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Rural System? Just Dreaming …
A For-Profit Conglomerate for
Meaningful Jobs
Healthful Communities
and Improved Natural Resource Management
by Robert H. Giles, Jr., Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus
Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia
2007
Chapter 17. Marketing
Dreaming: A personal relationship with a car… with its company… ecological relationships … relations… relationships…ships…ships…interactions…actions …inter…interlinks … simple paired rules are all that there are, for nature is simple…one thing right after the other. Just dreaming…
| Within Q Works, success in the tasks of marketing flows to all groups and the system. A special behavioral orientation is proposed for this essential set of processes within the system. |
Everyone who has taken a marketing class knows of the 4 P's, that is of Product, Price, Promotion, and … Particular Persistence in Probably not remembering the fourth one, Place. Each of these words has symbolic and great theoretical attachment to professional marketers. They relate them in various ways, for example, asserting that price is a function of the product, its location (or place), and the quantity and quality of the promotion it has been given. Promotion is multidimensional and includes advertising, usually asserted by those professionals that it is not synonymous with marketing.
I needed to understand markets and marketing, largely to be able to explain and predict them. I needed a theory or model for markets will allow me and staff to rapidly understand each other, use that theory, and make adjustments for the future. I am indebted to Prof. Joe Sirgy (Sirgy and Giles 1986) of Virginia Tech for fruitful discussions about many of these ideas.
Marketing, like "community" or "love," has many meanings. Marketing is ancient, but the first formal thought and writings were in the 1940's. Categories of analyses were the customer or seller, exchange, pricing, promotion, the product, position, objectives, and distribution. Once the marketing specialists tried to target customers (sex, age, etc.) with the marketing mix (the 4 P's). Now the Saturn car has provided evidence for a needed addition: selling a Relationship.
Rural people know this element, R, well. There is a special relationship with land, with a crop, with a group of animals of a type. Dog and cat owners relate to "their" breed. Farmers select to manage certain breeds of animals that may not be in their best financial interest. (The reasons are many, some quite strange.) There are two other basic concepts of marketing, probably so evident that the need for including them was assumed known. Profit needs to be added to the four major words, i.e., that the product or service is done for the entrepreneur's profit and must concentrate on long-term costs and risks as well as Price. Then, or before that, there is need to address the Benefits from which the profits might be realized. Thus, there are, loosely, 5 P's plus B and R. (R is special and does not have to be forced into B.) "Marketing" within the university may always have "the study of" in its definition, but elsewhere it is a verb or place where that action occurs. It may also mean the group of people performing that action … or during recognized difficulties… the cursed ones within a total system that fail to be profitable or to achieve objectives.
Within Rural System we have a marketing group for specialized action. They, as experts, study supply, and demand, and the relations between the forces of these two broad topics in the system. They also act to influence them in desired ways (typically to achieve the stated objectives). They, with other staff, see marketing as the dynamic process by which the entire conglomerate develops and grows by discovering and creating it place in society. They need a model. There are too many businesses, the definition of marketing too broad, the actions and effects too diverse for one word to be sufficient. (Perhaps it is just a different perspective on economics, or group psychology, or sociology?) There are too many factors for us (or anyone) to try to continue to work with them as if they were a car motor, even a clock. Motors and clocks can be mastered by mere mortals with conventional tools. Modern businesses and ecological systems are too complex. A new way of looking at them and working with them is needed. The old ways, dear, respected friends, have worked, but they must be left, for they no longer work in the modem context. A new approach is needed. Perhaps it is a "paradigm shift," but that sounds trendy.
Within Rural System, marketing is a class of actions termed changing behavior and these are actions that all staff are doing together, indirectly as part of every working action as well as directly with specific objective and intent to change a behavior. The desired behavior is to buy to secure needed lasting benefits. Concentrating on changing behavior has the indirect action of avoiding presently-functionless words like continuing education, extension, and outreach. That indirect action coalesced with "public relations," both the condition (along some continuum between good and bad relations) and the set of activities called that. The behavioral emphasis tended to improve the performance of Rural System. Marketing is wonderfully discussable with few boundaries. Excising it from education, management, sales, promotion, advertising, and sociological and geographical analyses is difficult and can be tedious. As an example of the intended work to change behavior, marketing was involved in developing an event conducted by the Tours Group of Rural System. Here is that event.
