Friday, 26 October 2012

The 80/20 Fallacy


Byron Sharp[i] found that Pareto’s 80/20 principle is a misleading simplification within a number of markets. Research found that the Pareto principle in a number of countries amongst a number of categories are closer to 60/40, that is 60% of the turnover comes from a 40% customer base, or even 50/50.

Coca Cola describes a ‘heavy’ user as someone that purchases Coke 12 times a year! Hardly what we expect!

I expect that within services this principle would be even lower.

This week ANZ announced a full year profit of $5.66 billion http://bit.ly/S1ReeR noting the bank’s ability to ‘adapt to a changing environment’ as one of the reasons for its success.

Peter Drucker said 'because its purpose is to create a customer, any business enterprise has two and only two basic functions: marketing and innovation'. 

If service organisations want to thrive, they need to develop innovative strategies to attract and retain the attention of a much larger customer base that doesn’t necessarily spend significant amounts with the organisation.

This is where technology plays a major role. We have to get smarter at using technology to identify and ‘draw in’ customers into the sales funnel. I will discuss various strategies in my upcoming blogs.



[i] How Brands Grow – what marketers don’t know, Oxford University Press, 2011

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