marketing imagination

1. HOW CAN WE BE MORE IMAGINATIVE?
DISCOVERING THE CULTIVATION
METHODS OF MARKETING
IMAGINATION

2. PURPOSE OF THIS STUDY
• People do not simply purchase tangible products, but a hope,
an identity, and most importantly, a resolution that marketers
provide for them (Levitt, 1986). Hence, Levitt suggested that
marketers should seek to understand their customers by
imagining their wants, preferences, and problems, and
subsequently generating various means to capture their
attention and customs.
• Titus (2000) supported that marketing could be conceptualized
as the process of offering creative resolutions to consumer
problems. Imagination can initiate creative ideas and enhance
consumer satisfaction through designing innovative products
and services, and building a strong consumer-brand relationship
(Huang & Mitchell, 2014; Levitt, 1986).
• Bly (2005) believed that many copywriters do not follow the rules,
and that “great” advertising breaks the rules, which implies that
excellent copywriters (or marketers) demand and play with their
boundless imagination. we propose the question: How can the
marketing imagination be cultivated?

3. INDICATORS OF IMAGINATION
Indicator Definition
Novelty The ability to generate uncommon ideas.
Productivity The ability to generate ideas effectively.
Concentration The ability to formulate thoughts through focus.
Sensibility The ability to evoke feelings during the creative process.
Intuition The ability to generate immediate associations with a goal.
Effectiveness The ability to generate relevant and profound thoughts about the target.
Dialectics The ability to seek improvement by logically analyzing thoughts.
Exploration The ability to question the unknown.
Crystallization The ability to express abstract ideas by using concrete examples.
Transformation The ability to perform tasks by transforming information acquired
across multiple fields of knowledge.
Initiating
imagination
Conceiving
imagination
Transforming
imagination

4. METHOD
• Semi-structured in-depth interviews were
conducted with six renowned copywriters in
Taiwan.
• The ages of these participants ranged from 26
to 46 years, and they had been writing from 4
year to 17 years.
• Participant 1 and 2 Planners at Agribusiness;
Participant 3 and 4 were Entrepreneurs;
Participant 5 and 6 was senior mangers.

5. CULTIVATIONS OF MARKETING
IMAGINATION (1/2)
Cultivation
Indicator
nurturing broad
interests
reading &
learning
observing &
listening
Novelty ● ● ●
Productivity ● ● ●
Concentration ● ●
Sensibility ●
Intuition ●
Effectiveness ●
Dialectics ● ● ●
Exploration ●
Crystallization
Transformation ●

6. CULTIVATIONS OF MARKETING
IMAGINATION (1/2)
• Nurturing broad interests “Hanging around and chatting with
different people is helpful. I may thus find interesting movements
or phrases from them … I’d like to see movies, and study how
they perform on stage … A wide range of interests helps me to
generate diverse ideas” (novelty and productivity; M2)
• Reading and learning “I love to read many types of magazines.
To me, that is the best way to learn… Extensive reading enables
me to realize different perspectives, generate various thoughts,
and generate increasingly flexible marketing ideas” (novelty,
productivity, and transformation; M1)
• Observing and listening “The more you chat with others, the
more you understand others … I often focus on observing why
consumers like to buy fruit in grocery stores … While
brainstorming, I open my mind to various opinions, and then try
to integrate them” (productivity, concentration, and dialectics;
M4);

7. CULTIVATIONS OF MARKETING
IMAGINATION (2/2)
Cultivation
Indicator
monitoring
processes
evaluating
outcomes
comparing &
benchmarking
developing
market
insights
Novelty ●
Productivity ● ●
Concentration ●
Sensibility ●
Intuition ● ● ●
Effectiveness ● ● ● ●
Dialectics ● ● ● ●
Exploration ●
Crystallization ● ● ●
Transformation ● ● ●

8. CULTIVATIONS OF MARKETING
IMAGINATION (2/2)
• Monitoring process “Diverse ideas emerged before I set a goal and
organized the whole structure of a plan … I could connect all my
previous experiences into a mental map. I can grasp similarities
quickly ” (productivity, intuition, effectiveness, and transformation; M5)
• Evaluating outcomes “I often rehearse what will happen in my mind,
and then I decide what to do … I rehearse all possibilities before any
consumer problem occurs … I like to evaluate the outcome of a plan
in advance, and finish it stepwise ” (effectiveness, dialectics, and
crystallisation; M5)
• Comparing and benchmarking “I differentiate between various
consumer expectations because you can’t justify the values of every
consumer … I often exploit marketing tools from high-tech industries,
and compare their product lifecycle with ours … I have benchmarked
with the high-tech industry and have digitalised our marketing
database. I believe that it would take our agricultural business into the
blue ocean” (effectiveness, dialectics, crystallisation, and
transformation; M4)
• Developing market insights “If a consumer tells me that the ordering
methods must be changed, I will handle it immediately …
Accumulating consumer complaints is helpful for improving service
quality … I closely watch consumers who care about health regimens
or wellbeing to build a strong consumer relationship” (effectiveness,
dialectics, and exploration; M3) ”

9. CONCLUSION
• First, marketers use their initiating imagination to envisage consumers’ latent
unsatisfied wants, trigger their consuming desires, and most importantly, diversify all
the marketing possibilities. Second, marketers use their conceiving imagination to
empathise with their customers, evoke consumer feelings, form beneficial plans,
create extraordinary consumption experiences, and effectively attain their goals
(Carù and Cova, 2003; Hatch, 2012). Finally, marketers use their transforming
imagination to probe new information, provide feasible resolutions, and apply prior
experiences (Brown & Patterson, 2000; Hansen & Machin, 2008).
• All these methods are related to self-disciplined engagement, inspiration, and
internalization. Liao et al. (2014) suggested that both self-disciplined engagement
and internalized information are vital for writer imagination, which may
consequently assist them in recovering creativity, and enable them to think
critically.
• These results carry implications for self-cultivation of marketers, provide insights for
human resources management, and underscore a demand for more effort to be
devoted to this line of research in the future.
• Erevelles et al. (2007) believed that great marketers know how to create an
“atmosphere” among their people where the human imagination is allowed to
flourish and grow. Further studies connecting imaginative-capacity cultivation and
marketing performance are also needed.

10. THANK YOU FOR YOUR
LISTENING. 