Prologue: From Marketing 0 to Marketing 0

Figure 5.2 Mapping the Customer Path throughout the Five A's

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Marketing 4 0 Moving from Trad Philip Ko
Management and Cost Accounting Bhimani

Figure 5.2
Mapping the Customer Path throughout the Five A's
The stages in the five A's are not always straightforward and are sometimes even spiral, similar to the way women buy. With attention deficit, customers might skip a certain phase along the customer path. For instance, a customer might not be attracted to a brand at first, but a recommendation from a friend drives the customer to eventually purchase the brand. It means that the customer skips appeal and goes directly from aware to ask. On the other hand, it is also possible that some customers skip ask and impulsively act
solely based on the initial awareness and appeal.
In other cases (e.g., in scarce and highly popular categories), loyal advocates might not necessarily be actual buyers. Tesla products, for example, are well advocated by non-buyers. This means that customers skip act and go directly to advocate. The new customer path is not necessarily a fixed customer funnel, and customers do not necessarily go through all the five A's. Thus,
from aware to advocate, the path might expand or narrow in terms of the number of customers going through each stage.
The new customer path might also be a spiral, in which customers return to previous stages, creating a feedback loop. A customer who asks questions might add new brands to the “awareness list” or find a particular brand much more appealing. A customer who encounters product issues during usage

might research more about the product before deciding whether to keep using it or to switch to another. Since the path might be a spiral, the number of brands considered throughout the customer path might also fluctuate across the five A's.
The time customers spend on their path to purchase also varies across industry categories depending on the perceived importance of the categories.
In consumer goods categories, for example, aware and appeal occur almost simultaneously. Thus, strong brand awareness without equally strong brand appeal in those categories usually leads to nothing. The time spent on ask is also typically very short. Spontaneous discovery is very common. Customers instantly and impulsively decide which brands to choose as they stroll down the grocery aisles. Most customers catch only a glimpse of each considered brand in-store and typically do not research further. For big-ticket items such as real estate and cars, on the other hand, customers are willing to spend more time asking questions and doing extensive research before purchasing the items.
The five A's framework is a flexible tool that is applicable to all industries.
When used to describe customer behavior, it draws a picture that is closer to the actual customer path. It allows for cross-industry comparisons, which reveal insights into industry characteristics. It also provides insights into a company's relationship with customers in comparison with its competitors.
When a company, for example, finds that the most common path its customers often take is very different from the typical customer path in its industry, the company might discover either an authentic differentiation or a hidden customer experience problem.

Driving from Awareness to Advocacy: The O Zone (O
3
)
The ultimate goal of Marketing 4.0 is to drive customers from awareness to
advocacy. In general, there are three main sources of influence marketers can use to do so. A customer's decisions across the five A's are usually influenced by a combination of their own influence, others' influence, and outer
influence. Let us call them the O Zone (O
3
). (See
Figure 5.3
.)

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