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A clear behavioral objective was written for the event… the needs of the participants were clear; the event was to reduce the estimated difference between what they had and what they needed. Without this clarification, the risks were too great that participants would leave, doubtful, unconvinced, not willing to return, not asking for more, not reporting success to others. The target audience was clarified. One marketing group staff wanted to add People to the mix of elements. Without clear segmentation, there was real danger of presentations being unsuited for many people, thus frustration and even hostility developing. The Price had to be right for the event. They hid some of an otherwise seemingly excessively high entrance fee within proportionate concession costs, publications, and meal costs. Clear and rapid booking of participants added to their sense of confidence and reliability in the event and its sponsor. The event was considered to "start" upon booking. Travel suggestions were made; final arrangements were clarified. The real start was arrival in town where well-marked staff greeted arrivals (or otherwise met them at the event reception area). Photographs of their arrival added a nice touch on the surface, but it was designed to build memories of the event and Rural System (called "name recognition" combined with developing product or " event loyalties" ). Badges helped people relate and were visible by everyone wherever they went. The concept of work for the entire event, from start to finish, was to prevent the exceptional bad incident that becomes the story about the event, rather than about its behavioral impact. ("Stuck in the mud for 3 hours" has been the conspicuous first story about the otherwise successful hunt for many deer hunters.) The venue, the "Place" was right for the number attending and comfortable. Rural System Inns (see Chapter 25, Realtors), the bed-and-breakfast places scattered around the region were used. Busses were well scheduled to reduce the hassle. (Knowing there are commonly "exceptional people," unannounced catch-up transportation was available.) Quality of accommodations was clear. There are no needs for dissonance of over-expectation and under-delivery in the housing product or service. Catering was hired, partially for the economic advantage to local people, but coaching was done to assure quality of the coffee and snacks, and service that did not interrupt the conversations of participants, one of the activities for which the event had been carefully designed. Departure was more carefully planned than arrival for it could be controlled. There were small useful and lasting gifts, building memories. All names were placed in a membership roster of those having participated in the named event. Professional contacts, idea exchanges, "deals" made, and follow-up event and programs surpassed the pleasures of "belonging," (gaining the desired membership Benefits). Email queries got the needed feedback about the event and all staff shared it. Positive comments because part of future Promotion and sales literature. The "program" within the event may be the banner under which it operated, but the total event is the opportunity for behavioral change, not only in the specifics (of the written objective mentioned above) but in responses to Rural System and its objectives… improved rural resource management flowing from Profits from its effective diverse enterprises.
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In Rural System, one part of marketing has been on developing the set of planned actions by staff to influence the actions, structure, facilities, and outward appearance of the System. (Some people called it public relations work.) It was to produce a condition, an inner feeling of the public about the system that enabled and encouraged investing in and buying from it. It was grounded in simple phases like: "To believe the message, you must believe the messenger;" "Seeing is believing;" and "Birds of a feather flock together." "Support for our programs" is an immeasurable attitude that results along with other rules, just as "flock behavior" is a rule within artificial life, explainable but unpredictable." We act based on a forming theory and the observations of other groups that report that mutually-beneficial relationships between the System and various publics were likely to assure success (by several criteria (see Chapter 7). Within the marketing unit there were people seeking similar relationships and they engaged in analyzing situations, predicting outcomes, advising management on actions and messages, and improving individual and group performance based on experience and thoughtful, creative work. Deeply hidden was the effort to create conditions of actual and perceived reduced risks - the conditions for and the outcome of buying. This seemed like "marketing" to us. "Publics" are employees themselves, customers, media employees, the general public, and special interest groups. In Rural System we see publics and "markets" as through a stereoscope.
Those indirect actions are only listed in training sessions and are not specific things to do but are the space and conditions within which actions are appropriate, friendly, pleasant, mannerly, efficient, and praiseworthy. All behavior is to favor the objectives of Rural System. We study our model of profits, using it to understand how profits are likely to be affected by numbers of people, proportion of those that are buyers, effects of perceived quality on the price, effects of price on buyers, potential competition from changing prices and alternative products or services, costs of advertising, costs of building relationships, and delays in returns on investments in natural systems and other groups within Rural System.
