The 1990s will belong to the customer. And that is great news for the marketer.
Technology is transforming choice, and choice is transforming the marketplace. As a result, we are witnessing the emergence of a new marketing paradigm—not a “do more” marketing that simply turns up the volume on the sales spiels of the past but a knowledge- and experience-based marketing that represents the once-and-for-all death of the salesman.
Marketing’s transformation is driven by the enormous power and ubiquitous spread of technology. So pervasive is technology today that it is virtually meaningless to make distinctions between technology and nontechnology businesses and industries: there are only technology companies. Technology has moved into products, the workplace, and the marketplace with astonishing speed and thoroughness. Seventy years after they were invented, fractional horsepower motors are in some 15 to 20 household products in the average American home today. In less than 20 years, the microprocessor has achieved a similar penetration. Twenty years ago, there were fewer than 50,000 computers in use; today more than 50,000 computers are purchased every day.
The defining characteristic of this new technological push is programmability. In a computer chip, programmability means the capability to alter a command, so that one chip can perform a variety of prescribed functions and produce a variety of prescribed outcomes. On the factory floor, programmability transforms the production operation, enabling one machine to produce a wide variety of models and products. More broadly, programmability is the new corporate capability to produce more and more varieties and choices for customers—even to offer each individual customer the chance to design and implement the “program” that will yield the precise product, service, or variety that is right for him or her. The technological promise of programmability has exploded into the reality of almost unlimited choice.
