Renault planned to have one of its models "speak" to its customers. The company hired THT to find out how the car was supposed to speak to its driver. Should it say "You need to put gas in the car soon" in a feminine voice or in a masculine voice? Should a matter-of-fact tone or a cautionary one be used? The answer Renault got was unexpected: Drivers didn't want the car to speak to them at all. They didn't want to be "outsmarted" by a car; the driver was supposed to be the intelligent one, the one in control. Rather than having the car tell them when the gas was low, the drivers wanted direct, simple access to the information when they needed it. A digital gauge did not meet this need because drivers found the information hard to read and process quickly. They preferred having a simple, visual representation of how much gas they had left in the tank. This finding was confirmed in research conducted by Volvo. According to them: "The instruments on the interior of a Volvo are designed ergonomically. They appeal to the eye; they also have analog dials, not digital displays. Research has convinced us that drivers feel more comfortable with familiar analog dials than with digital readouts." Both Volvo and Renault have discovered the correct way to communicate fuel status to customers: through a visual gauge.
In earlier publications we have suggested that the most important tension facing marketers is the dilemma between this orientation to the internal or the external world. This antagonism becomes even clearer if your organization offers its products or services in an international context. It is quite obvious this orientation on control, or locus of control, is culturally determined. And obviously the solution lies in the connection of this antagonism.
In research at THT we have asked over 60,000 business people to chose from the following propositions:
What happens to me is my own doing.
I often feel I cannot take control of the things that happen in my life.
Let's look at the results across nationalities. Respectively 88% of Israelis, 86% of Norwegians, 82% of Americans and, yes, 76% of the French chose answer "a." On the other extreme - the externally controlled, who take the outside world as their point of departure - we find 67% of Venezuelans and 61% of the Chinese saying that answer "b" applied more to them than answer "a." (The relative orientations shown in Figure 3.3 are based on our internal-external dimension scale, which is computed from a whole series of questions similar to the above.)
Undervaluing these cultural orientations is liable to cause problems in selling products in cultures which marketers do not understand. Let's look at one example.
Americans seem to want everything to be under their controclass="underline" their lives, their children, their partners, their bodies, their bank accounts, even international politics. The French company Danone, itself also "in control," has seen what results from underestimating this orientation. Their very expensive ads launching their French cheese in the US had absolutely no impact on buying behavior. In their campaign Danone emphasized the delicious smell and sensuousness of the cheese by showing female fingers caressing and pinching it. In France this is routine, determining the maturity of the cheese and used to see if there is some "life" in it. Cheese is allowed to mature outside of the refrigerator, often until it is runny. Conversely for most Americans cheese is associated mainly with the cheeseburger and is wrapped in plastic and kept in the refrigerator. Cheese is only edible if it is pasteurized and very "dead." Danone's ad appeared distasteful, and that was terrible for sales. Eventually Danone launched a campaign where the same cheese was recommended as being good straight from the refrigerator, was seen as well-packed, and was checked in detail.
But is marketing not by its very nature simply the anticipation of the customer's needs and wishes? The customer is king,after all. Not at all! To focus exclusively on customers at the cost of your own values is very dysfunctional. Staff in organizations such as Ritz-Carlton Hotels have understood this. Instead of "Sorry, that is impossible," they will say "I'll see what I can do for you." They have been trained never to say "no," but never to respond with an unconditional "yes" either.
Fons stayed at the Ritz-Carlton in Naples, Florida. His family arrived late at the beach and noticed that all the recliners were occupied. Fons talked to the hotel's beach guard, who said that this was quite normal at that time of the day. "But we've just arrived from the Netherlands where there is little sun," was Fons' immediate response, "and we'd really like to be able to sit outside." The staff member said that no other chairs were available, but asked them just to wait. Five minutes later he returned, together with two colleagues and the luxurious chairs from the hall of the hotel. These were taken to the beach and Fons' family were able to sit in an excellent place close to the sea.
But we cannot draw the conclusion that the employees had been brainwashed by the saying that "the customer always comes first." The obvious conclusion from that point of view is that the staff automatically come second. It concerns the reconciliation of two orientations that are both incorporated in a relationship of high quality. On the one hand, there are the demands of the customer; they pay for service. On the other hand, there is care for the staff; people give a large part of their life to the organization. As an organization you can demand nothing if you fail to look after your people well, and that applies to your customers too. Ritz-Carlton speaks of tough love: "where ladies and gentlemen serve ladies and gentlemen." Quality relationships are both demanding and caring. The more you give for your people and customers, the more demanding you become. If, on the one hand of the dilemma, too much care predominates without reciprocal demands, both customer and employee will go. And if you demand no care the result will be the same. The "customer as king" idea has produced a number of spoilt customers, resulting in a situation where employees do not want to satisfy their demands. In an ideal situation, a customer needs to be looked after well, but in such a way that you can demand some things in return. In this way internal and external orientations are united.
Customer Orientation in China and the US
In a cultural environment where a lot of attention is given to outside forces, companies are very interested in finding out what customers want. Manufacturers do their best to make or develop products that fulfill consumer needs. With the recent economic reforms, Chinese companies have been made responsible for their own profit or loss, and this has made them even more consumer oriented. For example, many Chinese manufacturers now conduct R&D activities in close cooperation with customers. Western manufacturers who wish to sell on the Chinese market will also need to be attentive to the needs of consumers and be willing to adapt their products and services to the Chinese market.
The strong Chinese belief in stories plays a significant role in marketing. In China, the company that is the first to introduce a certain product is usually the most successful. One of the main reasons behind this is that such a company can literally construct the market by creating stories or rumors beneficial to its products. These stories are as readily believed by Chinese consumers as facts, especially when the stories have an academic element to them, and they will be used as benchmarks to compare other products. Companies entering the Chinese market later, even with better products, will find it extremely difficult to counter these stories.
The usual practice in America is deviance-correcting feedback. You have an inner-directed purpose. You start to implement it. You get feedback that you are not quite on target. You take corrective action and persevere in your chosen direction.