People in forestry and agriculture in general, by inclination, academic training, and professional experience are traditionally oriented to solitary studies. Equally generally they are interested in producing products rather than producing or engaging in rural land services (or others from the list of benefits below). Developing perspective and sensitivity to provide for the tremendous, unanticipated growth of demand for such services has been difficult. It has required within Rural System internal education as well as careful recruitment and employee selection. Employees have been brought slowly but effectively to the cutting edge of changing public tastes and innovations and to that of changing manners and assumed rights and privileges. They are aware of rapid changes, much in contrast to the ponderous rate of growth of trees and responses of livestock and wild animal populations. " Frustration" is an assured, likely-constant, well-known, and assumed stance within natural resource work. Education to achieve that stance, while being healthy, has been difficult and, since it requires fundamental adjustment, is on-going. Manipulating people (as if it is not now being done by parents, churches, media, and educational systems) remains a contentious subject in ethics.
Based on careful studies (since 1970) we know that there are major differences in what people want in the outdoors and what managers think they want. Managers have worked hard to develop a new empathy with the people using the forests and fields. Staff, to be effective in the field, was selected with working experience there. The users of resources are from the city. The transition in society from rural to urban, during the life of managers, has been rapid, a reversal of 80 percent rural to 80 percent urban. There have been minor revolutions in social mobility, gender roles, family structure, and division of labor. The users do not come from the same places or experiences as the managers. Their mindsets are not skewed but completely reversed! Educating them as to the consequences and adjustments required remains a contest.
In Rural System work, marketing includes defining that work as assuring full appropriate benefits of resources to people. Fundamental to that is seeing that benefits are approximately-named responses to basic human needs (Maslow etc.). The emphasis intended is that on fundamental needs, e.g., food, housing, security, etc., in all of their expansions. "Wants" may be "needs," but are often hidden and secondary to or derivatives of needs. We recognize that the debate over the differences between want and needs is usually about an overlap. Wants include temporary fixations, high-risk events, trivial recreation, functionless or excessive property, un-prescribed narcotics, etc.
Staff name eleven classes of benefits that are more expansive than the traditional economic-theory "goods and services" (See Chapter 7). These benefits are an alternative way to conceive of "needs" perceived for rural people. Benefits are personal and groups share some, and in either case are the fundamentals of objectives (Chapter 7). Wants and needs are expressions of the difference between the present supplies or condition and the desired or required supplies or condition. The "want and need" cannot be seen or measured, but an expression of when it is no longer present can be elicited. Human decisions are made to achieve desired benefits. Objectives are alternative, full expressions of needs, often including the quantity and quality of matter or energy and the other conditions often required of " resources," i.e., time, space, and diversity. Written objectives clarify inner feelings but also provide a way to know how well we are achieving such objectives (Chapter 7). The behavior we want to change is from the very diverse set of unnamed conditions (sometime unknown needs) to the behaviors called "to request" and "to buy." We want people to request items, services, inspections, project work, management contracts, research reports, software, tours, etc. ... anything within the existing or creative purview of any group of Rural System. We want requests. "Support" for Rural System may be one way to express the desire for widespread positive feelings for the enterprise, those resulting in continued requests for and acquisition the benefits we provide. This topic is one often included under "advertising"; it is an expression of "belief in the messenger;" an expression of confidence and past positive reinforcements (called "product recognition"). We really want people to buy "needed" things, to engage in buying as actions that are appropriate, efficient, effective (achieve their objectives efficiently) and praiseworthy. If they can afford it, we want them to buy "wanted" things. They may not know they need something (e.g., a baseline ecosystem study, a type of insurance). Our strategy is to increase this awareness of need, whether we get an immediate request or not, for we predict that will occur within our planning period.
We want relations or relationships. We concentrate on "relations" in the definition of marketing. Ecology is also called the study of relations of plants and animals to each other. Both deal with relations. Some say "interactions," but there are few of these true two-way, consistent, cause-and-effect flows of energy or matter (Fig. 1, B ).
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| Figure 1. Relations and interactions may be depicted to assist some people in visualizing their meaning. There are few interactions in business or nature.
