys and when he criticizes you he has taken the cap of product development guy. When we start looking at our consumers in this fashion a change is bound to happen. This will not only give him a sense of connection but will improve retention.

With these ideas in my mind I see a future where the words like consumer and customers have vanished and the person who buys our product or services is essentially a partner in the organization. This will give more meaning to words like brand loyalty and improve the performance of the organization.