Last time, during an interview with Zhou Haijiang, president of Red Bean Group, he said that this round of inflation put greater pressure on Chinese enterprises than the financial crisis, and the mortality rate of most small and medium-sized enterprises might be higher. Therefore, he believed that transformation and upgrading were urgent. But how to transform? How to upgrade? He talked about consumer demand issues. He provided a path, which is to focus on consumer needs.
Actually, this is an old topic. However, do Chinese enterprises truly understand consumer needs? The consumer needs we understand, how exactly do we obtain this information? How to promote management changes and industrial changes?
Based on my research, our understanding and grasp of this issue have two major mistakes:
First, we often oversimplify consumer needs.
Strategically speaking, consumer needs are the main DNA guiding corporate strategy positioning. However, our enterprises place it in a marginal position, not considering it as the core for formulating corporate strategies. In contrast, some industry-leading enterprises focus all their early-stage efforts on consumer needs.
For example, Brother Industries in Japan, although this company is not large in global scale, it is a global champion enterprise in the printer and sewing machine fields. Yin Bingxin, the leader of Brother's China operations, told me that they noticed customers (enterprises, consumers) becoming increasingly stringent about printing costs and efficiency. Therefore, they launched a series of double-sided printers. Actually, Lenovo also paid attention to this change in customer needs and introduced similar products. Thus, there was competition between two products in the market. However, Yin Bingxin clearly did not focus on competitors because they had more need-based products in reserve, just waiting for the right time to launch them.
Letting consumers decide is a phrase emphasized by Yin Bingxin. In Brother Industries' view, consumer decisions dominate the entire group's operating strategies globally and in China. Almost every year at strategy meetings, the first content discussed by the group's senior management is not subjective opinions but research reports from the market department, such as differences in customer perception of the company's products, customer feedback, and economic demands for product use. The second step is to propose technical changes based on demand requirements. The third step is to conduct integrated marketing based on technical products. The entire process is a strategy. From this, we can easily see that consumer decision research precedes corporate strategy execution. However, our enterprises have reversed the entire operational order. Our response to consumer needs is too delayed.
Second, our research on consumer needs is too coarse.
According to general business game rules, produce what consumers want and give them what they need.
Indeed, this is true. However, we overlook detailed analysis of consumer needs. Researching consumer needs is not just a simple management action; it also involves a research process on consumer psychology.
Based on need expressions, there are various psychological manifestations such as fully determined, semi-determined, uncertain, emotional, impulsive, economical, skeptical, and undefined types. Can enterprises satisfy all these needs? Clearly, this is unrealistic. Therefore, enterprises need to comprehensively study, analyze, and determine all need information before influencing management practices.
Still taking Brother Industries in Japan as an example, within the group, there is something called the Brother Group Global Charter for managing consumer needs research. It consists of two parts: basic guidelines and behavioral standards for daily trend decisions and actions by group companies and employees, emphasizing providing excellent value to customers and placing customers as the top stakeholders. Specifically, there are the following two contents: one, looking at long-term perspectives and striving to meet the requests and expectations of all stakeholders with the spirit of "At your side"; two, adopting this as a new opportunity for corporate operations and taking actions. The most critical part here are the two words: expectations.
This company believes that expectations are the engine of CSR operations, continuously providing satisfaction to stakeholders, especially customers, regardless of current industry and operational conditions. This concept integrates various customer needs. Specifically, how to implement it? For example, the recently launched 5 office equipment models that won the iF Red Dot Design Award fully embody this business philosophy. In terms of technology application, besides double-sided printing, they also include network wireless printing, etc.
Consumer needs may seem like just a marketing topic, but they have a significant impact on corporate strategy positioning and enterprise transformation and upgrading.