A. A relationship. One is influenced by the other.
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A relation is the change in A directly related to B or the subsequent effect of B on C. The potential number of relations can be counted, the arrows of the ecologists' or marketers' diagrams. The number is R and it is calculated by
R = [N (N-l)]
where N is the number of things being studied in a system. Where N is 25 (a small group), R is 600, a big number of potential relations that must be studied and reported. Ecology (a study of) has become mixed and confounded by phrases like "the ecology of an area," "the ecology is bad" (an absurd statement). (See Chapter 16.) It has gotten improper use in agency names, and very diverse and flawed use because of the poor synonymy between "ecologists" (who are students) and "environmentalists" (a diverse, active, and often poorly informed and out-spoken group).
Early Adopters
We need to identify early adopters of products, services, and other benefits offered. By working with these people, widespread adoption or buying or "buying-in" can occur. These people, the "First adopters" or innovators whom we seek, seem to people who have studied them to be in the tail of a bell-shaped distribution of normal people. There are very few such venturesome, nearly obsessive people, willing to take high risks. These are people who learn about practices and concepts before the change agents or salespeople. They travel widely, read, visit other innovators, and attend conferences. The "early adopters," also sought, are opinion leaders and are often contacted by others before they adopt a practice. They tend to be educated, have many media contacts, have high social status, deal with abstractions, are rarely fatalistic, have a favorable attitude toward science, have a positive attitude toward change, and are able to cope with uncertainty. They are more cosmopolitan than others, more social, and have higher respect for education that the general population. Early adoption in specific fields such as forestry does not have a bell-shaped distribution among people and predicting early adopters cannot be precisely done. Adoption of forestry practices varies with length of land ownership, time for evident positive response of a practice, acres owned, presence of a son, notable expertise, and interest in many subjects. As a phenomenon with few equivalent samples, adoption behavior does not yield to classical statistical analyses. The two factors of the nature of the topic being proposed and its costs create great statistical difficulties. The projected local results of a failure (embarrassment as well as financial loss) can be enough to prevent adoption. In rural areas, given the existing financial difficulties, there are few innovations that can promise to make dramatic, large financial gains. Gaining new social status from making an innovation has little current rural relevancy. Rate of adoption of a practice or program seems to be a function of the degree to which an innovation is perceived by a landowner to be consistent with his or her existing values, experiences, ideas, and needs.
Staff will use concepts of early adoption along with other activities discussed in this chapter to secure buyers of advice, services, products and other benefits from Rural System. Working with early adopters is likely to provide efficiencies if the search for them is not costly or delaying. Early adoption premises are only slightly different from gaining any type of sale and include:
Transition or Succession
Investment advisors recommend diversifying stock portfolios. Market specialists advise diversifying brands offered to achieve financial stability within a business. Following a parallel concept, Rural System operates to achieve the parallel benefits observed for ecological systems. Invasion of species into an area as well as competition have parallels in business. The similarity of the product life cycle with ecological succession may be important. There is great similarity between the "product life cycle" of the marketing community and ecological succession or transition (Chapter 15). In the business world a newly introduced product goes through recognizable, fairly consistent stages of sales and development within a market. Perceived stages or periods of change are similar to the ones of natural change that occurs within systems throughout life and in the outdoors. In nature, after an area is laid bare, as by a forest fire, predictable, fairly consistent stages of growth and development and other changes occur. Similarly within biology, there are patterns of development, recognizable stages that occur in almost all animals and plants.
More than just drawing parallels and analogies between the product life cycle and ecological succession, between energy flow and money flow, between promotion and advertising and biological attractants, there is a potential for a unifying useful model, one that serves to integrate concepts from biological, physical, and social sciences, management, economics, and marketing. It is drawn from many fields with diverse terminology but, amazing to me, nearly identical ideas. The similarity is called isomorphism.
Each item within the benefits list has a "product life cycle," better phrased as a likely-to-be-predictable benefit dynamic. It is unlikely to be cyclic, just a predictable transition from introduction to senescence, failure, withdrawal, decline, or disposal. The pattern can be graphed and is very similar to that of ecological succession.
