Stakeholder Marketing? Part 2 — Beyond the One-to-One Paradigm

Beyond the One-to-One Paradigm

Since the rise of modern marketing, the focus has been on customers and building relationships with them. In recent years, thinking in terms of “customer personas” or “user stories” has become the norm, so that businesses can segment a customer base and target marketing efforts accordingly. But the focus is still on identity, as though each customer and segment exists as homogeneous groups and are unattached to others with discrete needs and identities. This practice keeps the one to one relationships and value exchanges, between a seller and a buyer, the way most companies like it.

Stakeholder marketing moves past this old way of thinking. Hillebrand writes that stakeholder marketing “focuses on co-creation in network relationships rather than just one to one relationships and acknowledges the potential of indirect creation of value. … Stakeholder marketing recognizes that customer relationships may be influenced by relationships with other stakeholders and that a diverse network of stakeholders creates value.”

See the conversations and then actions taken in response to Colin Kaepernick by people, political parties, leagues, colleagues, brands and government as well as the social, political and financial capital created as an outflow. Very few of which were intended by the original communications between Mr. Kaepernick and the league.

None of this is to say simple one-to-one exchanges no longer exist-they do. The point is that today, in more and more stakeholder networks, exchange relationships have become complex, meaning they involve more than two parties. More and more businesses now operate in this complex world, but many (most?) still cling to the old -one-to-one-paradigm. They do so to the detriment of more powerful and meaningful relationships because the old paradigm cannot allow an accurate understanding of how the treatment of one stakeholder group or single stakeholder impacts relationships with others.

To thrive in a world full of complex exchanges, organizations must develop a new capability: community or systems thinking- which (in a marketing context) is basically an ability to understand the business’s value stream as well as its ecosystem. Marketers must gain insights into who influences whom and how, and who depends on whom and how. Only then can a business deploy meaningful strategies.

Originally published at https://consciouslyinc.com on October 23, 2020.