What Is Disruptive Innovation? What is a Disruptive Innovation in Marketing?
Disruptive innovation was the term coined by Harvard Business School, Professor Clayton Christensen. (Clayton M. Christensen, 2015) He states that Innovation is the process where a smaller company with limited resources successfully challenges and overtakes the already established company. There is a general tendency amongst the established companies (Incumbents) that they always try focussing on making their products or services better for the customers who are more profitable and ignore the segment that generates less profit. The smaller company then completely focusses on that ignored segment gaining a foothold by delivering more better quality products/services usually at a lower price. Incumbents who are chasing the high-profit market do not respond to the competition vigorously. After initial success, the entrant company moves upmarket and starts delivering performance for the upstream and more profitable customers. When upstream customers start switching from incumbents to entrants’ offerings in a large volume, disruption has occurred.
Figure 1 by (Clayton M. Christensen, 2015) below contrasts the product performance trajectories with customer demand trajectories. It denotes how the Disruption occurs in the marketplace as explained in the above paragraph.
Geoffrey Colon, the author of the book Disruptive Marketing: What Growth Hackers, Data Punks, and Other Hybrid Thinkers Can Teach Us About Navigating the New Normal explains that the new world promotes winning of conversations over hard selling. Growth is now defined by users who create the best content for brands; people who focus on feelings and analytics with creativity. (Colon, 2016)
This ideology by Colon can be supported by a study carried out by Wantedness.com where 88% of consumers in the U.S. and 90% in the U.K. generated interests in engagement with brands that are starting new standards and are pushing boundaries. This can be only done if companies use disruptive marketing instead of traditional marketing techniques. (BICKOV, 2017)
Disruptive marketing strategy is well defined by G. Tomas M. Hult in his article ‘Disruptive Marketing Strategy’ The definition is stated below –
In a similar way (Clayton’s Disruption theory), as it relates to market orientation and marketing organizations, disruptive marketing strategy is a process by which valuable marketing activities take root initially in applications within a department or function in an organization and then relentlessly move across a company’s internal departments/functions, eventually connecting with external companies to ensure that market-based value creation is delivered to the company’s primary stakeholders. (Hult, 2017)
This kind of marketing can be implemented in an administrative process or in product or service innovation.
In the current modern age, the only way a particular company can stay competitive and relevant is by having disruptive ways of business and marketing. In a world where a single user is exposed to a variety of brands in a single day only on their cellular device, it makes disruptive marketing more relevant. Disruptive marketing emboldens a company to revaluate their entire brand and not only their advertising and marketing strategies. The company should be Eveready to change their business model so as to accommodate the consumer’s changing needs. Changing products or services according to the changing trends is sure a very risky move but a stagnant business model is even more dangerous.
Geoffrey Colon further highlights the ten modern world trends which can help marketers to use disruptive marketing for their brands in the future (Colon, 2016) –
1. Mobile marketing is the key — Smartphones are the most relevant tech in the market right now. Almost everyone uses a cellular phone to carry out their day to day activities. Marketing via mobile leads to a very personalized relationship with the customers
2. Successful business customer relationship will be based on Transparency — Customers demand engagement from organizations. Better transparency will always lead to more customer satisfaction and trust. Companies are always seeking ways to keep their customers invested and transparency seems to be a way forward.
3. Content is the new currency — Engaging contents keep the customers from wandering away to other brands. Educational and Entertainment content is a key part of people’s lives and is not going to be changed in the coming future anytime.
4. User-generated content will be more disruptive — Brands would be looking into user reviews, posts, and blogs to better their content. This co-creation of content based on both user reviews and brand products will become a popular trend.
5. Social networks have the potential of creating their own eco-system — Social media is an ever-growing entity with a lot of marketing taking place already on their platforms by the means of Digital Marketing.
6. Press and Publishers will become irrelevant as Brands will push their own multimedia- The digital age is upon us and brands have the capacity to directly connect with users, seeds of the brand image via marketing would be rooted inside customers by the means of creating loyalists and brand advocates.
7. Generation Z would be the market focus — The newer generation Z after Millennial age would want more from the organizations other than pure profits like Environmental conversation as evident from Speeches and doings of Activist Greta Thunberg. (The Guardian, 2019)
8. Disruptive marketing will evolve around products more than services — For the marketers of the future, not only customer satisfaction and retention would be important but also product innovation will play a key role.
9. Data-driven and personalized disruptive way of marketing will become a standard tool — Personalized marketing will be relationship-oriented and will build trust with the customers based on content.
10.Accuracy of tracking metrics will increase — Sophisticated means to analyze and mine right data is still a work under progress for now. Better analytical tools would be developed to help marketers to achieve success in terms of emotional and cultural relevance and higher rate of returns.
REFERENCES —
Clayton M. Christensen, M. E. R. a. R. M., 2015. What Is Disruptive Innovation?. DISRUPTIVE INNOVATION, Issue December, pp. 44–53.
Colon, G., 2016. Disruptive Marketing: What Growth Hackers, Data Punks, and Other Hybrid Thinkers Can Teach Us About Navigating the New Normal. 1st ed. New York: American Management Association.
The Guardian, 2019. Greta Thunberg condemns world leaders in an emotional speech at the UN. [Online]
Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/sep/23/greta-thunberg-speech-un-2019-address
[Accessed 03 December 2019].BICKOV, A., 2017. Sendible Insights. [Online]
Available at: https://www.sendible.com/insights/disruptive-marketing-tips
[Accessed November 2019].
