Li Jiaoshou's Marketing Class: A Model to Unravel How Marketing Experts Win

Before we officially start, I would like to ask you two questions.

The first question: What is marketing ?

I asked many people around me, and the common answers were:

◆ Marketing is communication, which is to use communication skills to go viral in the circle of friends ;

◆ Marketing is branding, it is using the power of media to build a strong brand;

◆ Marketing is advertising, which is about efficient promotion , such as how to do a good job in Baidu's bidding ranking ;

◆ Marketing is copywriting , and it is about impressing consumers with wonderful copywriting.

The second question: What is the difference between marketing experts and non-experts?

I also asked people around me, and the common answers were:

◆ Marketing experts have many ideas;

◆ Marketing experts have great copywriting skills;

◆ Marketing experts are extroverts;

◆ Marketing experts have a strong ability to learn new things.

These two questions outline everyone’s general understanding of marketing. To sum up, marketing seems to be an activity in which some smart people use a series of sophisticated techniques to effectively spread corporate brands and products, make them widely known to consumers and trigger consumption.

Is this really the case?

Demand is the first instinct of marketing

Key points in this section:

◆ The core concepts of marketing are: demand;

◆ The essence of marketing is to achieve one's own goals by taking advantage of other people's needs;

◆ The essential purpose of marketing methods is to increase consumers' demand for you. Without demand growth, no matter how good the marketing numbers are, they will be ineffective.

Let me ask you another question: Who made the greatest contribution to humans being able to fly into the sky?

I believe everyone’s first reaction is the Wright brothers who invented the airplane. But I think it was Newton and Bernoulli. If humans did not understand gravity and fluid mechanics, there would be no way to harness the power of nature and invent airplanes to fly in the sky.

The same applies when we discuss marketing.

If our marketers only focus on superficial aspects such as how to send WeChat messages , how to do promotions, and how to organize events, but do not explore the "gravity" principle of marketing, then we will be like the ancients who wanted to fly by fitting a pair of wings, and fall off a cliff and be smashed to pieces.

Our task today is to find the most basic principles of marketing and use a model to crack its core code. I hope this model can become the most basic thinking tool for marketers and then become a thinking habit, and everyone will definitely benefit from it.

Because of my work, I have had in-depth exchanges with many company founders and marketing managers, and they often ask the following questions:

◆ I have made a very good product, laid out a very good channel , run a very good advertisement, and have very good publicity. Why can't the product become a truly strong brand like Coca-Cola , where people naturally have a demand for it even without advertising?

◆ My product is of very good quality and is very popular among users who have purchased it. But why can’t I achieve significant growth no matter what marketing method I use, even if I slash the price?

◆ My product is very innovative and cool, and many people are interested in it, but why does all this attention only turn into a few orders?

I think their questions all touch upon the most fundamental issue of marketing: demand. There are many definitions of marketing, but in my opinion the essence of marketing is very simple: studying how to achieve your own goals by satisfying the needs of others.

Understanding user needs is the first instinct of marketing.

Each of us has desires and goals in this world, but we must be clear that we live in a value trading system, and your goals often have to rely on others to achieve.

Thus, marketing emerged. Both companies and individuals have the need for marketing. Its function is to make others demand your value.

Many of our entrepreneurs have produced great products, so they keep buying channels to distribute them to consumers and say: Come and buy me, because I’m cool.

This type of marketing does not establish a relationship between the product and a specific need of the user, so it is often ineffective. But such basic mistakes are repeated every day in our advertising and promotion.

Therefore, the most basic concept of marketing is demand. All brands, promotions, copywriting, and advertising are marketing activities, not the essence of marketing. If a company does not grasp the real demand, then no amount of marketing activities will make sense.

So, starting from the essence of demand, let’s examine marketing activities. We write copy, post on Weibo, send red envelopes, do door-to-door marketing , and ask others to scan... What is the purpose of these various marketing methods?

The essential purpose of marketing methods is to increase consumer demand for you. If your marketing programs don’t increase demand for you, then no matter how impressive the exposure numbers they achieve in the short term, they will be ineffective in the long run.

In today's class, we will first analyze the mechanism of user demand formation. This is the top priority of this class and a proposition that every marketer should deeply understand. On top of this, let’s discuss how to keenly discover changes in user needs and seize emerging new demands.

