Part 1: Defining Marketing and the Marketing Process (Chapters 1–2)
Part 2: Understanding the Marketplace and Consumers (Chapters 3–6)
Part 3: Designing a Customer-Driven Strategy and Mix (Chapters 7–17)
Part 4: Extending Marketing (Chapters 18–20)

4

Marketing
Information to Gain

Managing

Customer Insights

Chapter Preview

In this chapter, we continue our exploration of how marketers gain insights into consumers and the marketplace. We look at how companies develop and manage information about important marketplace elements: customers, competitors, products, and marketing programs. To succeed in today’s marketplace, companies must know how to turn mountains of marketing information into fresh customer insights that will help them deliver greater value to customers.
Let’s start with a good story about marketing research and customer insights in action at P&G, one of the world’s largest and most re-

spected marketing companies. P&G makes and markets a who’s who list of consumer megabrands, including the likes of Tide, Crest, Bounty,
Charmin, Puffs, Pampers, Pringles, Gillette, Dawn, Ivory, Febreze, Swiffer, Olay, Cover Girl, Pantene, Scope, NyQuil, Duracell, and dozens more. The company’s stated purpose is to provide products that “improve the lives of the world’s consumers.” P&G’s brands really do create value for consumers by solving their problems. But to build meaningful relationships with customers, you first have to understand them and how they connect with your brand. That’s where marketing research comes in.

P&G: Deep Customer Insights Yield Meaningful
Customer Relationships

C

reating customer value. Building meaningful customer relationships. All this sounds pretty lofty, especially for a company like P&G, which sells seemingly mundane, low-involvement consumer products such as detergents, shampoos, toothpastes,