GUEST BLOG FROM DR. CHARLIE HALL!

What’s in Your Wallet?
By Dr. Charlie Hall
Texas A&M University

I borrowed the title of this month’s column from Capital One’s new tag line. If you’ve seen their commercials, they use this tag line to convey to their potential customer base that their credit card services offer greater security and fraud protection than competing products in the marketplace. In marketing lingo, we would call this their unique selling proposition, or simply value proposition.
One topic that generates much discussion is how to create a compelling value proposition that would accentuate a grower’s competitive strategy in the face of this economic downturn. The problem is that many a company goes to market without having fully defined its customer value proposition. Instead, growers tend to market a nice list of "powerful" benefits (which their competitors most likely state they have too).
The underlying purpose of a value proposition is to identify and satisfy an unmet need that your target market possesses. An effective value proposition describes what you do in terms of tangible business results for the customer. However, it's more than a statement of offer or a buy-line. It's a commitment to deliver a specific combination of resulting experiences, at a particular price, to a group of target customers, more profitably and better than the competition.
For a customer value proposition to be uniquely persuasive, it must be distinctive, measurable, defendable, and sustainable. It is critical to define and support the value proposition in such a way that your customers will pay more for your product than the competitions’ product, or substantially more customers will desire your product over the competitions. Developing a value proposition is the most difficult and time-consuming of all marketing activities. That's probably why so many companies go to market without one clearly articulated.

Hear more from Dr. Hall at the Education Conference on Thursday, August 13, as well as on Friday morning at 8:00 a.m. before the trade show opens.