Humanism and technology together, on the customer’s side Interview with Prof. Aurelio Gisco
9 November 2022Prof. Aurelio Gisco is a member of the Faculty of the Professional Master in Marketing Management at BBS. It is an English-language course that offers solid training in both marketing and business management with an ambitious goal: to generate value by putting the customer at the center. In this interview he tells us what it means today to talk about “customer centricity” and why this vision is perfectly consistent with an increasing integration of new technologies.
The Professional Master’s program in Marketing Management is strongly oriented toward customer centricity. But when we talk about the “customer” today, we are talking about someone who is extremely well-informed, difficult to categorize and very attentive in their choice processes. What are the levers to approach and connect with such a demanding and diverse target?
There are mainly three levers. The first is the generation of value for the customer, across the board. This ranges from the creation of services, experiences and emotions to the generation of solutions and platforms that arise from a marketing management process in which the phases of value analysis, value creation, value delivery and value communication follow one another. The second lever is the building of a stable and long-term relationship with the customer, allowing the customer relationship itself to be considered a real asset, on which to exercise the options of cross selling, up selling and trading up. The third lever is a trend toward increasingly better customer insight, through both Big Data (quantitative techniques) and customer insight (qualitative techniques).
Marketing is increasingly moving toward a new humanism, as theorized by Kotler in his “Marketing H2H” edited in the Italian version by Prof. Ancarani. How do you make Marketing Management tools more human in the world of big data, technological innovations and digitization?
First, it should be made clear that humanism and technology are not alternatives, but they coexist. Rather, they feed off each other in a positive circularity. And hence the answer. The services, experiences, emotions and solutions, which we were also talking about earlier, are the offspring of content, and customized content, which only technology can provide. So, the meeting point is that of content, which, also enhanced by technology, provides customized services to individuals. And then, of course, the capabilities of management, and sales management in particular, facilitate on the one hand the humanization of technology, and on the other hand the systematic and continuous use of technology for humanization.
Issues of sustainability and diversity are now on the agenda in the professional world. How do they tie in with a path in Marketing Management?
Sustainability is naturally related to Marketing Management because Marketing is the business function that deals with the company’s relationships with the outside world, starting with the customer and extending to all potential stakeholders. So Marketing is naturally oriented toward a sustainable vision of management, social responsibility, inclusion and diversity management. It is no coincidence that, as a precursor several years ago, Professor Kotler launched the topic of social and societal marketing and, more broadly, that of nonprofit marketing.
Why would you recommend a new graduate to attend the Master’s in Marketing Management at BBS?
For a pragmatic yet rigorous approach based on the latest scientific research combined with close proximity to businesses and their realities. In an environment that combines tradition with a dynamism that makes it almost unparalleled. All this in one of the very few schools in Italy and Europe that has the EQUIS accreditation.
