If population, technology and economic growth were predictable then the value of a product’s unique selling proposition would also be predictable and the stable growth of a business would be assured. There was a temporary experience of this phenomenon in the post-war 50’s in America when industrial technology released from the war effort into a stable market hungry for innovation created a boom in both the economy and the birth-rate.

However population mobility, economic volatility, technological innovation, geopolitical instability have since created such unpredictability that consistent values seem impossible to gauge. These destabilizing factors weaken the corporate armor of even the most dyed-in-the-wool product icons for competition to attack. And the greater the proliferation of choice, the more unpredictable the customer appears in how they make choices.

Stuck In Tunnel Vision
Despite all this uncertainty the most common practice of businesses and organizations is to mold their values around a core leadership within the business. And they define their marketing assets based on the values that are business-centric, such as described above.

A business that blends this cocktail of assets successfully will achieve growth and achievement within a specific window of oppportunity. And, if it can generate enough capital within that window then it will be able to sustain itself through the inevitable redundancy of the product or service that built its financial base to adapt to changing market conditions. If it misses that window of opportunity, then so much innovation and investment will be flushed down the toilet. This is the scary and unpredictable world of venture and risk capital. It has become the roulette wheel of corporate fortune and misfortune.

Get Out of the Tunnel
But, if you think about it more deeply, the ability to sustain coporate performance throughout all the environmental and economic changes and fluctuations really depends on one thing: Customer values. Customers make all their choices based on their values. And there is ample proof in population statistics to demonstrate commonalities in customer values to sustain both mass market and niche markets for products and services. You can look at this as the basis for forming your Customer Value Grid.

Customer values form a totally different grid to the corporations. Each product is a fraction of the customer’s total spectrum of activity. So the product or service provider is only addressing a small fragment of the customer’s needs. Understanding the full spectrum of customer values will inform the marketer how to place its products within the Customer’s Value Grid. Rethinking your approach along these lines is your first step to keeping customers engaged for loyalty, frequency and continuity. What does this mean? It means stability within the context of change, or the reduction of unpredictability within your business.

The first step we mentioned is to classify the assets of your product or service in relation to a comprehensive customer needs system of classification:

• How does your customer look at your product?
• Achievement: how well will this product or service help me to achieve my goals?
• Convenience: how easy is it to locate, engage or acquire this product or service?
• Comfort: can I use this product in a comfortable way or to increase comfort.
• Esteem: will the use of this product/service equate with or raise my esteem?
• Pleasure: will this product/service directly or indirectly enable me to increase the amount of pleasure in my life?
• Trust: is this product, service or company a reliable source for all of the above.

Don’t be surprised that affordability is not represented as a customer value. Customers will expose themselves to financial risk to maximize comfort, esteem or pleasure. A house purchase is a fundamental example of this. Few homebuyers purchase a house that is easily affordable. In a consumption-driven society customers will invest disproportionate to their means to maximize these values. Wal-Mart’s value pricing simply enables their customers to maximize convenience and pleasure, often at the expense of comfort, through over-consumption. Although one the world’s largest retailer has built its business on the value of affordability, this is because price is only a function of the degree to which all the above can be satisfied.

A business that builds its values on the ACCEPT Customer Value Grid and maintains this focus can realize stability and predictability within its financial model.