The current economic crisis is far from being a simple recession, but a longlasting crisis which political leaders struggle to measure. Businesses must focus on the basics and find other ways to generate revenues. Today traditional businesses, which we call «brick and mortar», evade new business models that could generate new revenues.
These new models are directly inspired from the Direct Economy where freedom of action is left to the consumers. Processes exist already through services like Business Model Design which are directly exploitable, high quality references. Traditional companies need only to draw from these models in order to reinforce their positioning in a market that is completely ignored today; “The cycle of the flow of products and services”.
Ebay is the champion of financial flows that circulate between consumers by taking a commission for each transaction. On the contrary, Nokia and other mobile phone producers absolutely do not benefit from the flows that their clients could generate by selling their phone second hand…nonetheless, dozens of players do so outside of the control of Nokia, who is closed in a unidirectional BtoC revenue model.
And Nokia, like thousands of other mass consumption product brands, and even luxury brands, deprive themselves of millions of $ in commissions turnover from financial flows exchanged between their clients. They therefore don’t give themselves any way to pursue the virtuous chain of the «products and services lifecycle», which is so natural.
Because of this, today this turnover of several million $ is captured by other players who have a place in the CtoC market, developed unbeknownst to the large brands.
As a traditional response to the pursuit of the lifecyle of a product, businesses attempt to give a second life with adaptations or development of the product for other countries. Instead they should exploit UNDER THEIR BRAND platforms for exchange without thinking about cannibalisation problems, which in any case, will happen sooner or later. To do this they should acquire/create technical solutions and online services in order to propose to consumers to continue the exchange of products to empty unsold stocks .
The model CtoC which adds the marketplace dimension
This model is quickly integrated into a business’ organisation because it is fed by the consumers and does not require many internal resources. In addition, the products sold are more accessible to consumer’s budgets in times of crisis.
Many informed observers today attempt to redefine new approaches in face of the crisis, like Kevin Roberts, CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi, who was passing through Geneva. I was able to listen to him speak at a conference of the International University in Geneva. Although of very high quality, these approaches remain fundamentally academic and do not bring concrete answers to the pressing need of finding new sources of revenue.
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