Marketing Mix
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LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter you should be able to:
LO1
Creating Customer Relationships and Value through Marketing
INNOVATION AND MARKETING AT 3M: HOW DISCOVERING STUDENT STUDY HABITS LAUNCHED A NEW PRODUCT
David Windorski, a 3M inventor, faced a curious challenge—understanding how college students study! Specifically, how do they read their textbooks, take class notes, and prepare for exams? After finding the answers, he needed to convert this knowledge into a product that actually helps students improve their studying. Finally, Windorski and 3M had to manufacture and market this product using 3M’s world-class adhesive technology. Sound simple? Perhaps. But David Windorski invested several years of his life conducting marketing research on students’ study behavior, developing product ideas, and then creating an actual product students could use.1 This process of discovering and satisfying consumer needs is the essence of how organizations such as 3M create genuine customer value through effective marketing. In designing a product that satisfies consumer needs, David Windorski’s invention got a personal testimonial from host Oprah Winfrey on her 2008 TV show. More on this later.2 Discovering Student Study Needs As an inventor of Post-it® brand products, David Windorski’s main job is to design new products. He gets creative “thinking time” under 3M’s “15% Rule,” in which inventors can use up to 15 percent of their time to do initially unfunded research that might lead to marketable 3M products. Working with a team of four college students, Windorski and the team observed and questioned dozens of students about how they used their textbooks, took notes, wrote term papers, and reviewed for exams. Windorski describes what college students told him: “It’s natural behavior to highlight a passage and then mark the page with a Post-it® Note or Post-it® Flag of some kind. So it’s reasonable to put Post-it® products together with a
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
After reading this chapter you should be able to:
LO1
Creating Customer Relationships and Value through Marketing
INNOVATION AND MARKETING AT 3M: HOW DISCOVERING STUDENT STUDY HABITS LAUNCHED A NEW PRODUCT
David Windorski, a 3M inventor, faced a curious challenge—understanding how college students study! Specifically, how do they read their textbooks, take class notes, and prepare for exams? After finding the answers, he needed to convert this knowledge into a product that actually helps students improve their studying. Finally, Windorski and 3M had to manufacture and market this product using 3M’s world-class adhesive technology. Sound simple? Perhaps. But David Windorski invested several years of his life conducting marketing research on students’ study behavior, developing product ideas, and then creating an actual product students could use.1 This process of discovering and satisfying consumer needs is the essence of how organizations such as 3M create genuine customer value through effective marketing. In designing a product that satisfies consumer needs, David Windorski’s invention got a personal testimonial from host Oprah Winfrey on her 2008 TV show. More on this later.2 Discovering Student Study Needs As an inventor of Post-it® brand products, David Windorski’s main job is to design new products. He gets creative “thinking time” under 3M’s “15% Rule,” in which inventors can use up to 15 percent of their time to do initially unfunded research that might lead to marketable 3M products. Working with a team of four college students, Windorski and the team observed and questioned dozens of students about how they used their textbooks, took notes, wrote term papers, and reviewed for exams. Windorski describes what college students told him: “It’s natural behavior to highlight a passage and then mark the page with a Post-it® Note or Post-it® Flag of some kind. So it’s reasonable to put Post-it® products together with a