Customer Focus

Most companies today have a customer focus. The company focuses on its activities and products based on evolving consumer demands. The customer-driven approach, the sense of identifying market changes and the product innovation approach. In that case, consumer wants are the drivers of all strategic marketing decisions. No strategy is pursued until it passes the test of customer research. Every aspect of a market offering, including the nature of the product itself, is driven by the needs of potential customer. The starting point is always the consumer. The rationale for this approach is that there is no point spending R&D funds developing products that people will not buy. History attests to many products that were commercial failures in spite of being technological breakthroughs.

Product Focus

In a product innovation approach, the company pursues product innovation, and then tries to develop a market for the product. Product innovation drives the process and research is conducted primarily to ensure that a profitable market segment(s) exists for the innovation. The next big thing is a concept is that refers to a product or idea that will allow for a high amount of sales for that product and related products. Marketers believe that by finding or creating the next big thing they will spark a cultural revolution that results in this sales increase. The rationale is that customers may not know what options will be available to them in the future so we should not expect them to tell us what they will buy in the future. However, marketers can aggressively over pursue product innovation and try to overcapitalize on a niche. When pursuing a product innovation approach, they should ensure that they have a varied and multi-tiered approach to product innovation.