Today January 6 is “Dating Sunday”. The day is being actively promoted by the Dating App industry –they need a Black Friday too! Some fun facts:
- About 50% Americans describe themselves as single
- Romantic love is different from familial love and spiritual love and has the intent of a long term relationship i.e marriage
- Thus the romantic apps (OkCupid,Match.com,eHarmony) are different from “hook up” apps like Tinder
- A 70% spike in romantic apps usage is expected on Sunday night
- Holidays with parental family are over and singles are lonely and this window of finding someone is open only till Valentine’s day according to USA Today.
As mentioned in previous posts the tectonic shift in marketing thinking occurred in the late 1980’s and 1990’s particularly with the publication of Dwyer, Schurr and Oh (1987) that spelt out the parallel between the long term human marriage and business relationships. It was earlier in Europe that scholars of the European Industrial Marketing and Purchasing Group figured out that B2B relationships are long term that B2B marketers who really sold anything already did.
Similarly in B2C marketers had been using customer relationships data for a hundred years in direct mail. Naturally, things became much more easier with computers, internet and the mobile phone in the last ten years. Modern CRM systems including the grocery loyalty card try to emulate the mail order wizards of long years ago.
Just like dating apps technology can make initial contact easier but the couple (called B2B dyads in academe) need to make it work. Some thoughts on B2B vs B2C:
- In B2B there is an existing something that a customer is already buying from a supplier. There is a great deal of inter-locking with the value chain of the buying firm. Its a challenge to dislodge an existing supplier whose value delivery and relationship is going well- unless your value proposition is significantly better
- B2C is different particularly for low value items. Brand loyalty is in decline, particularly among millennials, so an Amazon Prime deal looks great and worth trying
All the best to the singles out there on this #DatingSunday!