How to approach marketing from a strategic perspective

Are you a marketer? Are you wondering why the consumer is more attracted to your competitor's brand than yours? If you think that your competitor has been able to win over the consumer, merely by offering better value propositions, you could be completely wrong, says Niraj Dawar, Professor, Marketing, Ivey Business School Canada, in his book Tilt.

Dawar claims that his book is a marketer's answer to his colleagues on how to build the competitive advantage of a company and building a sustainable source of differentiation in a difficult economic environment. In a conversation with Business Today's Ajita Shashidhar, Dawar shares three insights to approach marketing from a strategic perspective. Excerpts:

1. Marketing has nothing to do with offering better solutions, it's to do with selling better: Let me illustrate this to you with an example. Cement additives is an important component for any construction activity. Most contractors, however, don't bother to ensure that they stock enough additives.

More than often, the contractors run out of additives and place urgent orders. Master Builders, a cement additive company in Thailand, came up with a brilliant solution. To reduce the risk of run-out of additives, the company ensured that it made inventory available at all important construction sites round the clock.

It sold chemical additives with the guarantee that there will be no stock-out. By doing so it ensured the loyalty of the construction fraternity. This to me is a great operational tactic of understanding consumer needs and catering to it. Here, the company didn't offer a value-added product, but a smart solution.

2. Marketing is all about offering the right kind of information-based solutions at the right time: There was a time in the UK, when the consumption of wine was a quarter of what it was in other parts of Europe. The reason was the consumers didn't know which wine would go well with what food. Sainsbury's, a trusted UK retailer, decided to play a role in not only sourcing various kinds of wine, but it also colour-coded and labelled the wines, telling consumers which wine would go with a particular meat. They sold it under the Sainsbury's brand, which symbolised trust for most Britishers. Ever since they did this in the 1990s, the sale of wine in the UK has gone up every year.

3. Innovation needn't mean offering better products: Innovation could also mean helping a consumer cut his/her costs, conserve time, energy and so on. Twelve years ago, the CEO of Premier Automotive Group (which then owned brands such as Land Rover, Jaguar and Aston Martin) asked an interesting question. He asked his team whether it was possible to look at innovation differently, instead of building hero products. Since the target audience was globetrotters, he wondered if it was possible to sell them a mobility contract.

The idea was to enable the consumers to be able to access their brands in any part of the world at 24 hours notice. A customer could get a limousine when he landed in Dubai or a convertible in Paris. His idea was to not just make better cars, but also sell them in a smarter way.

It's a different matter that he quit and the company's vision also changed. However, the concept of shared cars was introduced later by companies such as Cambio and Zip.

You would find 30 to 40 cars parked at airports and metro station in many countries. To me, it is an efficient way of using automobiles. Every car spends 90 per cent of its time in parking lots. If cars can be shared, there would be fewer traffic jams and more parking.