Ecological succession is an orderly, predictable change in a plant and animal community. It varies among regions but can be recognized by a characteristic set of rates, conditions, structure, and organisms, many that are strongly related. I outline it here and in Chapter 15, Processes. Systems or communities change. A part is lost, other parts are added, but the system itself is recognizable as an entity, itself changing as a result of the changes in its components and their relations. This is called succession of transition. Succession leads to a last-stage community that is in general equilibrium, sometimes called the climax community. It is a concept that has been around since 1899. A typical example of succession in the Eastern U. S. is the change that occurs on a large rock, fresh-fallen from a mountain. First on the rock there are dust and earth fragments blown there or remaining after a "clean" droplet of rain evaporates. Then there grows there mosses and lichen, then grasses and forbs (small broad-leaf plants), then conifers like pines or hemlocks, then, eventually over many years, broad-leafed hardwoods like the oaks and hickories. The changes may take well over 60 years. A plant part dies and soil is built. Moisture is held, nutrients build on the surface, shade is provided, and sunlight is gathered, all step by step in relatively predictable fashion, all toward a mature forest. Succession is the code word for the observations of change that occur in a particular outdoor area.
The area is constant. The changes are in structures, processes, and composition as plants and animals process available energy and nutrients. The concept of ecological succession generalized to "predictable system transitions," is relevant to revising and synthesizing several concepts in marketing, business policy, and strategic management, and to producing a concept rich in its theoretical base and usefulness for explaining system behavior in many fields from cellular biology to national policy. "Predictable system transitions" is the idea of a fundamental pattern of growth and continual change with named relevant stages and their processes through which a system progresses over a specific period. Similar predictable transitions (as in the rate of use of certain products or attending events) occur in wants and needs of people as they age.
Policy
A fundamental understanding of marketing for Rural System seems essential, primarily because of the vagueness of its current use and the diversity in the literature. As Adam said to Eve, "we live in a period of rapid transition." Every generation experiences the same feeling in some year. Rural System emerged in 1995 when there are many changes, real and discussed. New needs were seen; wants were reduced by some, increased by others. Changing agency staff, cutbacks, a major war, and State and Federal agency changes have created a new situation. Land taxes increase; more people are urban; rural experience decreases as "experience" leaves the farms and forests. Wood prices have increased; supplies of quality hardwood decrease (thus price increases). There is a new era of environmental concern, one poorly informed. Problems continually arise in anti-hunting, anti-trapping areas. Species are lost. Wildlife damage increases; control efforts become controversies. Strict preservationists tend to resent effective but relatively low cost solutions. Competition increases among consulting foresters. Agencies feel threatened and initiate costly regulatory or excessive reporting and inspection requirements and threaten contacts with benefactors. Agencies and universities have changed. The effects of the wars are sweeping over society. Agencies seem less able to provide needed natural resource services; needs for services seem to increase. The urbanized users become less tolerant, less hardy, more demanding, less well informed about land and resources. Rural System seems uniquely positioned for success if the marketing strategy is sound and well employed.
We worked on the policies and general activities of the organization, thinking that as one strategy, knowing and working toward these may provide unification, a common image (often identified as a public relations need), efficiencies, "product recognition," and other advantages intertwined with causes like efficiency and morality. The list became:
Who Are the Sub Markets?
Given the rapid change in society, it becoming suburbanized, we know how few people now have farm experiences, know rural vocabulary, or know existing named products or services. We tend to re-define and re-name these things to meet the needs of the people of sub-markets. We believe people acknowledge the existence of the rural environment and community of people but treat it with the respect and ignorance of knowledge of the nuclear power plant. It is "there" and probably needed, but too complicated to study and master. It is assumed good and needed and hopefully, that someone is looking "at" and "out over it."
To and with whom are we engaged in all of the above activities? If "publics" are data-specific sub-groups of the public, segregated for analyses by sex, age, race, socioeconomic class, etc., then markets have to be similar, maybe the same. A "market" (not the place to go on Saturday for a chicken, cornmeal, and several onions) today seems to mean all of the people who might buy a product or service (or seek the other listed benefits above).