Demand Triangle

Key points in this section:

◆ The sense of lack, the target object and the consumer's ability constitute the crucial "demand triangle" model;

◆ Failed marketing must be due to the failure to complete the construction of the demand triangle;

◆ The fundamental difference between excellent marketers and mediocre marketers is that mediocre marketers manage means, while excellent marketers manage needs.

User demand is a concept we often talk about, and it doesn't sound profound.

Our common definition of demand is that people form the purchasing power for specific products and services in order to meet specific needs. This sentence is very confusing and doesn't seem to be particularly inspiring. But if you carefully break down this sentence and delve into it, you will find that it contains a key "demand triangle" model.

The first stage in forming a need is a sense of lack.

All needs originate from some kind of lack; without lack, needs will not form. For example, a female college student who has just graduated may think that carrying a 200-yuan bag looks good.

But after I started working, I found that my colleagues were carrying bags worth thousands of dollars, and I began to feel a sense of lack. In fact, the sense of lack is often formed by acquired marketing.

All needs ultimately come from a sense of lack, so is a sense of lack a need? Of course not, this is just a feeling and ultimately there is no way to form a purchase.

The second stage of demand formation requires a clear target.

Due to different cultures, environments and people, the same lack will point to different targets.

Let’s take the female college graduate just now. When she first entered the workplace, she lacked a sense of presence. Her goal of increasing her presence might be to carry a more expensive bag, pursue better performance, or establish a better relationship with her boss. It depends on her values.

The sense of lack plus the goal constitutes motivation. When we help consumers build motivation, our marketing is half successful. But that’s not enough.

The third factor in demand formation is consumer power.

Ability not only refers to the economic ability to pay, but also the consumer's learning ability, trust cost, etc. In short, after completing motivation shaping, what marketers need to do is to empower consumers so that they can ultimately make a purchase.

Many products have a large audience, but are well received but not popular. The problem often lies in this dimension.

Sense of lack, target object and consumer ability constitute the "demand triangle" model.

Li Jiaoshou 's "demand triangle" model

The composition of all demands must meet these three elements. Without any one of them, the final demand cannot be formed. The root cause of failed product marketing is often the failure to complete the demand triangle.

This is the fundamental difference between mediocre marketers and excellent marketers.

Mediocre marketers focus on means and techniques, such as the eight means of attracting traffic , how to register an account on WeChat, how to get a beautiful avatar, how many people to add nearby, and what products to promote afterwards. These are not essential issues.

Great marketers are very good at managing demand. They are very good at identifying and exploiting gaps in demand. Corporate marketing requires a clear strategy, and the strategy comes from the management needs triangle.

Next, let’s take a deeper look at the three elements of the needs triangle and see how to use them specifically in our work.

Lack of feeling

Key points in this section:

◆ Good marketing must establish a connection with the user's sense of lack, awaken the consumer's hidden sense of lack, and give him a reason to change himself;

◆ Dissect the “Consumer Gap Table” and find the five perspectives that stimulate consumers’ sense of lack.

The sense of lack is the difference between consumers’ ideals and reality. We commonly call it "pain point".

You have to know that people don’t like change and are very resistant to change. Companies are always more anxious about consumer changes than consumers themselves. Why? Because if consumers don’t change, the company’s products won’t sell.

So how do we get consumers to change? It is necessary to establish a connection between the product and the consumer's potential sense of lack.

For example, dating websites, their common marketing tactics are to use others to stimulate your sense of lack. A young man was living a good life, going to get off work and coming home every day, taking the bus, eating pancakes, and not having too many thoughts.

But at this time, the dating website tells him that someone who is similar to him is married, and his conditions are not even as good as yours.

Under such marketing, the psychological gap of this young man is aroused, and a sense of lack is created. He will want to fill this gap, and thus business opportunities arise.

Nowadays, a large number of institutions that provide one-on-one English lessons to foreign children also use similar marketing strategies. The fear they inspire in parents is that if their children don't learn pure English from an early age, they will fall behind in competing with their peers in the future.

What’s the truth? Let us ask ourselves, did Jobs start learning foreign languages ​​when he was 8 years old? The truth is not important; what is important is to inspire a sense of lack.

Let’s take another example of Coca-Cola. The reason why Coca-Cola became popular so quickly when it was first launched was because it promoted the concept of health. Alcoholic beverages were popular in the United States at the time, and people also knew that alcohol was unhealthy, so Coca-Cola's marketing concept was "the great nation's non-alcoholic beverage," and it became an instant hit.

