Strategies to Reach the Changing Consumer

As executives, we know we have to transform our businesses to keep pace with rapidly changing markets: that’s not the problem. The problem is not knowing where to start. The latest issue of IESE Insight review has been designed precisely to help you get started.

The cover dossier discusses three strategies to reach the changing consumer. The consumer decision journey is not what it used to be. At every step from awareness to purchase to loyalty new factors add twists to the traditional path, which is largely being shaped by digital technology.

Julián Villanueva and Luis Ferrándiz offer a step-by-step guide to transforming your business for a digital future.Íñigo Gallo and Claudia Townsend suggest how to touch consumers hearts by marketing with experiences. And Bernd Skiera and Daniel M. Ringel delve into another area where executives face a steep learning curve: deriving actionable insights from big search data.

In the interview, SEAT Chairman Luca de Meo admits that he, too, is learning how to reinvent his industry. After 25 years in the automotive industry, he says the next decade may be the most disruptive of his career. But he expresses the right attitude when he adds that it will also be the most exciting. The engagement of other companies with different perspectives is stimulating our industry to reinvent itself. I think this is a very positive thing.

To rise to the occasion, executives may have to reorder their agendas to give priority to certain tasks. Adrián Caldart, Alejandro Carrera and Magdalena Cornejo highlight which executive tasks deserve greater attention.

Inspiration can come from unlikely quarters, as two other articles illustrate. Ian Goldin and Chris Kutarna find lessons from the Renaissance to deal with the paradigm shifts of today. And if your job sometimes feels like pulling rabbits out of a hat, the article on innovation, in which a magician reveals his tricks, will give you the creative edge you need to pull off the very things you never thought you could do before.

This issue also contains thought-provoking columns by Victor Pou, on the future of the European Union at a time when its future viability is being questioned; David J. Teece, on the key elements of good business model design; and José Azar, on the rise of mutual funds and the consequences of too much common ownership.

Members of the Alumni Association and subscribers to IESE Insight a quarterly research-based magazine, published in separate English and Spanish editions can read all these articles using their membership credentials.

Those who are neither Alumni nor subscribers can access the premium content by either subscribing to the magazine or buying the articles from IESE Publishing.

Read the latest IESE Insight magazine here.