Certainty at Uncertainty Times

Certainty at Uncertainty Times  

What strategy of marketing is to be followed in the current uncertain market scenario where the product, market and the traditional details involved in market research are unknowable? It would be cliché to say that world is more uncertain than ever but few realize the magnitude of this uncertainty at present times. Number of new start-ups have increased by almost tenfold in last 50 years which means technology and market is growing at an very fast pace. This uncertainty, which is accelerating at a very fast pace, has affected different industries in a different way. This uncertainty can be either due to demand uncertainty (will customers buy my product) or due to technological uncertainty (will I be able to build a right product). It is due to these uncertainties that the traditional marketing strategies have become very uncertain these days.

The demand uncertainty arises due to unknown preferences of the customers. More the unknown greater is the uncertainty. For example when Ola had first launched its carpooling services in India there was a lot of uncertainty of its survival as it was the first of its kind of service in India and there was no one else offering this type of service back then. In contrast when Sony decided to launch LED TV there was less of demand uncertainty as people were already using television. In this case as a marketer you are not sure whether you have meet the customer needs and customer will really be willing to shell out money to buy your product.

Technological Uncertainty arises from the unknown regarding the technology which is used to build a newer product. In this case you are unsure if you have built a right product by combining various technologies. An example of this could be developing clean technology products like solar cars. In this case as a marketer you are not sure whether the product is rightly built combining various technologies as per the needs and expectation of the customer.

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The upper right industries are the most uncertain industries. These companies require greater innovative marketing strategies compared to other industries. In other words if these highly uncertain companies don’t strive for innovative marketing strategies which can compensate for both demand and technological uncertainty, these companies would sooner or later die off. For example who would have predicted that robots could perform surgery? When Intuitive Surgical launched the Da Vinci System medical robot — which allows surgeons to operate using 3-D visualization and four robotic arms — the company faced significant technical as well as demand uncertainty.