For Immediate Release:

Friday, December 23, 2016

Wikipedia defines consumerization as the reorientation of product and service designs to focus on (and market to) the end user as an individual consumer, vs an earlier era of organization-oriented offerings.  It speaks to growing markets by looking for a completely different category of buyer, who may also be an influencer for the organizational purchase.
Of greater relevance, however, is looking at consumerization from the buyer’s perspective.  Consider:

• “consumerized” members of an association may no longer see membership as a great investment: they may compare membership with alternatives, and decide that something – or anything – is a better use of their funds: impacts membership.
• “consumerized” staff may prefer their own computers (and smartphones) over the “clunky” official tech gear: impacts IT planning, IT security, and brand.
• “consumerized” clients may suddenly look elsewhere for answers to their problems… including Google, LinkedIn groups, and your competitors:  impacts both marketing strategy, and revenue.
• “consumerized” learners may prefer to learn at a time of their choosing using Lynda.com (now part of Microsoft/LinkedIn), instead of attending your “official” professional development offerings: impacts training strategy (and training providers!)

If the internet (and Amazon) has taught us anything, it is that we are fast approaching a time with almost perfect access, both to information and capability.  It takes merely seconds to find an answer on Google, and mere minutes to set up a server on the Amazon cloud.
This week’s action plan:  Imagine a time, five years in the future, when you are competing in a completely consumerized market.  While it is a significant analytical exercise to imagine what this looks like, this week’s action plan is more practical:  what is your organization doing, right now, that you don’t think measures up to consumer choice?  Then either up your game and choose to compete with this, or give it up and redeploy your resources to an activity that has consumer “legs”.

Note: The Make It Happen Tipsheet is also available by email. Go to www.RandallCraig.com to register.

Randall Craig
@RandallCraig (follow me)
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