The Rural System market was once all of the people of western Virginia and surrounding area, about 400,000. The people have widely varied needs and wants. It may be best to treat them as unique individuals and store information about each separately but for various reasons we will probably be content with mastering the probable behavior of sub-markets. These may have innumerable characteristics but we find power and low costs of data collection, storage, and retrieval within four of them: sex, age, race and education-completed. With 3 classes for sex, 5 for age, 3 for race, and 6 for education, there are potentially 270 unique classes …for the 400,000 people … potentially allowing great discrimination in analyzing expected behaviors and precisely designing desired change. Rural System may then present new alternatives that are now or may become wants and needs, and increase the desire for needed things (life quality enhancing and prolonging; socially beneficial). It may then attempt to assist cost effectively in finding legal ways for individuals and groups to satisfy these needs for the long term. (Increasing "wants" has been omitted on purpose. Nevertheless it creeps in because the differences are difficult to distinguish and wants are more easily satisfied than needs.)
I had lost sight! The number seemed large; the needs great. The number of potential people that might be involved in Rural System was less than 100,000 - counting age, employment, family status, etc. I thought the county was large enough for concentration as a market. In one county of interest in Virginia's western part, there are only 16,300 people … total! Thirty-nine percent of them are under 18 or over 65. Wal-mart has 80,000 people pass through one store in China in one day! I squinted my eyes at the map, looked at a larger area. The area for which I was designing, Appalachia, lies within a day's drive for half of the nation's population. They could be customers. Maybe they were the market. Too late, I counted backwards… if we made a dollar from each purchase and we sold 3 times a year, and we sold to 20% of the population of the county, we would make only $9780 a year. We were not selling products in daily use! We had to make more per item, sell more items or events, or expand the population. We probably had to do all three simultaneously, especially increase the market … expand the potential number of buyers. More problems ahead: The rural community was leaving for the cities!
I was now skeptical. Maybe tourism or ranging (Chapter 18) will become a key part of the region's economy. After 30 years of low gasoline prices, tourism has not boomed. Gasoline prices now escalate; easy or cheap availability is no longer certain. Public "ecotourism" suffers from staff cutbacks at the same time that hikers and nature enthusiasts increase and trails and accommodations are "beat-up." The benign negative effects of outdoor recreation on public lands will eventually engulf private lands and facilities unless they are well regulated… a condition only likely years in the future.
The possible reality of Rural System hit a long-time low point when a local economist commented after a brief review of some of the documents that there was no market. She had seen through my haze, some notion that if you have a good product it will sell. The answer is, of course, but after what period? Can you make any money (profit)? And enough money? And sustain the activity indefinitely? My estimates were positive, but I could not see the market clearly and was distressed by the limited view. I could be captured by a losing idea. I could, like those people suggesting putting cows on strip-mine bench pastures (Chapter 20, Cattle System), trap prospective cattlemen in a losing operation unless the number of cattle was very large and all managed as a total system.
Then one day in 2004 I took a long trip with Dr. William Sanders of Virginia Tech and he introduced me to the potentials of new communication bandwidth. He imagined a new-world market as simple as an inexpensive truck starting early each day driving the diameter length of the county picking up pick-of-the-day (picked within hours) corn, newly ripe vegetables and fruits, and catch-of-the-day fish and delivering products to up-scale restaurants, craft shops, and document centers in the affluent adjacent urban edge. Organic produce could be picked up at reasonable locations when notified on the Internet and timing coordinated by Internet communication. The Internet and the truck provided the links for individuals with the world. Craft products were signed and numbered, giving them extra value. They too were moved. Foods were as fresh as they can be prepared and eaten. They were certified as grown under appropriate, pollution-free environments. Data processors could be working at home and tending families and children and delivering backup products on the same truck. The need for large markets, essential for so many agricultural and small-craft products, was nullified by the Internet since now even the single bale of hay can be presented for sale and purchased rather than arranging for assembling, storing, and finding a buyer for some classically large number of bales that fit a classical truck having a delivery-economy zone computed some time before 1990. Individual products can be certified, numbered, made identifiable as unique. The product was no longer some integer sale unit but could be seen as individual units that might be delivered. Akin to the Ebay markets, anyone with something to sell can offer it. He described the current industrial model that might be used, that of an assembly plant, with parts from many suppliers, arriving on schedule, having brief storage, and the real production function being preserved knowledge of the assembly sequence with smooth input and output functions. I'm well aware that by some definitions rural institutions or agencies do not "fit" the ecosystems they seek to manage or sustain and thus fail for they were designed for a different objective. The Rural System design is for an alternative, a better fit than yet available. The difficulties lie in both the areas (1) of what of the natural world we want managed and how, and (2) the nature of the institution to do it. As we move from the crop in the field to world markets, the social and institutional factors increase in importance in decisions about actions to take.
