October 31, 2017 – Having participated in the thINK Conference in Boca Raton held October 9-11, 2017, the event can be summarized in one word: kyosei. Kyosei represents Canon’s corporate philosophy, and is defined as “all people, regardless of race, religion or culture, harmoniously living and working together into the future.” The thINK Conference embraced the concept with its emphasis on creating a welcoming community for all participants to share ideas for the betterment of the inkjet print industry.

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By Gina Ferrara

Determining whether to shut down your internal print and mail operation and outsource to a print service provider, or keep it in-house and potentially make a capital investment in new technology can be a tough conversation.

Those in favor of the latter option will cite concerns over sending customer data outside the organization and advocate that investing in new technology will improve operational workflows, enhance the customer experience and increase brand recognition by adding color to documents, as well as potentially generating a better ROI for the organization. Proponents of outsourcing believe that print is not a core competency and argue that outsourcing to a service provider would be the less expensive alternative.

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By David Erwin, Director, Technology Practice & Principal Analyst

In 1960, Jerome McCarthy introduced the 4 Ps of the Marketing Mix—a conceptual framework for marketing decision-making that focused on product, price, promotion and place. The 4 Ps helped cut through the confusion to ensure business success.

Two decades later, in 1981, Booms and Bitner added 3 new elements: people, processes and physical evidence, bringing the total to 7 Ps. And if 7 is good, 8 is better and thus, various marketing and business consultants added productivity to the list.

Is there room for yet another “P” in our Marketing Mix? Today there is. We need to add one more right between price and promotion—and call it preference.

Managing customer preferences has become extremely important not only to the marketing mix, but also to the overall customer experience, which encompasses how the customer looks at, thinks and feels about your brand over the duration of the relationship.

“By 2020, Customer Experience is expected to surpass product and pricing as the key differentiator for business.” - Forbes

To drive exceptional customer experience moving forward, brands will need to enable the individual to decide their personal preferences for the interactions and touchpoints as they engage with their organization. Doing so will require leveraging technology to receive, record and maintain the how, when and where of individual customer preferences.

Madison Advisors recently released an application brief that focuses on Preference Management and how it helps brands build trust with customers to create a foundation for a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship across channels—paper, email, mobile, social and more. A copy of Madison Advisors’ research brief, Preference Management for Multi-channel Communications, is available here.

We invite you to check back often as we will be updating our blog frequently with information you can use in your business as well as new research, market studies and analyst briefs that alert you to important trends you are experiencing today and in the future.

October 3, 2017, Colleyville, TX—Madison Advisors—Madison Advisors today announced that senior analyst Gina Ferrara and Gary Simpson, vice president of business development and service delivery, will host an educational breakout session at Canon’s thINK 2017 Conference on the latest trends in the migration to color inkjet printing. The event, exclusively for Canon Solutions America production print customers and partners/sponsors, will take place October 9-11 in Boca Raton, FL.

Madison Advisors’ session, “Color Inkjet is the New ‘BLACK’ – Technology Trends that Will Change the Way You Work” to be held October 10 from 3:30 - 4:20 p.m., will discuss the disruption and innovation that comes with new color inkjet technology. Ferrara and Simpson will share with attendees recent research on best practices and market trends in the color inkjet market gleaned from interviews and surveys of print service providers and Fortune 500 companies about their successful approaches. Conclusions drawn from the data highlight the many ways businesses can develop a thriving color inkjet business strategy.

For more information about thINK 2017, visit this link.