In 2023, Make Fandom happen in that Company by turning Consumers into Customers and into FANS

In your business and your mission, as 2023 arrives, you must build a tribe in that market. Yes, there needs to be a spirit of fandom if you want to unlock massive growth.

Mediocre companies have consumers and they serve their Needs. Great companies, out of consumers, create customers, who then recognize their identities and brands; they meet their Expectations. But the category-king companies stimulate new users, into new markets and segments, turning them into fans; they bring Perception. (in Harvard, I used Apple as a case study https://hbsp.harvard.edu/product/H006EO-PDF-ENG ).

The consumer goes to buy sugar in Umuahia. He enters the shop and he picks any sugar brand available. He pays and leaves. He is brand-agnostic.

A St Louis brand customer  enters that shop and specifically asks for that brand of sugar. Here, while the consumer is consuming  any brand, the Customer has an element of brand recognition, knowing that there is one sugar brand that exceeds his Needs and meets his Expectations.

In the user segment pyramid, Needs is at the bottom, Expectations at the center and Perceptions at the top. The perception-customers are the most sophisticated to service. But if you can unlock, nurture and keep them, you will become the king of your market. Yes, category-king. These customers are willing agents that enable disruption in market composition, and are innovation-tasty early adopters, becoming apostles of  missions. 

They are the FANS, and they make a great market tribe. You WIN your market when you enable Fandom. Build great products in 2023 and make Fandom happen.

In this videocast, I discuss why organizations must focus on developing products and services that go beyond the needs of customers to their expectations and perceptions. Focusing on the needs of customers is a recipe for disaster. The whole desire must be to deliver products and services at the level of customer perception where they are offered products and services which they might not have even imagined would be possible.

But the day they see the products they will say wow: That is the thing I have been thinking. This also explains the limitations of focus groups because focus groups are  tethered to what the customers think they need. Perception of customer level  service is offering something which could not have been requested during focus groups, because such products will not come into the imaginations of the people being studied.

Tekedia Mini-MBA introduces a new course, starting in the Feb 2023 edition titled “The NEP Framework – Discovering and Listening to Customers”, Yours truly, Ndubuisi Ekekwe, will teach it. We invite you to register here.

Customer discovery and customer validation

As 2023 arrives, research very well so that you can focus on what your customers REALLY want, and not what you think they want, or what they say they want.

If you have a social media account and post once a while, if you position your antenna very well, you will pick signals from customers. Those comments open the world of opportunities.

Customer discovery and customer validation are critical phases in product development. There is a reason in that village that makes everyone want to buy palm wine from Mazi Nkwo. That market woman that sells food at the corner of the telephone mast in the market never takes food home because she finishes it. What is the secret? Empathy: seeing markets from the perspectives of your customers and creating products and services to fix their frictions.

Tekedia Mini-MBA is introducing a new module – “Customer Validation And Building for What Customers Really Want” – in the next edition, beginning Feb 6 2023. Ndubuisi Ekekwe will teach it.

Beyond The Needs Of Customers – Pursue Customer Expectations and Perceptions [Video]

Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA (Feb 10 - May 3, 2025), and join Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe and our global faculty; click here.