Now the market of Rural System has become the people of Earth. That seemed large enough! The challenging market was for people now who will buy survival products for their children… lasting products with high embodied energy, very costly if available in the future. Now the sub-markets were hardly those of location but of language. Human needs were fairly uniform. The needs of Rural System have gradually become clearer. They are to help rural people anywhere meet their long-term needs, to achieve a viable long-term economy, to recognize care of resources as part of that life survival, quality, and vitality, and progressively to teach them the means for providing sophisticated care of their resources and producing benefits. We seek to work with "the whole of it," to clarify and narrow the objectives and to design an institution that fits well with that intent… and continues to do so (that is " adaptive" in the current jargon). Past experience suggests that we will fail in making the fit… but there may be improvements… but someone will surely try to start all over.
The E-Catalog
Dr. Sanders suggested using my principle of "start at the end." By concentrating on a catalog of potentially available products and services…the entire list of benefits…and thinking about them and potential customers, then a new perspective was gained. His message: Stop describing Rural System; list what it has to offer. The concept of an e-catalog was easily developed. The dynamic catalog was of low cost and as diverse as the benefits available. The perspective on Rural System changed completely for the regional boundaries disappeared. The market was the world linked by the Internet e-catalog. The products were as readily available as a page of information for a fixed price, a picture … an ear of corn.
Just Imagine… The following newspaper articles or advertisements are hypothetical but they might appear someday…
Come to the Tech ballgames and visit in nearby Giles County where Rural System offers delightful inns, country food, guided hikes, trail rides, nature discoveries and unique outdoor adventures…
Birdwatchers Find Guided Hikes to their LikingDaily hikes assure birdwatchers of seeing many species of birds, and often new species to add to their life lists. Local participants work on a new game, somewhat like golf, in which they know what a "par" day is and may go to extra lengths to gain a new species for the day. One member has a life score of 86, having seen 86% of the known species of Floyd County.
Jones Residence of Pembroke Joins the Rural System Inns of Giles CountyAfter major renovations, the Jones place has been admitted to the Rural System Inns. Part of Rural System, the Inns offer dispersed overnight and living arrangements for the many visitors and guests of Ranging. That enterprise is involved in a diverse group of outdoor and natural resource activities, adventures, and conferences all related to forestry, wildlife, and landscape conservation.
New Fence Developed by Rural SystemA fence to keep deer and other wildlife out of specialty gardens of Rural System has been created. Using wood from trees thinned to improve to improve forests growth, posts are preserved and an outward-facing ramp is installed. Why it works is not known but there are many opinions…
Tech Student Wins Contest from County WorkAnimal science student, Jane Doe, of Narrows developed a new formulation of a feed for domestic rabbits and won $500. A domestic rabbit production system in Giles County, dispersed in homes and farms throughout the county, has grown rapidly and new economies in feed and rapid healthful growth will result from Miss Doe's studies with Rural System staff.
First SmartWood ApprovalRural System of Giles County has promoted improved forest practices for years and they have paid off in Joe Smith gaining SmartWood approval for his forest and logs. SmartWood, like a good housekeeping seal of approval, is a means of certifying that all logs and forest products have been grown under sustained and environmentally correct conditions. The certification means, as he said, "big bucks" to him for he can now gain about 10% more money for his products. Demand increases and through Rural System he has opened negotiations with an exporter since demand for "green" or environmentally sound wood is increasing and it now gets premium prices.
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We now know that we have much to offer many people for the long term. We can couch it in terms of profits and real benefits, supplying responses to " demands." We also know that people often do not know what we have that can meet their needs. We know they are not informed, even poorly or ill-informed, and that they make less-than-optimum decisions. Knowing all of that is not enough. Perfect knowledge changes little by itself. We must make changes in the behaviors of the separate markets so that they can gain benefits over time.
The bottom line: We, the Rural System Staff and its marketing experts are engaged in effective marketing. We have to have stuff (items) and service (hours) to sell and must cause select markets all together to change their behavior to buy what we offer to achieve their benefits. Our marketing must be conducted all of the time, cost effectively, and continuously changing in achieving desired results, namely large and lasting long-term profits.
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