The purpose of business is to create customer

Recently I was going through a session of understanding Marketing and I came across this statement, and what intrigued me the most was – what people think about creating the customer. Well, the majority of people believe that the idea is to create a customer that is loyal to your products and your brand by catering to their needs, which is true up to some extent.

Yes, only ‘up to some extent’, not entirely. Any business that grows by satisfying the need of the customer will never be a market leader, only the companies that create the need for the customers can truly be successful. Usually, in this context people believe that it can be done only through the innovation in the product, which is very expensive and time taking and not every company can do that. But the idea is not necessarily to create innovation in the product, but the innovation in the ‘offering’.

When Maggi came into the market, they did not offer an innovative product but they innovated the ‘offering’. Maggi did not offer noodles, but it offered the need for ‘instant food’ that can be prepared by anyone. Prior to Maggi coming to India, there were several other instant noodles in the market but Maggi planted the idea and created the need for ‘instant noodles’ which can take less time and taste good. Maggi did not become a market leader by offering innovation, but by offering the ‘need’ to the customers.

Let’s take another example – before iPhone, Blackberry dominated the market with its QWERTY keypad phone. Now, when Apple launched the iPhone, they created the need for a phone that can do much more than just calling and ‘selected few things’. Think of it like this, if Apple would not have created the iPhone for the next 5-6 years, Blackberry would have remained the biggest market player. Nobody would have cried that Apple is not launching a new phone. People were not demanding touch-phone because they didn’t know it could exist. All the phones to date use the QWERTY keyboard including Apple, but they invented the need of getting ‘more on your phone’ by bridging the gap between the computer and the phone.

The only perpetual need of the customers is to get more, and companies need to define that ‘more’ by creating relatable and identifiable needs, that will create customers for the product.