The Customer Trap: How to Avoid the Biggest Mistake in Business
- ISBN-10
- 1484203852
- ISBN-13
- 9781484203859
- Category
- Business & Economics
- Pages
- 164
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2015-04-07
- Publisher
- Apress
- Authors
- Andrew R. Thomas, Timothy J. Wilkinson
Description
American business is dysfunctional. Companies of all sizes follow the mistaken belief that their products and services are best sold through mega-customers with pervasive market reach, such as Amazon and Walmart. Far too many business leaders fail to realize—until it is too late—that the relentless pursuit of volume at all cost is not the key to long-term profits and success. The Customer Trap: How to Avoid the Biggest Mistake in Business is Thomas and Wilkinson’s sequel to The Distribution Trap: Keeping Your Innovations from Becoming Commodities, which won the Berry-American Marketing Association Prize for the best marketing book of 2010. The Distribution Trap contended that cracking the big-box channel is not necessarily the Holy Grail that many marketers assume it is. The Customer Trap takes this thesis to the next level by arguing that all companies, regardless of the industry there are in, should maintain control over their sales and distribution channels. Volume forgone by avoiding the mass market is more than offset by higher margins and stronger brand equity. The Customer Trap shows that giving power to a customer who violates "the ten percent rule" sets a company up for ruin. Yet, when presented with the opportunity to push more sales through large customers, most decision-makers jump at the chance. As a result, marketing has come to resemble a relentless quest for efficiency and scale. Demands from mega-customers in the form of discounts, deals, and incentives erode the integrity of the brand and what it originally stood for. Lower margins become the norm and cost-saving compromises on quality take over. In time, the brand suffers and, in some cases, fails outright. Stark examples from Oreck Vacuum Cleaners, Rubbermaid, Goodyear, Levi’s, and others illustrate the perils of falling into the "customer trap." This book demonstrates in vivid detail how to thrive by controlling your sales and distribution. The authors show how many firms, such as STIHL Inc., etailz, Apple, Red Ant Pants, and Columbia Paints & Coatings, have prospered by avoiding the "customer trap"—and how your company can have similar success.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value
By Melissa PerriIn this book, Melissa Perri explains how laying the foundation for great product management can help companies solve real customer problems while achieving business goals.
-
The Distribution Trap: Keeping Your Innovations from Becoming Commodities
By Andrew R. Thomas, Timothy J. WilkinsonThe first section of the book explains the distribution trap, detailing how it hurts companies by forcing them to reduce costs, often by chasing cheap labor overseas.
-
The Hero Trap: How to Win in a Post-Purpose Market by Putting People in Charge
By Thomas KolsterThis book explains the meteoric rise of a company like AirBnB, how a 20-something Swede, Maria de la Croix, built a global coffee empire like Wheelys in just a few years, and how a group of friends hanging out in a bar in Melbourne created ...
-
The Content Trap: A Strategist's Guide to Digital Change
By Bharat AnandDrawing on these stories and on the latest research in economics, strategy, and marketing, this refreshingly engaging book reveals important lessons, smashes celebrated myths, and reorients strategy.
-
How to Create Lifetime Customers: Leverage the Marketing Power of the Internet and Mobile Technology to Quickly Get New Customers,...
By Suresh MayWhether your dream is profiting from the boom in mobile and internet sales, selling high priced products, creating predictable monthly revenue, or learning the secrets to keep customers buying from you for decades, this book is your ...
-
The Consumer Trap: Big Business Marketing in American Life
By Michael Dawson"Lays bare the ways in which the sophisticated and self-conscious 'class coercion' designed by and for business leaders passed beyond meticulous management of the workplace to 'manipulating people's off-the-job peceptions and actions.
-
The 24 Sales Traps and how to Avoid Them: Recognizing the Pitfalls that Mislead Even the Best Performers
By Dick Canadasales trap 16 : Let the Customer Control the Sales Call In days gone by , you used to be able to open sales calls with lines like “ What are you looking for ? ” or “ What can I do for you today ? ” Asking the customer to tell you about ...
-
Monkey Trap
By Lee Denning"This is an immensely exciting SF thriller..." ~ Dr. Bob Rich.
-
Beyond Selling Value: A Proven Process to Avoid the Vendor Trap
By Mark ShonkaBeyond Selling Value: A Proven Process to Avoid the Vendor Trap
-
The Time Trap
By R. Alec Mackenzie, Pat Nickerson" -- Eleanor Brantley Schwartz, Chancellor, University of Missouri-Kansas City "This edition is Dr. Alec Mackenzie's best Time Trap book yet.