Marketing guru Seth Godin has a theory called the “Purple Cow.” According to this theory, in a herd of all black and white cows, no one is different from another. But Godin says: If one were purple, it would be easily recognized from others. In all marketing strategies, whether speaking of a product or service, the theory is based on the purple cow that differentiates from the herd. Godin developed this theory as an addition to the marketing’s P’s: production, pricing, promotion, and place. Despite being the latest P, it became the most important one. The paradox is the ‘purple cow’ is different until seeing another one which is more interesting.
In Logistics
We must demonstrate the basic needs of players to apply this theory to the logistics industry. The industry has been evolving with customer demands and market conditions for years. However, we can state traditional needs of the industry as pricing, timing, capacity, and service quality. Although all these factors are still important, value-added services determine who will survive on the market. We might describe these services as knowing customer needs, being specialized, being reachable and easy to work, being transparent, and being trustworthy to name a few.
The Purple Cow: Tech-Oriented
For past 5-10 years, technology – especially online services – has become a key factor for success. Most shipping carriers and freight forwarders started to serve with technology and announced their online tools, like live chat options and paperless documentation services. All these were great, beneficial, and useful innovations. However, almost all players now have it and the purple cow started to become unrecognizable.
The key point to being different may be artificial intelligence that combines all the factors we mentioned above to provide the best service experience, best timing, and pricing. Artificial intelligence will listen to you without missing a word, regardless of the language spoken. It will analyze big data sets and find the best solution for the customer’s needs, and supply chain automation will be taken to another dimension. This will also enable us to move away from traditional globalization and focus on the new generation of globalization. Spatial globalization will gradually decline, and every company will have the opportunity to serve every customer differently.
Although it is not clear at the moment, we can predict how things will go. The successful ones will be the first publishers of new technologies, regardless of the level.
