Review
by Therese Padilla

Several years ago, when we were forming the AIPMM, I asked a colleague (who was a developer) to look at our first web site. Expecting him to come back with glowing praise, I was embarrassed when I received a long list of criticisms. On the top, in big, bold letters, was the word CUSTOMER. He remarked that he had done a search on the pages for the word customer and found zero (0) results. Now, one could argue that I didn't need to insert the word customer in our web pages to be customer centered, but I got his point. I was reminded of this lesson when I picked up The Customer Learning Curve. The goal of the book is to teach any marketing manager how to create profits from marketing chaos.

In the middle of that chaos, sits the customer; whom marketers struggle to understand. In the quest of understanding, a company will launch an initiative to become customer-centric. CEO's urge their marketing staffs and managers to talk to customers regularly. They purchase books and attend workshops about customer-centric requirement building, relationship marketing, and placing the customer at the center of the business strategy. Guess what? For $39.00 ($27 from Amazon -- look at the button on the left) a company can use this book and put a handsome amount in the kitty for the product managers' bonuses.

The Customer Learning Curve (CLC) approach has two major components, the first one is Customer Insight. Customer Insight can be boiled down to simply remembering "the most important marketing process is the one that goes on in the customer’s mind." The second component of CLC are the Financial Models. The financial models present a customer-oriented framework for determining which tools and marketing investments will deliver the most impact on revenue and profit. The financial models consists of eight steps measuring customers’ mental and buying process: Need, Awareness, Access, Motivation, Purchase, Know-how, Experience value, Retention/Loyalty.

This methodical and mathematical approach builds on these eight separate processes. CLC is filled with case studies that have been garnered from the authors’ years of working with strategic marketers. There are also exceptional case studies and examples. One of the great features of the book is the Customer Learning Curve Model which is live on the author's web site. If you jump to http://www.resultrek.com/curve/ you can use this modeler to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. However, you need the book to interpret the results to refine each metric.

I highly recommend this book for all product managers and product marketing managers.

Book Description
The Customer Learning Curve examines every aspect of selling a product or service from the customer’s point of view. It enables you to take an integrated, customer-centered approach and help move the customer through the learning curve more effectively. It helps you cope with too many choices, deal effectively with disruption, make midcourse corrections, assess the progress of a new product or service, and assist top management in making good choices. Companies need a strong model for understanding customers, but their approach is often piecemeal because each department focuses on a different component – technology, price, service, communications, and distribution. This book starts with the premise that a company’s most important marketing process is the one that goes on in the customer’s mind. From the customers’ perspective, the company’s division of labor is irrelevant: The mental process of learning about, deciding to buy, purchasing, and using a product or service is a single continuum. That continuum is the Customer Learning Curve (CLC), that ranges from customers having a need (but perhaps not even knowing it) to being loyal -- repeat users. The CLC is a proven model, grounded in years of research and consulting with business-to-business and consumer goods companies—companies that have consistently achieved breakthrough results from their CLC-guided marketing efforts. This book will give you the information you need to join these marketing success stories and make the CLC work for your business.

Richly illustrated with cartoons and reproductions of many of the actual campaigns used at the time marketing wizard Richard Chapman takes readers on a hilarious ride through the last twenty years. Filled with personal anecdotes spanning Chapman's remarkable career (he was present at many now famous meetings and events) "In Search of Stupidity" takes a no holds barred look at the uncreative and hopeless marketing ideas surrounding the technology industry. It offers clear, detailed analysis of what happened, why, and what you can do to avoid acting stupidly in the future.