Although digital marketing is the way to go in today’s world for promotion of products and services, it would 
not be much effective if the customer isn’t the centre of devising the strategy. After all, the customer wouldn’t 
buy your offering if he doesn’t perceive value in it. 
 

 
 
Nestle saw a decline in its candy sales over the recent years. After conducting a few focus group discussions, it 
observed that a lot of its candy-bar loving customers faced a mental obstacle in buying a large candy bar 
because they’d have to eat the entire bar thereby consuming a lot of sugar. Based on this insight, Nestle came 
up with the concept of bite sized candy bars offering the same large candy bar in smaller form. The consumers 
wouldn’t face the same mental obstacle now as they wouldn’t have to eat the entire bar now. This spoke a lot 
about Nestle being customer focused.  
 
During the 90s, the go-to choice for video renting were Blockbuster stores. There were over 9000 stores 
across the world. Although the customers rented VHS tapes from these stores, they were still not happy with 
the service being offered. There were two reasons to this  
 
1. Late fee that was levied on the customers was one of the revenue sources for Blockbuster  
 
2. Customers had to wait in long queues to be able to return the tapes in time.  
 
Because of this, as soon as the customers saw an alternative to video-renting they parted their ways with 
Blockbuster. One of these alternatives was Netflix. Netflix had earlier started with DVD rental-by-mail, and 
they levied no late fees. This model helped them expand their subscription base to more than 20 million users. 
Although it was doing great with this model, Netflix transformed itself into an online video streaming service, 
taking away the inconvenience of DVDs from them. Today Netflix has over 100 million users. The reason why 
Blockbuster failed was its lack of customer focus, and the reason why Netflix is doing so well today is because 
of its extreme customer focus.  
 
Blackberry was one of the most widely used phones in the work circles during the early 2000s. It was used by 
all the top industry professionals. However, when Apple introduced the first iPhone which was a sleek 
touch-screen phone, users started inching away from Blackberry’s QWERTY keypad phones. Even after 
seeing this, Blackberry didn’t transform itself soon enough. By the end of 2012, the total share of Blackberry 
in the mobile segment was a mere 0.05% across the world. The reason behind this loss was the lack of 
customer focus it showed.  
 
Kodak was too internally focused on its film technology, which customers parted with as soon as there were 
digital devices that came with the capability of taking pictures. So it failed because it lacked customer focus 
and was too narrowly focused on its competitors.  
 
When it comes to customer focus, it should not be limited to just the enterprises. To enable its citizens to reap 
the benefits of digital to the fullest, the Government of Estonia built an ecosystem where government services 
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are just a click away. The services that were introduced included  
 
1. E-voting, thereby doing away with the inconvenience of standing in a queue to cast a vote  
 
2. E-health services, thereby making it easier to maintain better health records  
 
3. Blockchain payments were accepted in its national registries including judicial, security, legislative, 
and commercial code systems  
 
4. Online public safety  
 
5. E-residency  
 
6. E-tax services  
 
More than 1.3 million citizens of Estonia are enrolled with these services today.  
 
Another such example was Real Madrid FC. To bring its fans from across the world to a single platform, it 
launched an app called Realmadrid App. Apart from acting as an online community for its fans, the app offers 
other personalised services such as discounts on merchandise, and ticket booking. The app was a perfect 
equivalent of providing its entire fanbase or its customers with football in a way it was never experienced. The 
app has over 5 million downloads today.  
 
Zappos is one company that has taken customer focus to another level, and its strong customer service has 
become its primary value proposition. So it is important for the firms to stay customer focused lest they face a 
chance of obsoletion just as Blockbuster and Blackberry did.  
 

 
 
For a firm to stay customer focused, it is important to understand how its customers behave. One of the ways 
to find this is by gaining customer insights.  
 
An insight is a deep understanding about the fundamental motivations that underlie individual behavior. For 
instance, the insight behind the fashion retail store C&A’s digital hangers was that customers like to know the 
opinion of others before buying a fashion commodity such as clothes. Similarly, Coca-cola had found that it 
needed to communicate with its customers at a personal level, and as a result Share a Coke was born.  
 
The communication strategy of Snickers’ ads is also based on an important insight. The insight behind the 
Snickers ads is that when someone is hungry they are not themselves. Through this, Snickers aimed at 
positioning itself as the go-to choice of snack for when someone was hungry. Since the insight was real, these 
ads resonated really well with its viewers.  
 
Not only have firms communicated with their potential customers based on a strategy but there are firms that 
have built their entire businesses based around an insight. For instance, eBay, and Alibaba started their 
business based around the insight that someone’s trash can be someone else’s treasure. This was inspired 
from the concept of garage sale. Although Alibaba today has transformed itself into many other businesses, 
the basic insight behind these businesses was that someone’s trash can be someone else’s treasure.  
 
To gain customer insights, a firm must understand that an insight is a mix of two things  

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 1. Market research  
 
2. Wisdom  
 
There are different methods of doing market research. Some of these include  
 
1. Focus group discussions  
 
2. User interviews  
 
3. User surveys  
 
a. Online  
 
b. Offline  
 
4. Experimental methods  
a. A/B testing  
 
There are many ways of conducting user surveys. For instance, there are several online market research firms 
such as Surveymonkey, and Surveygizmo. Users can be requested to fill out Google forms online.  
 
The second component i.e wisdom, comes from a careful observation of user behaviour over a period of time. 
Firms take help of more experienced people in the industry to gain wisdom to be able to gain customer 
insights.  
 

 
 
● Identify the importance of consumer focus for a business  
 
● Derive consumer insights and utilise them to create a value proposition  
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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