In some industries the enticements of full mass production have been so powerful that for many years top management in effect has told the sales departments.
"You get rid of it; we'll worry about profits."
By contrast, a truly marketing-minded firm tries to create value-satisfying goods and services that consumers will want to buy.
What it offers for sale includes not only the generic product or service but also how it is made available to the customer, in what form, when, under what conditions, and at what terms of trade.
Most important, what it offers for sale is determined not by the seller but by the buyer.
The seller takes his cues from the buyer in such a way that the product becomes a consequence of the marketing effort, not vice versa.
Lag in Detroit.
This may sound like an elementary rule of business, but that does not keep it from being violated wholesale.
It is certainly more violated than honored.
Take the automobile industry.
Here mass production is most famous, most honored, and has the greatest impact on the entire society.
The industry has hitched its fortune to the relentless requirements of the annual model change, a policy that makes customer orientation
an especially urgent necessity. Consequently the auto companies annually spend millions of dollars on consumer research.
But the fact that the new compact cars are selling so well in their first year indicates that Detroit's vast researches have for a long time failed to reveal what the customer really wanted. Detroit was not persuaded that he wanted anything different from what he had been getting until it lost millions of customers to other small car manufacturers.