No.19   December 1, 2000   A 21st-Century Approach to Marketing   Toshiro KAMEI        Now that traditional approaches to marketing are beginning to show their limitations as companies have less and less direct contact with their customers, new strategies are needed in order to develop markets. And because information is becoming more readily available as the Internet is increasingly used to send and receive it, consumers are becoming more homogeneous and passive. Companies must therefore devise ways of both surprising and impressing consumers, as well as ways of retaining their customer base. In order to do this, they need to adopt a different approach to management--one that is more focused on customer needs.    Successful companies have already adopted such a course. In order to sustain these new lines of attack, however, management will have to be organized (and management policies implemented) in a novel way. As companies will need to be able to respond better (something that touches on corporate culture and cannot easily be copied), this will also present them with an opportunity to develop distinctive competitive strengths in an innovative way--hence the title "A 21st-Century Approach to Marketing." Contents I A Need to Redefine the Term Marketing II Identifying Customer Needs III The Increasing Homogeneity and Passivity of Consumers IV How Companies Need to Respond to Changing Market Conditions 1 Focusing on the Customer 2 Emergence of New Layers 3 Need for Customer-Oriented Management V Next-Generation Marketing 1 Incorporating New Management Ideas 2 Management Evolution and Increasing Corporate Value GO to PDF