But now Coca-Cola has been labeled unhealthy because of its high sugar content, and user demand has decreased. What should we do?

The new ad it launched last year is called "Enjoy the Moment," encouraging people to pamper themselves a little and not make the present life too hard for the sake of long-term health. You see, the user's sense of lack has been awakened again.

Therefore, good marketing must establish a connection with the user's sense of lack. Most marketing and product failures are due to focusing more on the company’s own needs and not connecting with others’ sense of need, which ultimately leads to the failure to form demand.

For example, last year I did a training and one of the students was a Chinese medicine massage practitioner. His marketing point was “external treatment for internal diseases.” Is his way of delivering the message correct? Actually, I think it is wrong.

Why? Why do I need external treatment for internal diseases? Can you give me a reason? This is like asking everyone to wear their T-shirts inside out. There is no reason why you should wear it inside out.

I helped him analyze the situation. Chinese people have a deep-rooted concept that "all medicines are poisonous", so I suggested that he change his marketing direction to "non-drug therapy", thus establishing a connection with consumers' lack of sense of security.

Please remember that when you start a marketing campaign, your goal is to increase consumer demand. The more others need you, the more successful your marketing will be.

What you need to constantly study is how to make others need you more and where their sense of need lies. This is marketing.

Do we have a systematic way to stimulate users' sense of lack? Today I am releasing for the first time a chart that I developed and use frequently, which I call the Consumer Gap Chart.

Li Jiaoshou's "Consumer Gap Table"

It is classified according to the perspectives from which consumers observe themselves, and the five perspectives cover all sources of consumers' sense of lack. Let’s look at these five perspectives one by one.

Mission perspective

Think of the consumer as a person who is on a task; his gap comes from completion minus uncompletion.

Many successful marketing cases come from the decomposition and analysis of consumer tasks.

• What tasks do consumers face when using your product?
• How close is he to completing these tasks?
• How can I gain his support by satisfying his tasks?

For example, the marketing copy of an underwear brand is: It took ten days, five cars, and several coffee shops to meet the goddess, but it turned out that she was wearing a very low-quality men's underwear.

This is a typical hookup scenario, where the marketer takes advantage of the task’s target obstacle. The target is just a little bit away, and the marketer cannot lose on the underwear, so he must make up for it.

Another typical example is the copywriting for marketing online loans. We found that adding a sentence after the copy doubled the conversion rate . What? Test how much you can borrow. This also helps users complete the decision-making loop in task scenarios. Simple, but effective.

The perspective of time

One lives not only in tasks, but also in time. If we look at a person from the perspective of a time machine, then his gap comes from the present minus the past (or future).

Looking at a person vertically, there are many corresponding psychological factors, such as fear, sense of scarcity, pursuit of novelty, desire to try something new, or nostalgia.

This perspective is not difficult to understand and is often used. For example, the 1997 stand-alone game "Red Alert", which was extremely popular in 2016, has a mobile phone version. "All the games played on mobile phones are memories."

Another example is Shande Education’s marketing slogan: “If you missed college once, don’t miss undergraduate studies again.” These all take advantage of people's emotions on the time coordinate.

The time perspective requires us to conduct experience analysis and expectation analysis on users.

Relationship Perspective

People live in relationships. We need to use relationships to define ourselves. We need to connect with each other, and feelings arise in this process. This creates a sense of lack, and its formula is oneself minus others.

I am a person who hates blunt sales, but I once bought a rose that a little girl sold to me because she said to me, "Shouldn't you buy a rose for your girlfriend?" You see, this is marketing in a relationship.

There is a dating app whose slogan is "Find people who like you". It’s not about connecting with people who already like you, it’s about finding people around you who will like you. It opens up the possibility of new relationships for you.

There are many more examples like this.

For example, when the Hong Kong property market was sluggish, one real estate developer launched a promotional strategy: Children’s childhood only lasts a few years, so are they going to spend it in a rental house in Hong Kong?

The property market is sluggish, so your promotional features and investment value are certainly not attractive, but at this time the merchant called on relationship resources and achieved success.

The relational perspective requires us to analyze consumers’ key decision paths.

The group's perspective

In addition to being in specific relationships, a person must also be part of certain groups. This group is more of an anonymous group.

Group perspective means that when people consider doing something, they will refer to a certain group.

