TUCSON, Ariz. -- Marketers of the future will have to deal with consumers as real people with passion and feelings rather than as statistical entities, a marketing consultant said here at the Private Label Manufacturers Association annual meeting and leadership conference.
new invention, not re-invention, and they will need to find ways to deal with consumers not from a mathematical and statistical perspective but as real flesh-and-blood individuals with passions and feelings.
"In that world marketers will no longer battle for consumers as targets -- they will battle for the consumers' minds by learning how people think."
In such a world, Wolfe said, computers may become sophisticated enough to read human emotions and to project emotions of their own -- developments Wolfe said could lead to a growing anti-technology segment.
"We can't know the impact of all this on marketing or anything else," Wolfe said, "and that means we can't strategically prepare for what's to come."
To deal with the changes ahead, Wolfe suggested companies become learning organizations that assign people in the organization to read future-looking books and share their findings with others. "That may be the only way for organizations to survive the next 10 years," Wolfe said.
