Making Best Customers Even Better

Title: Make Your Best Customers Even Better

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The conventional theories of marketing prioritize 4 Ps – Product, Place, Price and Promotion – as the marketing mix. In my opinion, of late, successful strategies include a 5th P: People. The customer experience is now the differentiating factor amongst brands across all industries.

The article Make Your Best Customers Even Better emphasizes on the 5th P, and in particular, superconsumers. Superconsumers of a product are those high volume buyers who are also actively engaged with the innovative uses of that product – they are passionate about the product, i.e., they are attached to the product both economically and emotionally. This makes them the key to profitable growth in any product category. The author discusses the Pareto principle – the superconsumers who constitute to a small fraction (10%) of the consumer base account for 30-70% of sales and even higher percentage of profits - and how companies should persuade the superconsumers to spend even more.

But do companies devise marketing strategies accordingly? Sure, there are companies like Tesla, Harley Davidson that do but, like the author says, companies think that there is a limit to the superconsumer consumption. In reality, though, studies found these consumers are drawn towards a product not just because of its use but have a thrill to use it or experiment with it. How much or how many a superconsumer would buy cannot be defined by the average use of a typical consumer. In light of these new findings, companies should appeal to this segment of their consumers for higher ROI instead of mass advertising to regain lost/inactive customers who are very unlikely to buy their products anymore.