For example, Didi ’s slogan is “Three out of four friends use Didi”, which takes advantage of people’s sense of group, as if I am not a “friend” if I don’t use Didi.

People will refer to the behavior of other groups. Their gap comes from what the group has and I don’t, or what I have and the group doesn’t. Corresponding to this are typical actions such as desire, conformity, avoidance, and integration. The gap formula from this perspective is the group minus yourself.

For example, how the German emperor two or three hundred years ago persuaded people to grow potatoes. Potatoes were a very low-class food among the European people at that time, and it was difficult to convince others to grow them.

The approach taken by the German Emperor was not to promote how good potatoes were, but to promulgate a law declaring that civilians could not eat potatoes and only nobles could grow and eat them, and he also sent some soldiers to guard the nobles' potato plantations.

Then the king slowly relaxed the legal restrictions and eventually lifted the law, and everyone started growing potatoes, and potatoes became popular.

This is to take advantage of the ordinary people's desire and reference for aristocratic life and utilize the power of the group.

For details, please see the article "If you are not persuasive enough, the group will make up for it"

Character's perspective

What is the role? The role is the consumer's self, the self that he identifies with psychologically. There is a gap between this self and the real self. The formula for this perspective is character minus self.

I often use the role approach when managing a team.

For example, if a project is behind schedule, I will not directly blame the project leader, but will say: "As a project leader, your current behavior is obviously wrong." This will activate his sense of role, and not only will he not resist, but his energy will become stronger.

When I observe the businesses around me, I find that the most successful role-playing product is probably the anti-radiation clothing for pregnant women. In fact, anyone with a little scientific knowledge will know that the radiation hazards from mobile phones and computers are very small and do not pose any harm to the fetus at all.

But why is anti-radiation clothing still so popular? Essentially, this is what the role requires. Pregnant women hope to tell people through it: I am a pregnant woman and everyone should take care of me.

Therefore, when we marketers look at consumers, we need to consider who they are and what their self-perception is. The typical sentence pattern is: As a so-and-so, you should do this and that.

For example, a successful marketing case of an e-commerce company used a dynamic creative idea. When everyone clicked on their link, a sentence would appear: Don’t wear cheap goods after you are N years old. N is the actual age of the person. This persona marketing creates a high conversion rate.

The above are the five most typical sources of consumer lack.

Please remember that marketers always see the world through the eyes of consumers. We need to understand consumers, be able to discern their sense of lack, and make up for what they lack. Only by being targeted can good marketing be achieved.

Target

Key points in this section:

◆ Consumers need clear instructions from marketers to make purchases;

◆ Marketing must provide the target that accurately matches the sense of lack. In this regard, we often make three mistakes;

◆ Marketers are always discovering facts that already exist rather than inventing knowledge that does not yet exist.

We have solved the problem of stimulating a sense of lack, but the sense of lack is just a feeling, an uncomfortable feeling, and it does not form a motivation for consumption. At this time, a clear target is also needed.

The second factor in forming demand is the target object. It is a solution to fill the sense of lack and a specific action goal that drives consumer decision-making.

Here we need to introduce a psychological concept called implementation intention. How can we be more likely to motivate others to do something? The more clearly the action is stated and the clearer the goal is, the higher the probability of the action being accomplished.

In marketing, we believe that consumers often need clear instructions from marketers before they will consume.

When the target you provide to consumers is unclear or does not match their cognition, consumers will not be able to take very specific actions or form motivation.

For example, there is a watch advertisement that goes like this: "It doesn't matter how long it lasts, it only matters that you once had it." Does it create a sense of lack? Created. I was so moved after watching it that I almost burst into tears.

But after I was moved, there was no next step because I didn’t know what the connection was between this feeling of lack and buying a watch, and there was no way to form any motivation.

I would like to emphasize the difference between marketing and art here. Many friends in the advertising circle easily confuse the two. Art doesn’t care about purpose, but self-expression, so it is enough for it to create a sense of emotional lack and move people.

But marketing is a tool, a tool for business success, so it must be able to point to matching targets.

I used the word "match" here because in our daily observations, we see that the most common mistake made by most companies is that the target object and the sense of lack do not match in the consumer's perception, and the target object they provide has nothing to do with the sense of lack they provide.

Here are two somewhat funny examples.

