One Book Made my Marketing Class Obsolete

I am currently reading Groundswell by Charlene LI and Josh Bernoff. While reading the novel, I could not help but make some comparisons between the book and what I have learned in my core business and marketing classes at Ohio Northern University.

Groundswell identifies listening as a tool on social media that can help a company gain insight on your brand and create new product ideas. Similarly, my product development class strongly focused on how important it was to listen to the consumer when creating new products or services.

                                                                                                                            

Although my class suggested several ways to listen to consumers, I felt Groundswell surpassed these ideas with two of their own. Charlene and Josh suggest setting up a community or brand monitoring in order to listen to your customers. However, my marketing classes taught me to set up focus groups, create surveys, and monitor in-depth interviews.

In my opinion, setting up an online community will get any marketer better results than creating a focus group. Charlene and Josh suggest that online communities are more convenient, cost-effective, and continual than a focus group. Also, the community can consist of a larger group of people, and a larger group of opinions.

With technology constantly evolving, marketers will have to decide which method allows them to listen to their customers most effectively. Both interviews and online communication have their pros and cons, but when the world is moving to technology for everything it is hard to stay connected without moving to the web. Perhaps there will be a time when focus groups are obsolete, because marketers are connecting with their audience online instead.