Businesses are Consumers Too

Business-to-business technology marketers might want to spend a few minutes reading "Thriving in a World of Consumer Control," by Boston Consulting Group authors Sebastian DiGrande, Dominic Field, Dan Jansen, and Holger Wenzky. The article provides insight around the issues caused by new forms of media creation, distribution, consumption, and monetization in consumer markets — in the style of portals, the iPod, DVRs, satellite radio and other disruptive innovations. The article notes that although a lot of money is changing hands, shareholder value lags in many media-related companies -- although that is certainly not the case with Apple.

One reason for this lag, the article suggests, is that many companies root their value proposition in technology rather than brand differentiation. I would argue that you need both, and that, furthermore, the combination must make intuitive sense to the buyer. Sony has great technology and has had great brand leadership, but its recent digital rights fiasco demonstrates a clear frustration at not being able to make that combination work.

The BCG article makes many interesting observations and three key recommendations to media companies (content, hardware, and software):

• Discover your core customers
• Reconceptualize your products
• Rethink your role in the value chain

But I think that many of these lessons apply equally well, if not more so, to B2B technology providers -- not just media companies catering to consumers. The same technology at work in consumer markets is at work in B2B, and buyers there are asserting the same kind of control in how value is sliced and diced.