José Ignacio Gafo Gómez-Zamalloa

Morocco is an impressive country for many things. And guess what: Within them you definitively have to include their Zoco Marketing. Needless to say they are not the masters of organization, structure and order, but they put into practice key marketing principles that we all should never lose out of sight.

No better place to realize their Marketing than the moroccan flee markets: The Zocos. The Zocos in themselves are one of the main attractions to be found in this country. Grouped by articles, the shops offer all kind of souvenirs and local products. Once into one of them, it is almost impossible to leave it with your hands empty…

You start wandering through the Zoco and you can feel thousands of eyes observing you. The belong to the salespeople, that are analyzing you in full detail in order to acknowledge where you are from, what you are looking after and how to make contact with you. The way for achieving the latter is relatively simple: The mutter a simple sentence in what they thing is your mother tongue and, if they find no response, they keep on trying in several languages till they get a response, verbal or non-verbal. At that moment, they will stick to the language that succeeded and try to get you into their store.

If they manage to do so, you are lost: You have entered their dominions and it will be really difficult to leave it without purchasing. The process is the following:

They will first ask you to go inside while trying to get to know you better. Usual questions will be your age, profession, nationality, family status, time you are to stay in Morocco, etc. By doing so they get two things:

a. get a better understanding of their needs
b. make you feel more comfortable, as of course, compromised to do business with them (i.e. purchasing something).

Having got this valuable information, they will jump then into selling some of their staff. After letting you wander for a while they will ask you what you are looking exactly for. If they have it in the store you will be moving into the price negotiation; if not, they will keep on asking till having a very precise idea of what you want. Then they will ask you to wait and will end up coming back with exactly what you were looking for. To give you an idea, last time we went there, a salesperson went for and back six times till bringing what my wife was after. Great job with customization!

And finally, we reach to the best known part: The price negotiation. They will usually ask for the triple of what they expect to get and ask you to make a counter offer. This process can be really exhausting and can actually take a long time (some customers actually get bothered by this). But you eventually get a reasonable price referred to as “democratic price”. The key here is to be patient and not let them down with their exaggerations.

When you are done with the price, they will try to sell you something else (great example of cross sales). If you get hooked, the process will restart again; if not, they will make sure that you leave with the impression of having done a great business.

A living example of three basic marketing things:

- Customer orientation
- Product customization
- Maximised price per transaction

Isn´t it amazing how much Marketing they know? If these people knew about branding + promotion, they would be unbeatable in a worldwide basis.

Think Different!!!

Ignacio Gafo

Posted on 9 November 2008 in International Marketing

Comments

Posted by: jose luis pastor at November 20, 2008 05:31 PM

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