【正文】 berg Beer 3 INTRODUCTION The scope of today‘s marketing challenge is breathtaking. There are a number of reasons for that: globalization, resulting in fiercer, worldwide petition。s economy has soared at consistently astonishing rates, many global panies have focused on serving the country39。s poorest, will steadily climb the ine ladder, creating a new and massive middle class. Because they are now still relatively poor, serving them will naturally require a pany to change its strategy significantly. Early movers, such as CocaCola and Pamp。s tightly managed exchange rates, they may significantly underestimate China39。s wealthiest consumers will be from 25 to 44 years old. Second, the urban middle class will dwarf the current urbanaffluent segment in both size and total spending power. From 20xx onward we will see some distinct subsegments among the affluent—including the mass and globalaffluent categories—but they will still total only 40 million households by 2025, accounting for just 11 percent of all urban dwellers. They latter will remain a critical market for some panies. These uppertier households already account for 25 percent of Chinese household savings and will continue to control the bulk of the nation39。 M‘s launched an online site called Colorworks. It offered a palette of 21 colors to coat specially ordered Mamp。 Gamble lets shoppers design everything from eye moisturizer to liquid foundation makeup at its site. Engineers at Rockwell Collins use virtual online labs to tailor materials for fighterpilo9t visors. And Yankee Candle woos buyers with brightlyhued labels and 8 exotic scents they can mix and match for the right candle. Mass customisation will grow, being a necessity in some industries. Companies are approaching this new world with caution, and with good reason: The Web can find plenty of customers for madetoorder products, but retooling a factory to spit out thousands of faultless variations on a theme is no easy job. Nike for example spent six months working with suppliers in Asia to rejigger its manufacturing for custommade sneakers. Other panies, aware of the plications, start off with reduced offerings. Still, recipes for success are emerging. Industries such as clothing that can charge a premium for quality are a natural. Others, like golf clubs and hockey sticks, that deal with simple shapes also have an edge. For businesses rooted in databases, from creditcard panies to mortgage lenders, the race to the mass market of one is well under way. Customization not only expands markets but also allows businesses to charge more. Shoppers who spend hours in changing rooms hunting for the elusive fit are happy to pay triple the price of the offtherack products. Suppliers have to charge more to cover the higher cost of making customized clothing, but are hoping that as the custom operation picks up steam, highercapacity manufacturing processes will lower the cost per unit, boosting profit on the premium line. Financial services are naturals for customisation too. Creditcard and mortgage panies already traffic in digital information, so they can whip up loans to fit a wide range of specific risk profiles – and charge personalized prices as well. The payoff, though, can stretch beyond sales. Masterfoods USA has picked up marketing ideas and is now testing new colors in some retail markets. For Xmas, along with the famous ―M‖ on its candies, it will print messages such as ―Ho Ho Ho‖ . Want to see your name on a batch of aquagreen Mamp。 observing consumers。berg describes both the nature of market polarization in the appliance sector and the highwire act Electrolux is now performing. By rethinking customer wants and needs, refocusing the brand portfolio, sorting out the challenges inherent in selling high and lowend products in the same channel, and launching innovation efforts that have won public plaudits, Electrolux has started to pete more effectively across the entire market. Yet even as sales, operating ine, margins, and the pany‘s stock price rise, Str229。 and with the development of specific, rather than generic strategies, tailored to the needs of individual customers. CASE: China Enter and GXS Partner to Launch B2B e。 reconcile differences, mediate in turf wars both in the customer anization and in their own. They must be capable of walking the corridors of power and know which buttons 11 to press, which strings to pull. As entrepreneurs account managers are not primarily concerned with enhancing product sales so much as with identifying opportunity, and with recognizing the synergistic potentials for bining the core petencies of both supplier and customer in joint value creation. The disruption that KAM causes to established anization structures and to entrenched political positions demands that senior management are entangled in the process. Getting Started Stage Companies who choose for this approach appoint cross functional staff for large accounts involving collaborative work who handle all aspects of the relationship. The pany‘s largest accounts may even get a strategic account management team, consisting of personnel who are permanently assigned to one customer and who sometimes maintain offices at the customer‘s facility. The Key Account Manager represents the emergence of a new anizational role that we have described as that of the political entrepreneur. High levels of expertise are required of Key Account Managers. These petencies are particularly evident in the areas of team work, change management, supply chain and logistics management. Also evident is the need to develop distinctive anizational, team and personal petencies that add value to the KAM relationship. Account managers must learn to cope with high levels of plexity and ambiguity. The aniza