The first one is a men's underwear. The general meaning of its copy is that business elites demonstrate gentlemanly demeanor. I always feel that as a business elite, an important way to demonstrate elegance is not to show your underwear to others. That doesn’t seem very good, right?

Another one is the promotional copy of a brand of water heater I saw on JD.com , "Change the world, subvert your life." I really don't know how a water heater can change the world. Who would believe it except to find it strange?

The match between the target object and the sense of lack must be credible in order to form motivation. The marketer’s task is to discover the real connection and say what everyone wants to say, just tell the truth.

There are three common mistakes we make when it comes to matching our goals with our feelings of lack.

The target is too small and the sense of loss is too great

There is a smart piano company that positions itself as a smart instrument teacher. They believe that their pianos are different from ordinary pianos, and their software can prompt which songs are played correctly and which are not.

But you will find that this positioning target is too large. What it wants to satisfy is the need to find teachers, but the product actually cannot do that. So later the positioning was adjusted to smart training, and consumers' expectations of it were lowered. The company has reduced the sense of lack, and the target object is just enough to satisfy it.

The target is too large, and the sense of loss is small

What is the real reason why people use electric toothbrushes? Convenience, you don’t have to move it yourself, it will move by itself. However, after such promotion, it was found that the conversion rate was not high.

All products that focus on convenience are often very difficult to promote. Why?

Because the consumer value of convenience is accumulated over a long period of time, you may have to brush your teeth hundreds of times to cover the extra cost of buying an electric toothbrush. It provides very little sense of lack.

The ultimate appeal of electric toothbrushes is to brush those places that you cannot reach. This is a greater sense of lack, which is difficult to satisfy with traditional toothbrushes. So by solving the matching problem, sales conversion has been greatly improved.

Improper connection between target and sense of loss

A typical example is fruit vinegar.

Because this beverage is a fermented beverage and is a bit sour, merchants initially named it fruit vinegar. But in the eyes of most consumers, vinegar is not a solution to thirst, the target object and the sense of loss do not match, so the sales effect is not good. Later, merchants changed fruit vinegar into fermented juice, and sales increased significantly.

I wonder if you have seen the way to solve the trap of matching the target object with the sense of lack in the above three cases. That is to reclassify the target object and replace the lack it is meant to fill.

A product can satisfy different feelings of lack. For example, insurance can not only solve your health protection problems, but also meet your relationship needs of being a good father and a good husband.

So what is the most appropriate match? It is a match that happens to match people's cognition. Lacking the influence of human nature, the target object is influenced by culture, and culture is actually our existing cognition of some things.

So, please remember that marketers are always discovering existing facts rather than inventing knowledge that does not yet exist. You are a discoverer, not an inventor.

Consumer Capabilities

Key points in this section:

◆ To finally transform motivation into demand, the consumer’s ability is the last hurdle;

◆ Marketers need to “empower” consumers so that they are more capable of making the final consumption decisions;

◆ Consumers face six major costs, and the empowerment methods are different.

Consumers now have the motivation, what they lack is the ability.

We have found that there are a lot of such problems in the history of marketing, that is, consumers are very tempted, but ultimately do not buy. Why is that? Because the cost for consumers to make changes is too high, which exceeds their willingness.

Let’s look at an extremely typical case: how to use big data to market Audi cars on the Internet.

According to our usual thinking, we can place keyword -targeted advertising and push Audi ads to users who often search for Audi keywords. This should be the most accurate. But it turns out that the effect is not very good.

Why? Because Audi fans and Audi consumers are not the same group of people. People who can afford Audi don’t search for it often, they just buy it and drive it; while those who often research Audi are likely to be the ones who drive Chery.

Therefore, a better marketing strategy should be to classify people’s income based on big data, push Audi to people at a certain income level, and push Chery to people who frequently search for Audi. This is a more efficient marketing plan.

Between motivation and purchase, there is a ridge that is not easy to cross, which is the cost that consumers have to pay for self-change.

This cost is often not a monetary cost. Monetary cost is only one of them. There are many other costs that stand in the way of a purchase. I will analyze this a little more later.

To overcome the cost threshold and ultimately transform motivation into demand, what marketers should do is empower consumers. How to make consumers more capable, reduce their decision-making costs, and make it more convenient for them to make choices are all empowerment.

Another common mistake we make in marketing is that we should be empowering consumers, but instead we put our efforts in the wrong direction and keep increasing consumers’ motivations.

