About Strategic foresight with scenarios in Marketing 3.0

A Hypothesis

Strategically foresighting with scenarios in Marketing 3.0 is to be considered as a normative approach to unfolding future consumer value propositions on the grounds of participative marketer-consumer conversation and collaboration. Scenario building process is to be developed in terms of the Value-Based Matrix Model having considered the three 3.0 driving forces: The Age of Participation, The Age of Globalization Paradox, and The Age of Creative Society. Moreover, scenario building blocks are to be synchronized with the Building blocks of Marketing 3.0.

Method: Understanding Marketing 3.0 by means of Retrospective Scenario Process

Durance and Godet (2010) define a scenario as a means to represent a future reality with the aim of clarifying present action in light of possible and desirable futures. Hence, Strategic foresight needs to master the constraints of the present.

Strategic foresight with scenarios has the potential to enable a demanded conversation between a marketer and consumers (as individuals) in the view of Marketing 3.0. Because of the shift to value-driven marketing, Kotler et al. (2010) build up a Value-Based Matrix Model. They have put together the company and the consumer there. The point is that company’s values address:

• the individual’s mind by searching the way to make him/her “be better”,
• the individual’s heart – by differentiating, and
• the individual’s spirit – by making a difference.

The Matrix creates natural premises for unfolding futures on a platform for cocreation.

Moreover, Durance and Godet (2010) make the distinction between the two major kinds of scenarios: exploratory and normative. They flatly claim that exploratory scenarios are devoid of human values, whereas normative scenarios are the expression of human values. Normative scenarios are constructed from alternative images of the future which may be both desirable and feared, and are conceived in a retroprojective way. Both exploratory and normative scenarios can be either highly similar or highly contrasted to one another, depending upon whether they take into consideration the most probable or the most extreme trends respectively.

Examine the 3.0 driving forces

To understand Marketing 3.0 and to raise respective issues, an examination of the rise of three driving forces that shape the business landscape toward Marketing 3.0:

• The age of Participation and Collaborative Marketing,
• The Age of Globalization Paradox and Cultural Marketing, and
• The Age of Creative Society and Human spirit Marketing.

Observations of how these forces transform consumers as to be more collaborative, cultural and human spirit-driven are needed.

As consumers become more collaborative, cultural, and spiritual, the character of marketing also transforms. What Marketing 3.0 is to offer is:

• Content by Collaborative marketing, as to create the Stimulus; and
• Context as to identify his/her Problem.

The modus of how Marketing 3.0 is to offer the Solution for the individual in the Age of Creativity lies in using Spiritual Marketing.

The panoramic-uttered issue of Strategically Foresighting with Scenarios in Marketing 3.0 is to be more concrete-stated. The future marketing attributes – the Content and the Context – are to be articulated towards generating futures of possible customer-driven and marketer-translated purchasing behavior 3.0.

References

Durance, P. and M. Godet “Scenario building: Uses and abuses”,Technological Forecasting & Social Change, Vol. 77, Issue 9, November 2010, pp. 1488–1492.

Kotler, P, Kartajaya, H. and I. Setiawan Marketing 3.0: From Product to customers to the Human Spirit. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2010.

Marcus, A. Strategic Foresight: A New Look at Scenarios. Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.