THE 22 IMMUTABLE LAWS IN MARKETING

Contents:

Law of Success.

Law of Perception.

Law of Failure.

Law of Duality

Law of Leadership- Counter Example.

Law of Exclusivity- Counter Example.

The Law of Success

Success often leads to arrogance, and arrogance to failure. This law illustrates that success can bring an enterprise great confidence. However, on the other hand it can also have negative impacts, for example leading to arrogance. Specifically after achieving great success, companies assume that they know everything about the markets. They begin to make judgements subjectively based on their past experiences but not on the changing markets demands and trends any more. Therefore, they cannot analyze the new market objectively and rationally, thus cannot make the right marketing strategies and generate new customer satisfied products accordingly. The company will be at risk of losing a large market share or even being eliminated by the markets. Its not difficult to find examples to support this Law. For example in automobile industry, GM was the leading automobile provider since the 1930s. In 1941, GM made up more than 40% of the automobile market shares in the United States compared with 12% back 20 years. The biggest success for GM was to destroy the streetcar industry completely and planned a big campaign to persuade the U.S. consumers to use private cars. However, after achieving those big triumphs, the arrogance culture of GM was exposed to the public. With the change of customers taste and advent of new demands for family cars, GM refused to try to make small cars to meet customers needs. Under such circumstances, Japanese and European cars quickly squeezed to the U.S. automobile markets. Because of its arrogance, GM began to lose market shares further. Therefore, in order to remain strong in the market, enterprises should not be blinded by success and instead should continually be aware of consumer changing demands and make innovations to meet those changes.

The Law of Perception All that exists in the world of marketing are perceptions in the minds of the customer or the prospect.

Perceptions play an important role in our day to day life. Every day we come across many people while working, walking on street side etc, we all form perceptions about the individual we look at or talk to. We tend to perceive and believe it to be real.

For example: the three largest selling Japanese imported cars in America are Honda, Toyota and Nissan. Most people think that the battle between three brands is based on quality, price, horsepower, etc but that's not true. It is what people perceive about a Honda, a Toyota or a Nissan. The perception decides which brand will win. Hence marketing is the field of perceptions.

Law of Failure Failure is to be expected and accepted. ''Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.'' - Steve Jobs Law of failure explains that failure has to be expected and accepted when you try to do something new. Most of the companies think failure is not good, but actually people can learn a lot from failure. Failing does not make you a failure. If a company can recognize the failure and review what is not working and start to move on to next big project then it can cut losses. Many companies often try to fix things rather than drop things. But a good strategy is to recognize failure early and start working on next project. A great example for Law of failure is ''Microsoft Windows Vista''. Vista was released on January 30, 2007 after five years of development by Microsoft team. Windows Vista was created to improve the security of computer operating system, but it was no better. Also Vista was not compatible with number of older computers which made limited user to upgrade to vista. Analyst also said that vista makes computer slower. All of these factors made vista a big failure. According to research site net applications, Vista global share of pc operating system was less than 24% while Windows XP had share of 62%. Vista sales was going down. Microsoft also announced a revenue drop for first time in 23 years. Finally on April 2007 Microsoft accepted the failure of vista and allowed Dell to start offering Windows XP in computers again. Also Microsoft moved on and boosted development of its next operating system windows 7. This is how Microsoft accepted the failure and started working on its next big project windows 7.

Law of Duality In the long run, every market becomes a two-horse race. Its a battle between top two products who leads in a product ladder. Law of duality depicts that market share are unstable in a long run but the final battle fought is between two of them. In the long run, players come and disappear but the market settles only on two players. As you know everything takes long time to settle down, to make trust, to make values, but in the end people get what they want from the market, which are choices between two strong products. As if any one goes in the market they do not like to make choices between 5 to 15 products, it makes the buying process hectic and confusing at the same time. So they make choices between what is the best in the market. Most of the buyers tend to buy what someone else is buying; they do not make their own buying choices. For instance, in 1969, there were three key brands of soft drinks which were coca cola, Pepsi cola and royal crown. Coca cola had about 60% of the market share. Pepsi had 23%, Royal crown had 6% and rest of brands had remaining percentage of market. This shows monopoly of a single product in the market. After 20 years Coca cola dropped to 45% of the market, Pepsi gained to 40 % and royal crown had 3% market share. This is how market changes in long run and only top two players lead the market. Now, other soft drinks have some share in the market but the leaders are only two of them.

The Law of Leadership- Counter Example Its better to be first than to be better. The law states that it is much easier to get into the mind of the customers first than to convince that you have a better product / service than the one that did get there first. However, in the current era where technology changes every single day, this law does not necessarily apply to all the products. For instance, sixdegrees.com was the first ever famous social networking site that was launched in the year 1997 followed by LiveJournal, Friendster and MySpace.com. However, facebook has gained a momentum and has swiped all its competitors. MySpace was popular in 2005, eventhough it did not have the advantage of being first. Facebook is the most popular social networking site now and has replaced MySpace. The graph clearly states how facebook has countered this first law of marketing. (Harbour, May 18,2012)

Neither did facebook have the advantage of being first, nor did it come up with a niche idea. It was all there in the market, what kept if going as the market leader is the innovation.

The Law of Exclusivity Counter Example Two companies cannot own the same word in the prospects mind. While this is true in some cases, this law is not universally true and is subjective at an individual level making it vary within the collective conscious. For instance, when one thinks of the word safety in the automobile market, one immediately may think of Volvo, a brand that has built itself upon its ingenuity and accolades surrounding passenger and driver safety. Usually there is no other brand in the industry that people deem synonymous with this noun. However, when you think of the word performance in the automobile market, several brands such as McLaren, Ferrari, Lamborghini, etc., come to mind. Additionally, if someone were to ask you, "What is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of McLaren/Ferrari/Lamborghini," it is likely that several similar adjectives will materialize. Although each of these brands has their own distinct brand identities within the market, they have several indisputable similarities. Since this is the case, although in a single brand may exist in an individuals perceptions based on previous dispositions and experience, in the collective conscious there are several automobile brands synonymous with performance.