One example is how the Boston Symphony Orchestra increased local demand for symphony music. They originally put a lot of effort into popularizing symphony education and raising interest, but the results were not good.

Later, through research, they found that many people were interested, but it did not turn into demand. It was a problem of ability, not motivation. It turned out that the location of the symphony orchestra was difficult to find and parking was very inconvenient.

So the symphony orchestra renovated its parking lot and provided navigation services, which resulted in a significant increase in sales.

Let’s take a look at the six major consumer costs that ultimately influence demand and how marketers should empower them.

Money cost

This is the cost that everyone is most familiar with, and it can create new market opportunities by reducing consumers' monetary costs. Ford cars became popular because of their drastic price cuts. There are many common strategies, such as promotions, temporary trials, etc., which are familiar to everyone and I will not say more.

Image Cost

When the rice cooker was first introduced in Japan, its main marketing point was convenience, but sales were poor. The survey found that the reason is that housewives feel that using rice cookers will greatly damage their hardworking image, and their mothers-in-law will think they are being lazy.

Later, rice cookers became popular as merchants promoted the selling point of making rice healthier. Although cooking with a rice cooker may not be much healthier, this is not important. What is important is that the switch in marketing points helps consumers bypass the image cost.

Consumers often cannot express their true reasons for consumption, so marketers need to understand this psychology of users.

For example, the real motivation for a Mercedes-Benz car consumer to buy is for face and a sense of social dignity. But Mercedes-Benz has no slogan saying "buy me to show off". Most of Mercedes-Benz advertisements talk about its own performance. This is also an image risk of taking care of consumers.

Cost of Action

If it is extremely troublesome and time-consuming for users to use your product, they will choose not to use it. For example, take the example of the Boston Symphony Orchestra mentioned above.

Let’s take another example, the current Internet of Things. Using a mobile phone to control home appliances is a cool idea, but it is not convenient. I need to download the APP, then find it among dozens or hundreds of APPs, click on it and then control it. The cost of this action is still too high. I bought a lot of home appliances that can be controlled by my mobile phone, but I don’t really use them at all.

I think in the era of artificial intelligence , the Internet of Things has a better chance of being realized through voice control. The current Internet of Things does not lack user motivation, but the cost of action is too high.

Cost of Study

Consumers must go through additional learning and change their existing habits before they can use the product.

For example, do we have a motivation to retouch a photo? Of course. However, the learning cost of professional photo editing software is too high, making it difficult to popularize. Then Meitu XiuXiu came into being, which allowed users to beautify photos with just one click and quickly became popular in the market.

A well-known sporting goods manufacturer in the United States has discovered that there are many so-called "golf spectators" who are interested in golf but do not play it.

Why? Because golf is too difficult to learn, it is too difficult to hit that little ball, and the cost of learning is too high. So this manufacturer developed a large-headed golf club that can hit the ball without much learning required, and successfully counterattacked the market.

Health costs

Consumers' perception of health hazards from using a product can also incur high costs.

For example, in the early days of Guangdong herbal tea, people understood herbal tea as medicine, and believed that "all medicines are three-quarters poisonous." Later, Wanglaoji redefined it as a beverage, and the health cost perceived by consumers was reduced, so it was widely accepted.

Decision Cost

For many products on the market, consumers have the motivation to buy but ultimately do not make the purchase. In fact, a very important reason is the huge decision-making costs.

I had a client who was in financial management . His main marketing goal was a 7% rate of return. He invested a lot of information flow ads , but the conversion rate was not good. How to solve it? It’s very simple. Just add “ LeTV and Lenovo’s first round of investment” to the copy, which greatly improves the conversion rate. We reduce consumers' decision-making costs by increasing trust endorsement.

Above we have analyzed the "demand triangle" in some detail. Let me emphasize again that it is very critical and very complex. We marketers need to practice and use it repeatedly. Only after a long period of deliberate practice can we truly master it.

Finally, I would like to say a few words to marketing practitioners. I find that many people who have been working in marketing for many years have been spinning in circles and have made no progress. Why?

Because they don’t truly understand the principles of consumer demand formation and make use of them. The power of consumers is enormous, and we must master the ability to call upon it in order to become excellent marketers.

I really like a sentence from the fairy tale book "The Little Prince": "The most important things are often invisible." The power of consumers is this invisible thing. Those who make good use of it often win.