Basic Principles & Definitions

For this tentative definition, I have chosen Christophe Bénavent’s work (2002) as a starting point. Christophe Bénavent is an expert in ICT marketing as well as the website owner of http://christophe.benavent.free.fr/.

Bénavent has segmented marketing as follows:

§1 Marketing as a means to address consumers’ expectations.

· This first aim of marketing is summarised by the author as the means to address consumers’ expectations in a profitable manner.

§2 Marketing as a way to elicit Corporate strategies.

·  This second item is “no longer focusing on customer requirements, but on the areas where Corporate action is necessary”.

§3 Marketing as a way to foster exchanges.

·  This is the third purpose of marketing according to Bénavent. It focuses on symbolic exchanges, the theory of the gift and reciprocal benefits [11] .

One may think that trying to define marketing is beyond reach. Indeed, Mc Kenna’s famous motto is well and truly in our minds while we are attempting to achieve this superhuman task: “Everything is marketing and marketing is everything [12] ” he wrote in the Harvard Business Review. However, Bénavent’s work enables us to isolate three main fields for actions and this is why his definition is a good starting point for us. The first thing I would like to point out though regarding §1 is that marketing is hardly restricted to answering customer’s requirements. For one thing marketing is not always about consumers. In certain cases, clients are invisible (or hidden), or at least they are not perceived as clients per se.

All clients are not “consumers”, but regarding ICT products & services, one may add that all consumers are not forcibly clients either. This is namely the case regarding B2B services and mobility services in particular. In this case, users (let us call them “consumers” for argument’s sake) are influenced by other groups of people, some of which are procurement people, some of which are their managers, others simply making recommendations to the former etc. All those people have different motivations, and they all belong to some very complex ecosystem of decision and usage. This description is in fact valid for most advanced communication services: users are not the buyers, and vice versa. Failing to bear in mind this amazing complexity for a moment could render the marketing and selling of such services rewarding in terms of positive user feedback but will engender very poor results in all likelihood [13].

Perhaps case §2 should have been put on top of the agenda. Indeed, purpose §2 is probably the most crucial. Strategy is actually what places marketing above mere salesmanship because it serves the objective of eliciting a vision and spreading it across the organisation. At the end of the day, when this vision is clear and widely shared, sales can thrive in a far better way.

	Figure 6 : The stressful and ineffectual budgeting exercise will never replace a proper marketing plan.

This is why forecasting and budgeting –however important they may be- cannot supersede proper marketing Planning satisfactorily. Budgeting is an exercise whereby growth percentages are applied arbitrarily –mostly based on what happened the year before- whatever the reality of markets, supply and demand may be. Budgeting often produces good enough results when the overall economic trend is well oriented. As soon as the economic situation deteriorates and business becomes more difficult, the budgeting exercise almost inevitable produces major disasters. This is easily understandable since such exercises do not help businesses anticipate changes. On the contrary, they tend to encourage people in believing that trends go on and on unabated. There is no example in real-life of a market that goes on expanding forever. This is pure fantasy.

Case §3 may appear a bit weird to some of my readers. However, that purpose of marketing is a fundamental aspect of ICT marketing [14] . During the Internet bubble, such informal and symbolic exchanges were highly valued and heavily commented upon. But it would be damageable to throw the baby with the baby bath and overlook such a fundamental aspect of marketing which has already produced some very interactive results in the field. Whereas the years of the Internet bubble produced great and undeniable collateral damages, one should also be wary of radical anti-internet bubbles stances which may prevent us from benefiting from past best practices. Burning too many bridges will serve no purpose.