Risky Business

Have you ever heard the saying that “you can’t be successful unless you are willing to take risks”? Well think about it, have you ever truly succeeded without first making some sort of leap? We live in an interactive world where people as consumers want to feel included and important in a world and society where they are empowered. We are a society of Internet, cell phone dependant people; Television and gaming, iPods and MP3 players, etc. Interactivity and consumer relationships are the dawn of a new era (to be completely cliché) in marketing and persuasion. It is not longer the focus of marketing to rely on the traditional and supposedly unwavering four P’s. Produce, price, placement, and promotion are not the only constructs that are important in marketing and persuasion today. Marketers must make a shift in order to include consumer relationships, interactivity, inform, and motivation. If it is all about making money then bluff. Make it seem that it is not, but in the long run just pretending is not going to work. Today’s consumer are smarter than ever, if they are being fooled or ripped off it won’t take them long to figure it out. There are so many ways in which we can find information these days and the Web has contributed greatly to that with its facets like Google and all of Google’s functions, the compounding amounts of blogs, Wikipedia, and informational websites.
Christian Gronroos of the Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration writes that the marketing society must undergo a shift that is so major and dramatic in the “fundamentals of marketing that it can no doubt be described as a paradigm shift”. Society has already undergone a paradigm shift and it is still changing and fast. Gronroos, whose keynote paper can be found on Google Scholar, “demands a relationship-oriented approach to marketing.” If these ideals are being demanded by scholars as well as society then is it not time for the marketers and persuaders to jump on the same bandwagon?